NAMING

NAMING. American personal names typically include a given name, middle name, surname, and occasionally suffixes. Anglo-American surnames can be traced back to the English adoption of surnames after the Crusades in the thirteenth century. Traditionally, American surnames were transmitted along the male line only. The practice of giving children the mother's surname, or a hyphenated or composite version of both parents' names, was becoming more common by the end of the twentieth century. The assumption that women will assume their husband's surname remains unquestioned in many communities; many other women, however, retain their natal surnames after MARRIAGE or hyphenate their surname with that of their husband. Middle names appeared in the United States and Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century most Americans received middle names, and by the end of the twentieth century, fewer than 5 percent of Anglo-American children lacked such names. Middle names and suffixes were first popular among the elite and later were adopted generally.

Most twentieth-century American given names trace to three sources: a small stock of traditional Anglo-Saxon names popular in England before the Norman Conquest in 1066, a stock of Norman names introduced following the Conquest, and a stock of biblical names from both the Old and New Testaments. Throughout the nineteenth century the stock of American given names continued to grow as names were introduced by immigrant groups (especially German and Scotch-Irish), surnames occasionally were used as given names, masculine names were transformed to feminine forms (Roberta, Michelle), and many new names were coined. In the twentieth century the pool of American given names greatly expanded, especially since the 1970s. While many traditional names continued in popularity, especially among religious groups who preferred biblical names or those of saints, names gained and lost popularity with increasing speed. In the 1990s the ten most popular names for men and women were given to 20 to 30 percent of children, down from 50 percent or more two centuries ago.

There were two notable trends in naming in the late twentieth century. First, while parents continued to name children after relatives (especially sons after fathers), FAMILY names were more often used as middle names and less often as first names. Second, Americans increasingly selected names that expressed identification with or pride in ethnic, racial, or religious groups. AFRICAN AMERICANS, for example, after a century of preference for traditional given names, began to draw names from a wider variety of sources and to coin new names. Many chose African names as a means of reclaiming an ancestral link to Africa. Religious conversion to ISLAM, in its various American forms, added another incentive to import names from non-Western sources. The renaming of boxing champion Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and the basketball star Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul Jabar) brought this practice into the mainstream. Self-naming could also serve ostensibly political purposes. After his release from prison in Massachusetts in 1952, Malcolm Little joined the Nation of Islam, then led by Elijah Muhammad. Considering "Little" a "slave name," he chose his new name, Malcolm X, to dramatize the negation of black identity and manhood under slavery ("X" represented his lost tribal name).

NAMING

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