Naming a child can be a stressful experience with intense pressure to honor religion and tradition or to please family members. In families with multiracial children, the process begins by questioning whether to choose names that reflect one or all aspects of their children’s multicultural heritage.
Why Parents Might Consider Names with Cultural Significance
Giving a child a name based on cultural heritage connects a child to their past. For some, it represents pride in one’s familial heritage and reinforces to a child their role in that legacy. Rapper and author Khnum Muata Ibomu, aka Stic.man of the group Dead Prez, stresses the importance of making connections to the past in his book Warrior Names from Afrika [Boss Up Inc., 2005].
“Black and brown people are the children of many great warriors, leaders and riders. Millions of our ancestors were forced into this society in chains and to this day we still fight for the basic human rights that we deserve,” Ibomu writes. Naming children after their warrior ancestors, he asserts, honors those ancestors and remembers the oppression and struggles they endured.
Honoring Multiple Legacies in Multiracial Children
Parents of children with mixed heritage also face the decision whether to honor more than one culture in the child’s name. Donna Jackson Nakazawa stresses the impact names and nicknames have on multiracial children in her book Does Anybody Else Look Like Me?: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Multiracial Children [Da Capo, 2003]. Nakazawa offers an example of a multiracial interviewee who says her name was integral to developing her biracial self-concept.
Jamie Mihoko Doyle, 23, was nicknamed “Mimi” as a child, Nakazawa writes. Taken from both her first and middle names, this nickname represents multiple aspects of her heritage, which includes Japanese, Irish and Caucasian descent. By using the nickname, Doyle believes, her parents emphasized that she shared these heritages.
“Later, in high school, I decided I only wanted to be called Jamie,” Doyle told Nakazawa. “But when I got to college, I realized how important having my Japanese name was to me. It’s something from my Japanese culture that I can never lose.”
Pronunciation Considerations with Ethnic Names
Some parents of multiracial children prefer names that honor cultural heritage while maintaining similar pronunciation across multiples languages. The names Ana and Pedro, for example, might appeal to parents in a multilingual household where English and Spanish are spoken.
A Name’s Long-term Impact
Naming a child is one of the first challenges parents face, and it’s an important decision with lifelong impact. Parents of multiracial children can positively influence a child’s multiracial self-concept at an early age by choosing names that reflect familial heritage. For examples of multicultural names, visit the Alphabette Zoope Web site.
Related Articles:
Culturally Sensitive Education Environments: How to Choose the Best School for a Mixed-Race Child
Famous Multiracial Celebrities: New Perspectives on Race and Identity
How Important are Children's Names?: Do Some Names Create an Unwanted Image?
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