The history of non-African Christian names is closely tied to South Africa's colonial past with a Black population suppressed by the Dutch, the British and as a climax, by the apartheid politics of racial segregation.

Most Black South Africans -- including President Nelson Mandela -- have both a traditional first name and a White Christian name. When apartheid withered and Mandela's ANC came to power in the country's first non-racial elections in1994, the trend in names also changed. In the nineties with the rise of black power politics, people started questioning the English names, says De Klerk.

In South Africa, there are many people with names that sound strange to Western ears such as Promise, Beauty, Sweetness, Smart-one or naughty. While in Europe names are often chosen for their aesthetics and sounds, traditionally in African languages, names were selected that had a specific meaning. They might be linked to the day or the circumstances in which someone was born or the way someone looks, or the name could express hopes and wishes for the future of the child. Your name speaks to you, De Klerk says, explaining the custom. When choosing an English name for their child people often stuck to that tradition. But under White rule, some Blacks ended up with only one name, a Western one -- either because their parents wanted to ease their path, or because White authorities disregarded names they could not spell or pronounce, branding them toocomplicated, foreign or heathen. This is how a famous South African such as Mandela got his well-known first name: When he started school in Transkei his teacher bestowed a new name on everybody and so instead of Rolihlahla (meaning troublemaker) he was made Nelson. Eastern Cape provincial Premier Reverend Makhenkesi Arnold Stofile experienced a similar fate. He was given the name Makhenkesi when he was born, but at his baptism the priest named him Arnold, although no one in the family ever uses it. Some names raise eyebrows today. There is a provincial minister called Darkey Africa, a political spokeswoman whose first name is Schoolgirl and a journalist christened Blackman.