My friend is being told the name she picked is too 'white'.

[Paige1991]

My best friend is originally from Africa. She's pregnant and wants to call her little girl Lilly.....she has had the snide remark however, that it is too much of a 'white' name. So she wouldn't 'suit' it!

So my question is do 'you' believe that names have a place regarding the colour of skin or culture of a person? I think you should be free to call your baby whatever. I once knew a Matteo (sorry if the spellings wrong) and he was in no sense Italian!

I've never heard of something so silly and horrible!

my best friend at school (in the 70's) was black, and called Pansy. She had a beautiful round smiley face and suited her name perfectly.

What does it matter? I had a black friend called Blanche and she didn't have any hang ups about it at all

Ebony has the meaning 'black'. Lily means pure, altho i suppose it can also be used as 'lily white'. I also know the fairest child i know with the name 'ebony'. Still surprises me 9 years later!
I believe in the usa there is a trend for african-american names to reflect cultural background, but i havent heard so much of it here. If parents/grandparents are the ones complaining, I guess that it is about something to do with reflecting culture/country of parents origin. 'Too white' is an odd way of putting it tho.

They do come in all shades, but they are a culturally ubiquitous simile for whiteness Lillies?? Huh??

See I'm always surprised by the amount of people who tell posters on here to not call there child a Scottish name of no Scottish background or the same as Irish namessage for example. It really baffles me that people say it. Surely call your child what you like!

'Too white' is blatant racism

sofia 'white as a lily' is a phrase to describe someone really pale like me. So from that point if view it might be considered an odd choice for a black child (bit like calling a winter baby Summer). But I don't think that's what's being implied by this family.

I know where Shirley Bassey is coming from. Yes, flowers in the lily family come in different colours, but the word lily is also used metaphorically about pale coloured things: OED has "applied to persons or things of exceptional whiteness, fairness, or purity; e.g. a fair lady" ... also compounds like lily-livered and so on.
That said, OP should call her daughter whatever she likes, and it's a lovely name - but her family might be alluding to this rather than to the name being insufficiently African?

Genuinely boggled by the number of people who can't see anything white about the name Lily. If it wasn't for the fact that there's more than one I'd suspect you were on a windup.

dictionary.reference.com/browse/lily-white
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily-white_movement

And my parental filters block urban dictionary, but it specifically defines lily-white as meaning racially segregated.

You don't have to pay attention to the meaning of words if you don't want to, as per the black Blanche and the blonde Ebonys above, but it's not racist to prefer to match names with meaning to the characteristics of the child they're used for. As per above if a 6 foot mate was going to call her 10 pound DD Pixie I wouldn't be arsey about it but I might raise an eyebrow.

Well my very blonde and blue eyed friend is called Melanie, which means "dark of skin". So what if Lily is associated with a pale flower. It's lovely and would suit any little girl, regardless of colouring or ethnicity or whatever.

There are some names that I do associate as more white names or black names.

For example I have never met a black jack.
My friend used Lily as a middle name for his baby last week and I thought that was unusual as I do see it as a more "white name" but I would never say that a black person can't use it. Just some names are more prevalent in different cultures.

I don't know any black children called Teddy, Evie, Archie, Freddie, Mollie etc does anyone else?

The word white can have many connotations and yes skin colour is one of them, but so is pure. In this instance, obviously the OPs friend isn't trying to say her child has white skin, but she could go for the fact it means pure? Seems perfectly reasonable to me! Also, lots of people don't choose a name based on the meaning. I've met lots of men/boys called Cameron, I would never assume when they were born their parents said "look, he's got a crooked nose!! I know, let's call him Cameron!"

I have three daughters - Darcy, India and Ebony. All blond hair, blue eyes. Darcy and Ebony both mean dark, nobody has every commented that they should be dark or anything.

I do know a Ziyad who is white. His mum had an affair and didn't know who the dad was. He was born with dark hair so she decided (or hoped) the dad must be her Asian husband. Turns out it wasn't! His name suits him despite being a typical arabic name.

I know a black Freddie (15yo) and a black Evie (60yrs). Evies surname is Heaven. Just rolls off the tongue!

She's pregnant and wants to call her little girl Lilly.....she has had the snide remark however, that it is too much of a 'white' name

Wow! What a disgusting racist comment to make to a person
''too much of a white name''

Just imagine the outcry if it was the other way around.

I had a lecturer who was black and her name is Edelweiss.

All the Marcus' I have met have been white.

What's in a name, eh?

What a crock of shit. If that had been a white person saying a name was too 'black' it would have been racist

Exactly. Double standards.

I wonder exactly how long a thread would last if it were titled

My friend is being told the name she picked is too 'black'

It would get zapped in two seconds flat.
Why is this thread being allowed to run?

Blimey I know a young white girl called Ebony too.

my mum got it from family members when she had me and my sister. My nan wasn't happy that she chose very "English" names for my sister and I, and gave us Polish middle names. My nan called us both by our middle names for years, and only spoke Polish with us

We do discuss the etiquette of naming "out of culture" quite often though without anything getting zapped. The twist here is that it's not clear whether the "friends'" objection is to culture or other connotations.

There's a boy in DSs class with a classic Arabic name. I don't know his background but know he isn't muslim but he is very fair and Anglo looking.

But then I know people from the ME with blue eyes and fair hair.

It would get zapped in two seconds flat. angry
Why is this thread being allowed to run?

Why are people so angry

We chose African names for our DC

Your friend can call her baby what she wants. Friends and family always have opinions on name choices

There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is about minority/majority and power holding dynamics