Black American Sound Preferences In The Late 1960s /1970s & The Female Names "Keisha", "Aisha", "Tanisha" Etc.

Written by Azizi Powell

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This pancocojams post presents information and examples of "isha" ending names.

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.

The content of this post is presented for onomastic and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.
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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] That title was later changed to "African American Females & The "Isha" ("Iesha") Naming Custom".

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.

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HOW KEISHA BECAME A FAVORITE GIRL'S NAME FOR SOME AFRICAN AMERICANS  

© Azizi Powell, July 11, 2019

"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 suggesting 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."

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Little Sally Walker (A Story. Tellin It Like It Is & Like It Was)

written by Azizi Powell

Latest Update: March 18, 2019

A Story. Tellin It Like It Is & Like It Was
(c) Azizi Powell, May 10, 2004

Little Sally Walker may not be as popular as “Miss Mary Mack” but she’s got a following all her own. And I’m one of her biggest fans.

Did you know that there once was a time that every Black child from North Carolina to New York knew Little Sally? My girl, Sally - she sure got around.

Little Sally’s got a lot of aliases. When I was growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s, Sally was known as “Little Sally Ann”. Here’s how we sang about Little Sally Ann:

Little Sally Ann
sittin in the sand
a weepin and a cryin
for a nice young man.
Rise, Sally, rise.
Wipe your weepin eyes.
Now turn to the East
and turn to the West.
And turn to the very one
that you love best.

Well, I never knew what Sally’s last name was. But when I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the late 1960s, I found out that folks here said Sally’s last name was “Walker”, which I know a lot about ‘cause my sister and my cousin married some WaIkers. Anyway, here’s how children in Pittsburgh sing “Little Sally”:

Little Sally Walker
Sittin in a saucer
A weepin and a cryin for
a nice young man.
Rise, Sally rise.
Wipe your weepin eyes
Turn to the east and turn to the west
And turn to the one that you
love the best.

I hear tell that way back when, children down South added some more to that song tellin Little Sally to

put your hands on your hip
and let her backbone slip.
Aah, shake it to the east, Sally
Shake it to the west, Sally
Aah shake it to the one
that you love the best.

There’s even another version of Little Sally Walker that this famous Black singer by the name of Leadbelly (You ever heard of him?) used to sing. It went like this:

Little Sally Walker
sittin in a saucer
a’weepin and a’moanin
like a little turtle dove...

(That song isn’t sung much anymore, probably ‘cause folks nowadays don’t know that a turtle dove’s some kind of bird that acts all lovey dovey or something. That’s what I think anyways.)

My girl Sally even shows up in some songs they used to play on the radio like that “Spirit In The Dark” song that Aretha Franklin made. Aretha's song goes like this:

It’s like Sally Walker
sittin in her saucer
that’s how you do it.
Ain’t nothin to it.
Rise, Sally, rise.
Put your hands on your hips
and cover your eyes
and move with the spirit in the dark.


And talkin ‘bout movin, now I hear tell that Sally girl done really changed up. The other day my grand babies and their friends showed me a whole new side to Sally Anne Walker. Well, maybe it’s not new to you, but it was new to me. Here’s how she goes now:

Little Sally Walker
was walkin down the street.
She didn’t know what to do
so she stood in front of me.
I said ooh girl do your thing.
Do your thing, STOP!
I said ooh girl do your thing.
Do your thing, and SWITCH!

That switching thing isn’t about shaking their little hips back & forth. It means “changing places”. Here’s how they did it. My grandbabies and their friends made a circle and one girl-I guess she was “Little Sally Walker” was in the middle of the circle. So while the other children are singing that song, little Sally Walker’s walking around the circle, kinda struttin you know. And then when they sang “she stood in front of me”, Little Sally does just that. And then when the song goes “ooh girl do your thing”, little Sally does some kind of hip swingin dance. And that one Little Sally’s standin in front of starts doin the exact same dance, only she does it her way. Then when the song says “Stop!”, they both stop movin. They kinda freeze in place, you know what I mean. Then the other children playin that game start singing again, and Little Sally and the one she’s standing in front of go back to doin that same dance they were doin before. Then when the song goes “Switch!”, the old Little Sally Walker changes places with the one she was standing in front of, and the new Sally Walker starts struttin around the circle. When it comes time for her to do her dance, she does somethin different from the other Sally Walker. But whatever she does, you can see she puts her whole soul in it. Because if it’s one thing about Little Sally Walker that everybody knows, is that she’s got soul.

Which is funny in a way cause Little Sally Walker's really WHITE. No, wait a minute. I’m not kiddin. I found out her real name was Sally Waters and she was born overseas in Europe. How she got started was like this: way back when, a woman who was gettin married had to step over a saucer of water on her way to the wedding ceremony. I swear I’m not making this up. That’s how those Little Sally sittin in a saucer words came about. It was to purify the water. Ain’t that somethin? We jumped over brooms, and they stepped over saucers.

