Mamas for Obama naming babies for Barack (Feature)

By Andy Goldberg Nov 11, 2008, 4:11 GMT

Los Angeles - From Kenya to Kentucky, jubilant supporters of Barack Obama are naming their baby boys after the man who will become the leader of the free world on January 20.

These Obama mamas even have a good solution for naming their baby girls. Expect to see the names of Obama's wife Michelle, and two daughters Sasha and Malia, zoom up the baby-name charts, too.

Barack supporters seem to have chosen auspiciously. The name's meanings are liked with images of strength, light and blessings.

For his most vocal detractors in the US, however, the name signals something deeply troubling, a foreign intruder, culturally linked to the country's enemies, and easily given to evil manipulations.

That didn't trouble Lakisha Brown in Joppa, Maryland. She named her newborn Sasha Malia after hearing Obama's victory speech while in labour on Election Night.

'I heard him speak to his daughters and the love he showed, and I said, 'That's it!' And we decided to name our daughter after his girls,' Brown told a local TV station.

In Florida, a set of parents gave their baby, born on Election Day, the middle name of Obama, even before the election results were in.

But the best naming story comes from The New York Times, which reported on a 23-year-old immigrant from Liberia who went into labour as she jumping with joy when Obama's victory was announced.

'I love Barack Obama, and I love the name,' said Decontee Williams.

The paper went on to predict a boom in babies named Obama, in the same way that previous presidents were responsible for thousands of kids named Dwight, Clinton, Theodore and Lyndon.

Yet American's aren't as name-crazy as the folks in Kisumu, Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland. According to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, more than half of the babies born in Kisumu on the day after the election were called either Barack or Michelle Obama. By the end of the week, Kisumu had 23 boys named Barack Obama and 20 girls named Michelle Obama.

Proud parents can point to auspicious meaning behind Obama's name. The name has the same etymological origins as the Hebrew word that means 'one who is blessed.'

Barack can also mean a bolt of lightning, and in the Bible the name belongs to a hero who fought a battle against overwhelming odds. Hussein, the president-elect's Arabic middle name, means someone who is good and handsome.

His family name is a little more prosaic. In the dialect spoken by the Luo tribe, it means: 'he who is bent or broken.'

For people on the political fringes, Obama's unusual name has fueled an internet cottage industry in fabrications, alleging that he is a secret Moslem or closet radical. Other people have cracked jokes about the 'Obama-nation' or the similarity between his name and the American arch nemesis, Osama bin Laden. At one of his rallies, a local politician and supporter even inadvertently introduced the candidate as Osama.

Such jibes and flubs failed to faze the famously cool Obama, who sometimes recalls his youth as a skinny guy with a funny name.

But if he wants a change, he could just rely on the codenames given to his family by the Secret Service. According to news reports Monday, the bodyguards call the president-elect Renegade, Michelle is Renaissance, Malia is Radiance, and Sasha is Rosebud.