Written by Azizi Powell
© Azizi Powell, July 11, 2019
[This pancocojams post was previously named "How Patricia, Alicia, Kecia, Felitia & Some Of Their Sisters Helped Re-Start The "Isha" Naming Custom Among Black Folks In The USA]
My people, my people. Gather 'round and listen up!
I've got a story to tell. And it's all true.
I never lied. Or at least I don't think I'm lyin 'bout this.
You tell me if you feel I don't speak the truth.
This story starts way way back in 1910 when brother Scott Joplin wrote an opera- I said opera not a play 'cause that's what he called it. And that's play's name was Treemonisha. So Treemonisha is the star of the opera. She's a young chocolate girl and you notice that she's got an "isha" name. Her mother in the pla-I mean the opera got an "isha" name. She's "Monisha". And if you were to as me, maybe her grandmother who wasn't in the play also was named "Monisha". That's how she got the name "Treemonisha" 'cause there was three of them.
This isha story might go back further than when this opera was written. As a matter of fact, it might go way way waaay back to the motherland when some of our people came from a Nigeria where they talked about and were talked to orishas- If you don't know about them, get to studin chile, cause this is your history I'm talkin 'bout and if it ain't, it's still worth studyin.
Then there were other folks way way back then who came from that same place Nigeria though from another part and the town they were from was called Onitsha- and still is called that. You notice that the "cha" in "Onitcha" sounds like that "isha" name ending. That's what I'm talking 'bout. Well, I had to look this one up. But I read on Wikipedia that that the folks living in the town of "Onitsha" were prone to "look down" upon the people of the towns near them so those people gave "Onitsha" that name which means "arrogant". (We would call them stuck up or something worse. So I guess it's a good thing we didn't have anything to do with naming that town.)
So what I think happened is that some of our ancestors -your family and mine -if you are even a little bit chocolate- if they came from that place called Nigeria or if they were on the boat with folks that came from there or if they lived and had their being with chocolate folks that came from there, I think they remembered those words "orisha" and "Onitsha". And they liked the sounds those words made.
So that's one way the story may have gone.
There's also our girls Alicia, Kecia, and Felitia and some of their sisters whose names end in "cia" not to mention their Russian cousin Misha, but they don't really hang with him. Notice that all those name endings sound alike - The "cia" sounds just like "shah". So you can look up those names and the different ways they are spelled. Alicia/Alisha, Kecia/Ketziah, Keshia; Kiesha; Felitia, Felicia, Felisha... And Patricia also is tight with Alicia, Kecia, and Felitia, but they call her by her nickname Trisha. She fits right in.
But, I'll tell you one thing, those girl names aren't from Africa (People think that Kiesah is from some African country where it means "favorite", but I'm not sure about that.) Of course, Everybody is from Africa if you go back far enough. But I mean that those two names Alicia and Felitia come from White folks and Kecia is a different way of spelling the Biblical name "Keziah". Look it up if you don't believe me.
But here's the thing- We Black folks know how to use our creativity. We aren't satisfied with something just lookin, or soundin, or be spelled the same way forever. We like to change things up, add some sooooul to that sauce. Ya know what I mean?
So even before that Reading Is Fundamental movement that talked about soundin words with phonics and spellin things the way they sound-That rap music took this idea and ran with it- But even before that time in the 1960s or 1970s or so, Black folks were re-spelling words and names are words so we were re-spelling Lots of names.
So Alicia became Alisha and Felitia became Felisha and Falisha, and our girl Kecia whose name used to be Keziah in the Bible became Keisha, and Kesha, and LaKeisha, and on and on and on. Some people think those names come from the motherland, but they don't really except everybody comes from Africa if you go far enough back.
The other thing everybody here knows already, but I remind you about since this is a big part of this here story is that since we Black folks love to create new things from old things and that includes names, one way we do this is by combining names or parts of names. So if one woman had a father named Tom and a mother named Alicia, she could've been given the name Tomisha regardless of whether "Alicia" was spelled with an "isha" ending. If a name sounded that way, it would've been all good to go. There's also sister Venicia- we haven't mentioned her yet. She's one of Alicia's, and Kecia's, and Felicia's sisters. Well "Venisha" and we could have spelled it, could have been named that name from birth. And her father's name could have been "Vincent" or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was Bernard, and she should have been named "Bernicia" or "Berniesha" or maybe her father was Don and her mother just like the "isha" ending so she named her baby girl Donisha.
