African names

When/if Barack Obama is elected president, there will be a huge surge in African-American parents giving their kids traditional African first names.

Currently, it seems to be more common for African-Americans to give their kids African-inspired names as opposed to strictly "authentic," letter-for-letter African names. According to this article, this trend began when, "spurred by the black power movement and media phenomena like "Roots," certain prefixes and suffixes inspired by Islamic and African names, like "Lat," "isha" and "ika," became fashionable for black girls in 1975: Tamika (No. 3 among black girls in 1975), Latoya (16), Latisha (20), Latasha (75) and Shameka (88)."

If Obama is elected, the resulting wave of black pride will probably go even further in the direction of authenticity, with African-American parents researching traditional family names, looking into the meanings of African first names, etc.

Maybe parents of non-African backgrounds will give their kids African names, too. I could definitely see non-African-American, hard-core Democrats naming their sons "Barack." This could lay the groundwork for an increase in name-swapping among all ethnicities.

Perhaps we'll even see a reversal of the long-term trend of upwardly-mobile, non-Anglo parents giving their children Anglo names. For example, maybe in a few decades it won't be weird or offensive for a non-Hispanic couple to name their son "Juan." Such a trend could be a healthy personal-branding response to the increasing size, power, and importance of traditional ethnic minorities in the United States.