ATLANTA — If your mom’s first name isn’t Sylvia, you might not want to try to run for mayor of Atlanta.
At least, that’s according to a bizarre coincidence: Mayor-elect Andre Dickens will be the third Atlanta mayor in a row whose mother is named “Sylvia.”
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Atlanta’s current mayor, Keisha Lance-Bottoms, shared the strange connection between former mayor Kasim Reed, herself and mayor-elect Dickens.
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“If your mother’s name is not Sylvia, you can’t be mayor of Atlanta,” a post from Skip Mason’s Vanishing Black Atlanta History read. Bottoms simply retweeted the post with #Facts.
Bottoms’ was born to R&B singer-songwriter Major Lance and Sylvia Robinson in 1970. Kasim Reed was born to Junius and Sylvia Reed in 1969.
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Andre Dickens was born to Sylvia Dickens in 1974 and adopted by his stepfather when he was seven years old.
Sylvia Dickens told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her son had wanted to be mayor since meeting then-Mayor Andrew Young when he was 12.
“I told Andre, ‘He’s mayor,’ and he said ‘I want to be mayor one day,’” Sylvia Dickens said. “He says he was 16 then, but he was 12.”
Andrew Young’s mother, incidentally, was named Daisy.
The name “Sylvia” is of Latin origin and means spirit of the woods.