At 1:29:45 PM on Saturday, August 22, 2009, Rick McCallister
wrote:
[...]
> Very true, but Imani, Aisha, Moesha, Jamila, Amina,
> Mu'amun, Ali, Omar, etc are rooted in Arabic and these
> names are very common among my students.
None of these is at all common amongst mine; I think that
in 34 years I've had one <Imani> and one or two <Ali>s. And
mine is an urban university in Cleveland with a large
African-American enrolment and a lot of students from the
Near and Middle East. (And of course <Ali> as a *feminine*
name is mostly in origin a variant of short forms of
<Alison>.)
> Tia, Tiaa, Tiya, Kiya etc. are names of Egyptian queens
> and princesses and are common.I point out to my students
> that Susan, Candace, Monica, Phineas and possibly Mary (if
> from Egyptian Mery "beloved" rather than Hebrew Maryam
> "bitter sea") are all African names as well
<Susan> is of Hebrew origin. For <Monica> North African and
Phoenician origin have both been suggested, but the actual
origin remains unknown.
Brian
I've always seen Hebrew Shoshanna explained as a borrowing from Egyptian but since I don't know either language, I can't vouch for what I've read.
No one seems to know where Monica comes from. I've wondered if it's related to Arabic Munah/Munyah "wish, desire". Is there a corresponding form in Phoenician/Hebrew?
My university is about 70% African-American. Regading Ali, the feminine form Aaliya is actually more common here. Curiously, I don't run into a large number of stereotypical names, maybe about 10-20&. I do run into a lot of Shauns, Shannons and Devons (male and female), also Eric, Jason, Elizabeth, Ian, Cary, Cory, Brian, Jessica, Houston, Dallas, etc. But most of my students tend to be middle class from the suburbs of DC, Philly and NYC.