"I have always found that name-game played by black women of the less-than-professional class more imaginative and spirited than the much easier "pick an african" name, though what all parents call their kids often leads kids to hurry and grow up so that they can drop the stupid, if well meant parent-tag given them..."
...it works well some of the time and not so well some of the time. A friend teaching in the Oakland public schools ran across a black girl named "Urethra." Sounds nice, right? And then there were all those hippies who named their kids "God." Ugh.
Be kind and respectful to children; they are not figments of your fantasies. As an immigrant who had to change my name (according to my parents), I picked names for my kids based on whether they would "hold" if we moved somewhere within the western hemisphere: so it was Alexander and Katharine (the great -- both of them :) )
I continue to be fascinated by immigrant asians, who seem to go whole hog for anglo names...despite choosing, on the other hand, far more isolation and less intermarriage than other immigrant groups. Asian kids routinely wind up being Suzy, Doug, Shirley, Amy, etc.
Joanna (not my real name)