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Dear visitors of Black Ghetto Baby Names. Today we continue our investigation into African American names that have been adopted from the names of European lords, whose descendants were probably slave owners. As promised, today we cover Marquis and Tyrone, two of the most popular African American names among boys. As usual, I will end the post with some of my own thoughts.
Marquis
As a student of language might now, Marquis is a family name from France. As with the flavors of names in the community today, the name Marquis has historically enjoyed many different spellings: “Marques”, “Marquise”, “Marqui”, “Marquess”, but they all referred to the same house. Since before written history of such matters, the family has been rooted in Normandy, the arrondissement of Boulogne-sur-Mer. In any imagining, the name means “Nobleman” or “lord of the borderlands.
The name came to America by means of Canada; in`the 17th century, many French lived in Quebec. However, when some nearby land (Acadia) was granted to the British, the French nationals fled to Louisiana. It is reasonable that there they acquired slaves and started to interface with the African slave population. The name Marquis has traveled an ocean and the long Mississippi to come into frequent parlance here in the United States.
Tyrone
There are very few identifiably African American names as the name Tyrone. Yet would it surprise you to learn that the name Tyrone is not a “Black Ghetto Baby Name”, but actually hails from the lands of an ancient Irish lord? The name directly translates from Gaelic to “From the land of Eoghan”. Now Eoghan is an Irish male name that originated perhaps in the 4th century AD. And the lands of Eoghan likely belonged to an Irish land owner from those times. So next time you meet a Tyrone, make sure he knows that his name dredges the long-ago history of the emerald island.
Today’s post discussed even more popular African American names and their histories that stretch back to Europe. In light of this connection, here in this final hour I would like to point out that all people, black and white, are interconnected and shall always be. May we learn to love each other peace, without war or bloodshed.
DeShawn
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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