Names Ending In "Isha", "Esha", "Ika", "Ica", or "Eka" In Three Compilations Of Contemporary Trinidadian & Tobagan Female Names

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part IV of a four part pancocojams series about Trinidadian and Tobagan first names of pen pals that I retrieved from Student Of The World Pen Pal websites for Pen Pals from Trinidad & Tobago in 2015 and 2020.

Part IV provides an analysis of some contemporary Trinidadian and Tobagan first names ending in "isha" "esha" or "ika" In three compilations of contemporary Trinidadian & Tobagan female names. The lists examined for those names include the  two Student Of The World pen pal lists that have been highlighted in previous posts in this pancocojams series as well as a compilation of names that a pancocojams visitor.from Trinidad shared with me in 2015 via emails. The link for the 2015 pancocojams post about those email is found immediately below this section.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/07/arabic-indian-traditional-african-names_18.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II provides a sub-lists of names from the Student Of The World Pen Pal Lists for Trinidad & Tobago that I retreived in 2015 . These sub-lists are for names on those lists that of Arabic origin, traditional African origin, or Indian origin (with "Indian" here referring to the nation of India). The meanings of those names are also given in that post.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/07/arabic-indian-traditional-african-names_72.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. Part III provides a sub-lists of names from the Student Of The World Pen Pal Lists for Trinidad & Tobago that I retrieved in July 2020.  Those sub-lists are for the names in that list that are of Arabic origin, traditional African origin, or Indian origin (with "Indian" here referring to the nation of India) and aren't included in Part II. The meanings of those names are also given in that post.

The content of this post is presented for onomastic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the editors of the Student Of The World Pen Pal websites that are quoted in this post. Thanks also to Shianne Ramdhan who shared examples of Trinidadian and Tobagan names that she knows, and thanks to all those whose names are cited in those websites.
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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/06/popular-first-names-in-trinidad-tobago.html for a very closely related 2015 pancocojams post entitled "Popular First Names In Trinidad & Tobago (from lists compiled by a 20 year old Trinidadian)".

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE TRINIDADIAN AND TOBAGAN PEN PAL LISTS
The internet link for the two Trinidad and Tobago Student Of The World pen pal lists that I retrieved (on June 17, 2015 and on July 17, 2020) is http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/penpals/stats.php3?Pays=TRI . The list that I retrieved on June 17, 2015 was apparently updated to the list that I retrieved on July 17, 2020. Each of those list happened to include 128 names (100 females and 28 males). Information on another Student Of The World website indicates that participants for that program can be no older than 24 years.

Some of the names that are included in the list that was retrieved on June 15, 2015 are also found in the list that was retrieved on July 17, 2020.  Both of these complete lists are found in Part I of this pancocojams series.  

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT SHIANNE RAMDHAN'S COMPILATION OF SOME TRINIDADIAN AND TOBAGAN FIRST NAMES

Shianne Ramdhan was a twenty year old female from Trinidad & Tobago when she emailed me in June 2015 as a result of my publishing a pancocojams post on the Calypso song "King Liar" by Lord Nelson in 2013 [http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/09/lord-nelson-king-liar-sound-file-lyrics.html]. As part of a school writing project on that song, Shianne found my post, and then asked me to share my understanding of the meaning of that Calypso song and my motivation for publishing that post. After I responded to Shianne's queries, I asked her if she would be willing to share information with me about names that are found in Trinidad. I wrote
..."Another subject that I am interested in is names. I've written a post on the frequency of some African American names since the 1960s beginning with the sh or ch element. Also, a lot of names created since the 1960s that are considered "Black names" start with La or De (pronounced dee or day) and a lot of names created since the 1960s that are considered Black names end in "a" (pronounced ah) or isha, or ika, or tay."
-snip-Parts of those emails and the lists of names that she subsequently shared with me comprise this pancocojams post: http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/06/popular-first-names-in-trinidad-tobago.html entitled "Popular First Names In Trinidad & Tobago (from lists compiled by a 20 year old Trinidadian)".

This pancocojams post focuses only on the lists of names that Shianne Ramdhan compiled for girls and women under thirty years old. Shianne compiled one list for "females of African descent" and one lists for "females of Indian descent" writing that "Girls of Indian decent* share the same names as well like Shanice and Alliyah." 


Here are the two female lists of names that Shianne Ramdhan compiled:

Names for females of African descent 
(girls to maybe young adults (those in their 20's as well)
Shanice,

Tamika,
Shamiah,
Tanika,
Tyanna,
Sade (pronounced sha dey),
Alicia,
Alliyah,
Tamisha,
kaneesha,
Deeyonte,
Denise,
Deisha. 