Anyway, I don't care if Sally first came from White people. We made her Black with all those shake it to the East Sally Shake it to the west Sally, let your back bone slip hip shakin motions. Not to mention that Black people are all mixed up with Black, White, Indian, Hispanic, and Asian and I don’t know what else kind of folks. That’s the way it’s been for a real long time, and that’s the way it’s probable gonna always be. Anyhow, ole Sally Walker’s all right by me. Wherever she came from, she’s one of us now. And that’s all I’m gonna say ‘bout that subject.

The end.

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Editor:
I believe that the title "Little Sally Waters" is the earliest version of "Little Sally Walker", "Little Sally Ann", and "Little Sally Walker Walkin Down The Street". From my reading, I gather that this children's game song originated as a British marriage and/or fertility ritual.

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VIDEOS AND ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
[Update: March 18, 2019- Unfortunately, the Billy Preston - "Little Sally Walker" (1965) example is no longer available on YouTube. I replaced that example with a sound file of "Lead belly singing "Little Sally Walker".]

Example #1: Bessie Jones - Little Sally Walker



ichagall | April 20, 2010
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Editor:
The beginning portion of this video features African American folklorist/author Bessie Jones instructing children & adults how to play a version of the children's game song "Little Sally Walker".

The other game song that is featured on that video, "Johnny Cuckoo", will be the subject of a seperate Pancocojams post. The words to that rhyme, and my comments about it can be found on the Cocojams link given at the end of this post.

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Example #2: Rufus Thomas - Little Sally Walker



Uploaded by paul2mtr on Jul 15, 2011

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Click http://www.metrolyrics.com/little-sally-walker-lyrics-rufus-thomas.html for the lyrics to this song.

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Example #3: Little Sally Walker Walking Down The Street



by AnnaGraceBananaFace on Feb 25, 2009
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"Little Sally Walker Walking Down The Street" is an updated version of "Little Sally Walker". I remember seeing African Americans girls (around 7-10 years old) playing this game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. I think that the multiple number of "Little Sallys" toward the end of this video might have been done to make sure that as many children as possible got a turn in the middle. Whenever I've seen this game played, there has only been one "Sally" in the middle at a time, and only one person she or he stands in front of & then switches places with.

"Little Sally Walker Walking Down The Street" is a children's game. However, the much older game "Little Sally" is relegated to a very young children's game (pre-five year olds), while the newer "Little Sally" game is considered to be suitable for play by girls five years old and older, because it provides opportunities to show off dance moves. In my direct experiences, girls self-initiate this game and it is usually only played by girls. However, I've seen a number of YouTube videos in which coed groups of White teens/yound adults or an interracial coed groups of teens/young adults play this game. It's my sense that inspite of the opportunities to show off their dancing skills, African American and Latino boys over the age of five wouldn't self-initate this game and would be less likely to participate in this game or any other hand clapping game with or without solo dancing opportunities*. It should be noted that the name "Sally" doesn't appear to change if a boy happens to be picked to go in the middle. The use of that female name serves as documentation that this originated as a girls only game.

In my opinion, the number of YouTube videos of this game performed by children, and often teens & adults demonstrates how the African American influenced "show me your motion" children's circle (ring) games are still being played in updated fashions. As is the case with the "traditional" show me your motion games, in this updated version, the one who is picked to join the person in the middle is supposed to exactly imitate the dances and/or other movements that the middle person does. Of course, this rule is waived with very young children.

It's also worth noting that a number of YouTube videos document that certain populations of teens and young adults also may play "Little Sally Walker (walking down the street)" as a stress reducer or just for fun. That game may not be initiated by the students themselves but might be started at the suggestion or direction of a teacher (after a test or at the end of the school year) or a director of a theater production before the play's performance.

A similar "fun, stress reducer" children's game that has also been adopted by some teens and young adults is "Down By The Banks Of The Hanky Panky". I wrote "certain populations" because I have strong doubts that these games are played with the same frequency if at all by all or predominated African American or Latino classes or groups. It's my theory that those two children's games are examples of ways that race/ethnicity and not just age and gender can influence which playground games are played & sometimes even how those rhymes are played.

*I have seen African American boys over five years of age play the competitive hand slap game "Stella Ella Ola" (also known as "Slap Billy Ola"). However, in my experiences of this game (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the late 1990s & the early 200s) was that boys didn't initiate this game, boys only played this game along with girls, and that boys didn't play this game after the age of 12 years or so (when they left elementary school). In other words, while the competitive nature of handslap games such as "Stella Ella Ola" and "Slap Billy Ola" make them more attractive to African American boys than non-competitive circle games, hand slap games (and handclap games) are generally considered to be girls games.

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Example 4: Sally Walker- Leadbelly Lead Belly



songs1994, Published on Mar 3, 2009

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