Which billoard top-40 artist as of January and February 2001 shares
their name with a legendary African monarch?

The answer is Dido. Here are a few references regarding the singer's
name:

"Her unusual name can be attributed to the African warrior queen she
was named after."

AskMen
http://www.askmen.com/women/singer_60/68_dido.html

"Dido was born on Christmas Day of 1971 and was named after an African
warrior queen."

Personal Page of Alex Tompkins
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/thepole2/DidoBiography.htm 

"Origin of her name: An African warrior queen."
 
Cool Music Box
http://user.chollian.net/~movieland/html/musician/dido-e.htm

Dido had a big hit called "Thank You" in 2001. The song ended up being
Billboard's song #8 of the year. Here's a Billboard citation:

Billboard
http://www.billboard.com/billboard/yearend/2001/hot1002.jsp

My Google search strategy:

"dido" + "warrior"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=dido+%22warrior

"dido" + "2001"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=dido+%222001

If any of the links do not function, or if anything I've said is not
clear, please request clarification before rating my answer, and I'll
gladly offer further assistance.

Best wishes,
pinkfreud

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Request for Answer Clarification by lisanne-ga on 15 Nov 2002 05:51 PST

Thank you for your response. The question stated a name affiliation
with an African Monarch. Your response was an african warrior. Do you
think that there could be another name? Is there any affiliation with
Sade?

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 15 Nov 2002 09:10 PST

Lisanne,

Note that the decriptions of Dido's name that I chose say that she was
named after an "African warrior queen."

A queen is a monarch:

\Mon"arch\, n. [F. monarque, L. monarcha, fr. Gr. ?, ?; ? alone + ? to
be first, rule, govern. See Archi-.] 1. A sole or supreme ruler; a
sovereign; the highest ruler; an emperor, king, queen, prince, or
chief.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=monarch

---

Request for Answer Clarification by lisanne-ga on 15 Nov 2002 09:24 PST

Yes you are right, I would agree this is the correct answer. Thank you!

---

Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 15 Nov 2002 09:28 PST

Thank you very much for the five-star rating!

~pinkfreud

good job!

My initial instinct had been that the artist is Ashanti, and that the
question should really say January and February 2002, not 2001.  But,
since pinkfreud-ga found references to an African warrior *queen* -- a
monarch, even if also a warrior -- Dido sounds like the real answer.

Thank you for the clarification.
Lisanne

Pinkfreud-ga is definitely right. German history sources refer to Dido
always as "legendäre Königin von Karthago" (= "legendary Queen of
Carthago"). And Carthago was located in North Africa, not far from
today's Tunis.

Scriptor

I found the following, which comes right from the artist herself:

“Dido explains where her name comes from."
"Dido: Dido, she was an African queen and in Latin literature she was
sort of a warrior queen, who actually ended up killing herself over a
guy, which was a bit depressing.”

Source:
iafrica.com
Entertainment
http://entertainment.iafrica.com/music/interviews/237875.htm

So I don't think there is any doubt that Dido was an african monarch.

Beth

Thanks to lisanne and pinkfreud for the very interesting question and
answer.

Here's a site that provides some literary sources for the legend of
Dido, Queen of Carthage, circa 7th B.C.:

http://courses.washington.edu/hum523/dido/

and here is a painting (gold leaf on parchment) from the Getty
collection:

[The Suicide of Queen Dido]

http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o112332.html

As a mathematician I was thrilled to recall the association of Queen
Dido's name with the isoperimetric problem:

[from "ISOPERIMETRIC INEQUALITIES OF MINIMAL SUBMANIFOLDS" by
JAIGYOUNG CHOE]

"The history of the isoperimetric problem begins with its legendary
origins in the ”Problem of Queen Dido” about 900 B.C. In his famous
epic Aeneid Vergil told a story about Queen Dido of Carthage. Dido was
a Phoenician princess from the city of Tyre. She fled by ship from
Tyre when King Pygmalion, her tyrannical brother, murdered her husband
to usurp her possessions. When Dido arrived in Africa at the site that
was to become Carthage, she sought to purchase land from the natives.
They asserted that they would sell only as much land as she could
surround with a bull’s hide. She accepted the terms and made the most
of the situation. First she had his people cut a bull’s hide into thin
strips and tie them together to form a single, very long, closed cord.
Then, by sheer intuition, she reasoned that the maximum area could be
encompassed by shaping the cord into the circumference of a circle. In
this way she acquired a larger piece of land than she had coveted."

http://www.math.snu.ac.kr/~choe/MSRI4.pdf

regards, mathtalk-ga