Where do these American black names originate, what language if any are they based on? It must be something as there's similarities between them.
I grew up with kids that were born in the 70's, 80's. There were usually 4 ways a black kid was named -
1) Regular names. These were just regular family names that were past down*. Lots of Srs, Jrs, III's, and 4ths.
2) Lots of Muslim names because their parents were involved with -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Percent_Nation . Sometimes the names weren't even Muslim, but kinda sounded that way to the parents.
3) Lots of "African" names like Shaka, Zaire, Afrika, Kenya, Kenyatta, etc...... because of Pan African movements here in the States, say 65-95 especially.
4) The White-Black combo. This was a combo of a "White" name or non-descript name with an odd prefix, spelling, or both. So you get Shakenneth, LaVanessa, Antforney, etc.... Old school Blacks used to joke that it was just to fuck with White people. But I've had them explain they didn't want their kids to have "White" names, so they've add something to it to be unique, sorta like what Beakdoctor mentioned.
* I've known 4 Adolf's/ Adolph's in my life. One was an old Jewish guy that was born before the war. The rest were young to middle aged Black dudes.
