How would the history have ended with you? Serious question. By the very definition of history, you naming your kids whatever you want to name him won't affect that. As far as legacy, whatever else you're trying to pass down to your children isn't attached to the name.
I used to ask that same question when I was a kid. I told my father when I was like 10 that if I had a son I was gonna name him something different. He told me to go tell my grandfather that and when I brought it up to my grandfather he started to explain our whole family history.
My grandfather was real big into ancestory.com and tracing our family history and all that jazz. He was very involved with our family reunion association (that shit is big business lol) and all that type of stuff so he showed me all of our family history dating all the way back to slavery and like 1809.
So he has these books and documents with everybody's name and their parents, kids, siblings, birthplace, all of that. So even while I was looking at that I still wondered what does our name have to do with it and that's when I noticed the names.
Most of the black people in America have what many of us would consider to be slave names. Meaning we were basically named after our slave masters or plantation owners last names like Williams, Jones, Davis, etc. Well my name is pretty unique. It's a spanish name and not a traditional slave plantation name. Now of course we all know that there were still slaves in the islands and in South America (The ones who got dropped off early before hitting what is now The United States) so not having a slave name doesn't mean you weren't a descendent of slaves. Which in my case, my family matriarch was a lady named Emma Fox who was the daughter of a Cherokee Indian and a Black Slave Girl.
This is her
There's a whole family lineage and a ton of information about her and all of the other ancestors. But what I noticed is through all of those years only one name still remains and it's mine.
So it's not so much about the legacy being gone of the name doesn't get carried on as it more about understanding that because of our history as Black people in this country our names have been the only thing in some cases that we can actually preserve for generations because honestly there's not a whole lot of history for us in this country to even hold our heads up high about. Especially considering how we got here and were re-named in the first place.
