Why Did Obama Change His Name?

Newsweek:

Barry Obama decided that he didn't like his nickname. A few of his friends at Occidental College had already begun to call him Barack (his formal name), and he'd come to prefer that. The way his half sister, Maya, remembers it, Obama returned home at Christmas in 1980, and there he told his mother and grandparents: no more Barry. Obama recalls it slightly differently, but in the same basic time frame. He believes he told his mom he wanted to be called Barack when she visited him in New York the following summer. By both accounts, it seemed that the elder relatives were reluctant to embrace the change. Maya recalls that Obama's maternal grandparents, who had played a big role in raising him, continued long after that to call him by an affectionate nickname, "Bar." "Not just them, but my mom, too," says Obama.

Why did Obama make the conscious decision to take on his formal African name? His father was also Barack, and also Barry: he chose the nickname when he came to America from Kenya on a scholarship in 1959. His was a typical immigrant transition. Just as a Dutch woman named Hanneke might become Johanna, or a German named Matthias becomes Matt, the elder Barack wanted to fit in. America was a melting pot, and it was expected then that you melt--or at least smooth some of your more foreign edges.

Read the whole story: Newsweek

Comments

[robXdion]

WTF?? What is the real angle of this story? It sounds like those trying to push this are picking the scab that Obama didn't feel he could fit in to a white dominate society so he made his nickname sound more Anglo. But when he got to college, he preferred his actual African name and is therefore possibly militant or an "angry black man" because he rejected the Anglo-sounding "Barry" moniker. Tie this to the story about the Rev. Wright and Obama looks as if he is rejecting Americanism which is a pseudonym for white culture. Just ask Greta Van Sustern. At least she said it finally. This is a pathetic story and Newsweek should be ashamed. Why does being "American" have to mean your very name has to sound like the "typical" WASP. ((yeah, I said it! "typical"))

[Toonbytes07]

Why did Obama change his name?! He didn't change his name!! Is all the media out to destroy Obama or what?!

[punkingale]

When did Obama stop going by Barry Sotero, his step-father's name?

[dollphingurl]

he never went by that name. his legal name stayed what it has always been: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. why change his name when that man did not adopt him and his own father was still alive?

his mother instilled such a sense of self in her son that she never would have wanted him to be anything other than Obama out of respect for her ex-husband, despite the way their own story turned out.