Rihanna and the former Mayor of the District of Columbia, Adrian Fenty, have the same last name. This has to mean that they’re related, right?
Rihanna and Andrian Fenty are not relatives. While they do have the same last name, there is no ancestry information linking the two. The last name Fenty is most densely located in Barbados worldwide. Adrian Fenty does have roots in Barbados, but those roots are generations back. Rihanna, on the other hand, was born in Barbados.
Scroll down to read more about Adrian Fenty, the history of the last name Fenty, and its occurrence in Barbados.
Adrian Fenty and His Success
Adrian Fenty was the Mayor of Washington, D.C. from 2007 to 2011. He was the youngest Mayor that the city had seen. Fenty was born and raised in Washington by his parents Jeanette and Phil Fenty. His mother, Jeanette, is an Italian-American and his father is from Buffalo, New York. On Fenty’s father’s side there are roots to Barbados and Panama, but not for generations making it hard to link him to Rihanna.
Fenty attended Oberlin College in Ohio and graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Economics. He then went on to get his Juris Doctor from Howard University Law School. In 2000, Fenty was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia as the Ward 4 representative. He won the vote for this role twice and then gave up his seat to run for Mayor in 2006. He won the election.
Adrian Fenty has been known for his large impact on educational reform in the District of Columbia during his tenure as Mayor. At the beginning of his term as Mayor, the test scores and graduation rates of students were some of the lowest in the country. His actions were credited with raising students overall success on national standardized test scores and graduation rates.
Click the below YouTube link to watch a Q&A with Adrian Fenty after he was elected to be the Mayor of the District of Columbia.
Meaning and Origin of the Fenty Last Name
While Adrian Fenty and Robyn Rihanna Fenty are not related, they do share a unique last name. The last name Fenty is a rare one with origins in medieval England and France.
On the website Surname Database, it states Fenty was “a title born in medieval times for the eldest sons (and daughters) of a nobleman before they inherited the title. The word was also used by the French to mean ‘a boy’ or possibly a ‘foot soldier’, and it is probable that the ‘English’ surnames derive from these latter explanations.”
Barbados was at one point a colony of England. The country was mainly used for sugar production by the English. Since there was a heavy European presence in the country, a lot of modern day Barbadians are of Afro-European descent. This means that it is not unusual for people in Barbados to have last names that were originally from Europe.
Fenty’s In Barbados
If you weren’t aware, Rihanna’s full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty. She is the daughter of Ronald Fenty and Monica Braithwaite and was born in Barbados. According to Forebears, in 2014 Barbados was the country with the highest concentration of people with the last name Fenty. Although there are only 245 people with this last name on the island country, the frequency of it is 1 person in every 1,173.
The country that has the most instances of the last name Fenty is the United States, which is Adrian Fenty’s home country. In 2014, there were 703 people in the country with the last name Fenty. The last name can also be found in countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Australia, and Panama to name a few.