When The Chi ends its run, it will leave behind something that great television always leaves behind: a set of names. Names that carry a place, a feeling, a specific slice of American life. Lena Waithe's show about the South Side of Chicago was always fundamentally about community — about people bound together by geography and history and love — and the names she gave her characters reflected that. They weren't random. They were chosen.
The Names at the Heart of The Chi
The show's central characters have names that read as a portrait of Black Chicago naming culture — names with deep roots in African American tradition, Biblical names given new weight, and a handful of genuinely distinctive choices that have already entered the wider conversation about names.
Brandon — The show's original heart. Brandon is a name that peaked nationally in the late 1980s and has been in gentle decline since, but it's a name with real cultural staying power in Black American communities where it never felt as dated as it did in suburban white America. Brandon is due for a quiet comeback — it's now old enough to feel vintage to younger parents, and it has a warm, familiar sound that ages gracefully.
Emmett — One of the most charged names in American history. The Chi naming a character Emmett was a deliberate act, connecting the story to Emmett Till without ever needing to say so out loud. Emmett is climbing nationally — it's now in the top 200 — partly through its use in pop culture and partly through parents who want to honor that history. It's a name with enormous weight and surprising warmth.
Kiesha — A name that's distinctly African American in origin and association, derived from an elaboration of Keisha, which itself may have roots in West African naming traditions. These names — Keisha, Kiesha, Kisha — peaked in the 1970s and 1980s and are now in the long tail of the distribution. They represent a specific cultural moment in African American naming history that deserves more documentation than it usually gets.
Jake — The show's youngest core character carries the most plainspoken name in the ensemble. Jake as a standalone name (not just short for Jacob) has been quietly steady for two decades. There's something right about a kid on the South Side being named Jake — it's a name that doesn't announce anything, doesn't perform, just is.
Chicago's Naming Culture: Beyond the Show
Chicago is America's most segregated major city, and its naming patterns reflect that in ways that are both fascinating and sobering. SSA state data for Illinois shows strong African American naming influence in the Chicago metro — names that are less common in other major cities, names that carry specific cultural coding, names that have been studied by economists (including the famous Fryer-Levitt research on distinctively Black names and labor market outcomes).
The South Side specifically has been a crucible of African American cultural production for over a century — it's where Muddy Waters played, where Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, where the Great Migration made its most powerful urban mark. The names that come out of that community aren't arbitrary. They're the product of a naming culture that values both distinctiveness and heritage, that has developed its own tradition of elaborate constructions, Biblical foundations, and African roots.
Names like Darius, Marcus, Isaiah, and Elijah all perform particularly strongly in Chicago compared to national averages. For girls, Aaliyah, India, and Essence represent the range from Arab-origin (Aaliyah means "exalted") to geographic names to abstract virtue names.
The Show's Deeper Naming Philosophy
What made The Chi's names feel right was the same thing that makes the show itself feel right: specificity. These weren't generic urban characters with generic urban names. Lena Waithe gave her characters names that placed them precisely — in a community, in a history, in a set of relationships. The name Emmett in this context isn't just a name. It's a statement about what kind of story this is and why it matters.
That's what the best naming does, whether it's in a television writers' room or a delivery room. A name doesn't just label a person. It situates them. It says: you belong to this community, this history, this set of hopes. The Chi's South Side names do exactly that, and they will keep doing it long after the show's final credits roll.
Names Worth Revisiting Because of The Chi
If the show has made you think differently about any of these names, here are a few to consider: Emmett (for parents who want a name with gravity and warmth), Dominique (used on the show, and a name that works beautifully for both boys and girls), and Victor (used for a recurring character, and currently climbing nationally thanks to tennis and basketball). These are names that The Chi touched, and they're better for it.
Data source: U.S. Social Security Administration. Analysis by NamesPop.
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