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Names for females of Indian descent
(girls to maybe young adults (those in their 20's as well)
Sherisse/Cherisse,

Sarah,
Shivanna,
Shania,
Tamika,
Shanice,
Annelise,
Chantal/Shantelle,
Shannon,
Karishma,
Nikkita Nalini, [No common was given between these two names, but my guess is that she just neglected to add a comma there.]
Manisha,
Vannie,
Britney,
Anya [No comma was given between this name and the next name, but my guess is that she just neglected to add a comma there.]
Safiya [No comma was given between this name and the next name, but my guess is that she just neglected to add a comma there.]
Jessica,
Alyssa, 

-snip-
For the purposes of this post's listing, I've also included Shianne's first name in that portion of her compilation which then totals 32 names (This is an unduplicated number that counts the two forms of two name as four names.)
-snip-
Read the excerpt in the comment section below for information about Indians in Trinidad and Tobago 

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LIST OF FEMALE NAMES WITH "ISHA" OR "ESHA" ENDING
(These names are given in the order that they are found in these lists.)

I. TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO PEN PAL LIST (RETRIEVED June 17, 2015)
farishaKhalishakenisha
Deneisha

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II.  TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO PEN PAL LIST (RETRIEVED July 2020)
Keisha
Aisha
Salisha 
Nelqueisha 

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III. SHIANNE RAMDHAN'S COMPILATION OF TRINIDADIAN AND TOBAGAN NAMES
"females of African descent"Tamisha,
kaneesha  

"females of Indian descent" 
Manisha,

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LIST OF NAMES WITH "IKA", "EKA", OR "ICA", ENDING
I. TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO PEN PAL LIST (RETRIEVED June 17, 2015)
Tenika
sarika
onieka
shernika
Kanica

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II.  TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO PEN PAL LIST (RETRIEVED July 2020)
sarika
jennika

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III. SHIANNE RAMDHAN'S COMPILATION OF TRINIDADIAN AND TOBAGAN NAMES
"females of African descent" Tamika
Tanika 

"females of Indian descent"
Tamika

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S SOMEWHAT RANDOM COMMENTS
I'm aware that these compilations are only a small sub-set of contemporary Trinidadian and Tobagan names and I'm aware that some other online examples of  Trinidadian and Tobagan names.  

However, I was interested to note some similarities between the Student of the World pen pal lists and the lists that Shianne Ramdhan compiled.

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I was also interested to learn that Trinidadian and Tobagan contemporary names* share certain me similarities with some contemporary African American names- including the use of the suffixes that are the focus of this pancocojams post.

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As is the case with African American names ending with one of these suffixes, some of these names have fixed meanings while others (probably most) are recently coined and don't have any fixed meaning/s.  I think that the popularity of the name "Aisha" among African Americans may have fueled the custom of ending female names with "isha" or "esha" in the United States and in the Caribbean.

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There are no fixed origins and meanings for "Tamika", "Tanika", "Teneka" etc. 
 
I believe that the name "Tamika" (and its probable variant "Tanika" and other spellings) came from the Japanese name "Tomiko". African Americans were likely introduced to that name by way of 1965 romantic drama film entitled A Girl Named Tomiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Girl_Named_Tamiko . The name "Tomiko" is a female name that means "wealth, abundance" in Japanese. https://www.babynames.com/name/tomiko#:~:text=Gender%3A%20Female,and%20is%20of%20Japanese%20origin.  That said, I'm not advocating that the meaning for "Tomiko" should be used as the meaning for "Tamika" etc. But "whatever floats your boat"...

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I remember in the mid 1960s and even in the early 1970s how little African Americans knew about African/Arabic names and how we searched for, latched on to, and passed around the few copies of these names that we could find. Given those pre-internet times, and the scarcity of books of African/Arabic names, it wouldn't at all be surprising to me for a Black person to invent the name "Tamika" (and other variant of that names) from the Japanese name "Tomiko", replacing the "o"'s for "a"s, particularly in the ending since so many contemporary African/Arabic names that we knew about then ended with an "ah" sound (and many of these names that we've adopted/coined) still do.

The name "Tamika" could also be a rhyming form of the Arabic name "Sadika"   

صديقة meaning "truthful"

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In the late 1990s, I knew an African American young woman whose name was Taminyika". That name may have been created from the name "Tanganyika". Here's information about that word "Tanganyika, historical eastern African state that in 1964 merged with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, later renamed the United Republic of Tanzania." https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanganyika
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My daughter grew up with an African American girl named "Oneica" (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania born in 1973). I don't know whether she knew what her name meant. I think that African Americans then and now were/are more interested in how their child's name sounds and how it looks (how it was spelled) than what-if anything that name means.

I wonder if that is the same in the Caribbean.

Another thing that some African Americans were/are interested in is choosing names that match all of their children- for instance starting all of their names with the same letter or the same beginning sound.

Is that custom also done in Trinidad and Tobago and/or in other parts of the Caribbean?

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The lists that are the focus of this post didn't include the female name "Tanisha".However, Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/07/origins-meanings-of-names-tanisha-and_22.html for a pancocojams post on the name "Tanisha" .

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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/10/some-distinctive-african-american.html for one of several pancocojams posts on the subject of distinctive African American names.
 
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This concludes Part IV of this four part pancocojams series.

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