My son will look like Trayvon Martin.

He hasn’t even been born yet — I don’t even know his name — but that’s one thing I know for sure.

The father of my child recently told me of his wish to name our son Keion, after his childhood best friend. I was nothing short of horrified. In my opinion, “Keion” is identified as a “black” name. My two best friends politely asked, in unison, “Don’t you think it sounds too ethnic?” And I cannot forget my brother’s blunt, stinging remark, “Hell, no … way too ghetto. You guys need to revisit the baby books.”

I decided to look up the meaning of Keion, mostly in preparation to battle against it. What I found won me over. Keion means “born of nobility” and “God is gracious.” It’s origins are eclectic: Hebrew, African, Irish and Hawaiian. I felt in my heart that this should be my son’s name.

I’d accepted “Keion,” but what about the rest of the world? I gave the name what I have now coined the “Google test:” I typed “Keion name” in the image search box. To my surprise, my computer screen loaded images of African-American young men posing for their mug shots.

Trying desperately to grasp at straws of hope for my baby boy, I tried a variant of Keion which is spelled K-i-a-n. The results were dramatically different. Smiling photographs of Caucasian males could be seen with every scroll of my mouse. I could not believe the change.



I typed in name after name, and the results were the same. Any name not strictly used by African-Americans brought up no criminal photo galleries. Smiling beauty shots for Jennifer and Amy, prison close-ups for Shaniqua and Laquisha. Same went for Keyshawn and Jaquan, but none for Shawn and Jason. Hispanics may have crime rates on par with blacks, but common male Hispanic names seem to be immune. Juan, Carlos, Jose, Manuel and Pablo surely pass the “Google test.” Needless to say, Devonte and Tevin resulted in my now-expected display of unsmiling mugs.

The assumptions regarding names aren’t new to me. As an African-American woman, my personal experience with my own name makes me fully aware of the “black name dilemma.” My first name, Nikisia (more usually spelled Nikisha and pronounced Nakeesha) originated in India and means “beautiful.” But at a young age I learned that my name was more synonymous with “black girl.” As a result, I chose to use my more “ethnically neutral” nickname, Niki.

I have come across other African-Americans who have also altered their names to a more acceptable form. In fact, this bonded me and my boyfriend when we first started dating. Early in life he also learned that Markeith was “black.” He chose to use Mark, and based on my “Google test,” he is not wrong. A quick image search of his name brings up a display of mug shots of men with a brown hue.

An image search might not be the only way a “black” name is a disadvantage online. When the Harvard University professor Latanya Sweeney set out to investigate whether race shaped online ad results, she found that searching for her own name on Google.com and Reuters.com, both of which rely on Google’s AdSense for online ad delivery, brought up an ad from InstantCheckmate.com that read, “Latanya Sweeney, Arrested?” and “Check Latanya Sweeney’s Arrests.” So-called black-identifying names were “significantly more likely to be accompanied by text suggesting that person had an arrest record, regardless of whether a criminal record existed or not.” (Her research, and responses from the companies concerned, were described in The Huffington Post.)

Reuters and Google have only made concrete an underlying issue that has always existed in America. Our president got into the Oval Office with the name Barack Hussein Obama, even during the War on Terror. Would he still be there had his name been Dequan Devonte Jones?

For me, the personal question remains. Should the name Keion be dropped? Unfortunately there isn’t even a shortened version that is “culturally neutral.” I could spring for the “white version,” Kian, but what does that mean? Choose anything but a “black” name or feel the wrath of Google!

We’re still undecided. But contemplating baby Keion led me straight to a a black mother’s biggest fear, mingling inside me along with the common aches and pains of motherhood. My unborn son, a seven-month old fetus, could have all the world’s unspoken markings of a criminal — the wrong skin color and the wrong name.