What’s in a Black name? Malcolm X and Assata Shakur revolutionized their names. Black trans people across the diaspora re-named themselves. Others fought to preserve their African names during enslavement. Your Black parents may have gifted you a name an ancestor wore first, hoping to keep their memory alive.
Our names can be nuanced. Spellcheck tells us our names are wrong by underlining them in red. But red lines show up in our daily lives, from careless mispronunciation and jokes, to discrimination and respectability politics.
That’s exactly why wearing jewelry proudly displaying our names is such an affirming part of our culture.
Nameplates, or script necklaces, rings, and earrings, took major hold in the 80s and 90s, but adorned our people for decades before then. In a society where our names are “wrong,” this jewelry says, “Here I am anyway.”
It may not always be an intentional resistance, but nameplates encourage us to stand firm in a world that tells us our names, and by extension our existences, need to be smaller. Edited. Assimilated.
Our creativity in owning our names and wearing them as fashion challenges the forces that work to discount us. Because Black names are more than just letters or accessories - they’re symbols of our self-creation.