Now I'm not tryin to imply that her mother was fast or anything like that. I'm not saying that folks don't know who were father was... I'm just throwin out examples of old school "isha" names and how people may have gotten those names. It might not have had anything to do with the mother's name or the father's name or combining parts of those two names. It mighta just been that you liked how that name sounded or if you ever met anyone with that name and liked or heard it on TV or in the movies -which brings our story up to the late 1960s or 1970s or so.
Way back then there were hardly any books on names from the motherland-and I'm including Arabic names as part of names from the motherland cause that Arabic language has been spoken in Africa and I mean places like Nigeria in Africa for generations upon generations upon generations. Nowadays some folks are learnin what I already knew-that some of our ancestors that were brought to this country in chains spoke and read Arabic and that means that they had Arabic names. So one of the Arabic female names that was given in the motherland way way back when and is still given there now is the name A'isha, which they say means something like "full of life".
When Patricia, Alicia, Kecia, Felitia, Venicia and the rest of their crew hooked up with A'isha, then they had good time suggestin different ways she could spell her name, but A'isha told them that folks already spelled her name different ways in Africa and in the other places throughout the world where she is known. So spelling her name like Ayesha, Ayisha, and Ashia wasn't really new to her.
In 1990, this boy group called ABC (Another Bad Creation) from the good ole USA made a record and a video called "Iesha". It's on YouTube. You should check it out. The way you spell "Iesha" is a really good way of spelling a name like it sounds, like I talked about earlier in this story, remember? The phonics way. I think that was a new way of spelling A'isha that us African American invented. Then there was this tv show called Moesha that folks watched in the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Moesha is another name that ends with the "sha" sound and it seems to me that tv show helped get people used to those "sha" ending names (Not that anyone I know named their daughter Moesha...
Anyway, Patricia, Alicia, Kecia, Felitia, Venicia and the rest of their crew had even more fun when those sisters hooked up with the beginning sounds "La", "Da", and "De". That's when LaKiesha, Danisha, and Delisha came to town.
And just in case someone's bent out of shape because these "isha" names aren't from the motherland, there's "Tanisha" which some people say is from that same African nation of Nigeria I spoke about before. Some people say Tanisha is a form of the word "Tani" which means Monday so Tani/Tanisha means "girl born on Monday" in the Hausa language that some people speak in Nigeria. But I looked on the internet and the Hausa word for Monday is is actually Litinin. So many "tani" is a shortened way of saying Litinin.
And the funny think about the name "Tanisha" is that some Indian women in India are named "Tanisha" (Sometimes they spell that name with two a's at the end-"Tanishaa" and say it means"ambition" in Sanskrit. Maybe it's just a coincidence that both Nigeria and India have the same Tanisha name, but I think there's no such thing as coincidences.
Anyway, Patricia, Alicia, Kecia, Felitia, Venicia, Aisha and the rest of their crew pulled their girl Tanisha to the side and suggested different ways of spelling her name. They got creative with it and came up with Tenishia, Tanesha, Taneshia, Tinisha, Tinesha, Tanysha, Tenesha, Tenisha, Tynisha, Taneisha, Taneesha, and more. And Tanisha was lovin it.
Now that's not the whole story- cause you know how we roll. We ain't satisfied with a little tweek here and a little tweek there. We like to Work It, chile. So with some people "isha" changed to "iesha" and with others "Keisha" change to Qisha" or "quesha" and so on and so forth.
And maybe this all would have happened anyway even if Alicia, Kecia, Felicia and dem hadn't wanted to try on different ways of spellin their names. But as for me, I think we owe them, and Treemonisha, and Vernisha, and Berniesha, and all the other "isha's that came before us some shout outs. Show them some respect, y'll. Remember their story, cause it's your own.
And that's all I have to say about that right now.
Sat on a pin. This story's end.
****
This pancocojams post presents information and examples of "isha" ending names.
The content of this post is presented for onomastic and cultural purposes.
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-snip-
This post is part of ongoing pancocojams series on distinctive African American names, Arabic names, and names from traditional African languages. Click the tags below for more pancocojams posts on these subjects.
Hat tip to the hosts of the YouTube vlog "Say It Loud" for publishing an episode entitled "Black sounding" names and their surprising history" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjiGBpdmk_I.
Watching that episode and reading the comments in its discussion thread motivated me to re-visit the subject of sources for "distinctive African American names", resulting in this pancocojams post and several other pancocojams posts, including https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/07/comments-from-africans-about-their.html "Comments From Africans About Their Traditional Names (From The YouTube Vlog: "Black Sounding Names And Their Surprising History"
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2011/09/little-sally-walker-story-tellin-it.html "Little Sally Walker (A Story. Tellin It Like It Is & Like It Was)" for another Azizi story.
This content is presented for onomastic and cultural purposes.
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