Darius
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Welcome back to Black Ghetto Baby Names. Today, we would like to discuss the relevance of an ancient name that has only recently entered the African American subconscious.
The name Darius has become so common that many assume that the name it self may have originated from Africa, or the vagaries of African America. This assumption would be a great mistake. The name “Darius” is actually Persian, there were three kings of ancient empire called Achaemenid Empire, and all three kings were name Darius. The contains more mystery than one may think! The name Darius traces back all the way to 549 B.C. With Darius the Great also know as Darius I of Persia. Roman form of Achaemenid (Dareios), was the Greek form of the Persian name Dârayavahush, which was composed of the elements dâraya “to possess” and vahu “good”. Several ancient kings of Persia bore this name, including Darius the Great who invaded Greece but was defeated in the Battle of Marathon.
Today there are many famous African Americans that are name Darius. One of them being Darius LaVar Miles. Darius Miles is a great NBA player who plays for the Portland blazers, he is a amazing 6foot 9, living up to the majesty of the name! Another big shot would be Darius McCrary many may have heard of this name from the very popular show “Family matters” or his popular move “Mississippi burning”
If I were to write a list of notables named Darius, the list would extend for miles large. In today’s society the name has been adopted and many African American family’s choose to name their kids Darius as it stand for “Being great”. There is Darius Rucker and Darius Walker, Darius Washington, Darius Danesh this is just a little list of famous African Americans that choose the name Darius. There are many more, which just proves the point that the name Darius is greatly used in today’s black society, and carries a wealth of history and meaning.
If you found this post interesting, I hope you’ll check out our list of popular black names for similar posts on other historically black names.
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FYI for the dummy who wrote this, Aaliyah, Nia, & Imani are African names originating form Africa. Aaliyah meaning the highest of all beings, Nia meaning purpose, and Imani meaning faith.
Kamiyah, I imagine that you are pointing to the names’ Swahili origin. However, to do so is to ignore the fact that Swahili itself is a language heavily based in Arabic! The name Aaliyah was certainly used first by the Arabs before either the Africans or ourselves.
DeShawn