Gang members find cachet in outlaw AKAs

When some two dozen reputed members of the Lucerne Street Doggz were hit with a battery of state and federal charges in late May , the Dorchester-based crew was adding another layer to the city's gang lore.

Like their outlaw forefathers, the Doggz and their associates allegedly possess the requisite accessories of urban gang culture: a lucrative crack-dealing business, guns to protect their drug operation -- and stag y street names.

Among them:

Lyric "Half Dead" Greaves

Eric "E Rock" Davis

David "D Felony" Coleman

Rashaad "Rizz" Mason

Joshua "Jizz Uno" Hightower

Willie "Money" Sims

Jermaine "J Burna" Taylor

Donnie "Stunna" Renrick

James A. "Gunna" Walker

Menacing monikers enhance the players' auras and are loaded with meaning, gang specialists say.

With the zeal of alienated extremists who take on aliases, a gang member shedding his birth name and adopting a new one is making a statement about breaking with his birth parents and bonding with others in the surrogate family of his gang, the specialists say.

"That's their passageway into the new family," says the Rev. Shaun Harrison, who works to keep youths out of gangs as head of Youth In Crisis Ministry . "It's an alter ego, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

These subterranean sobriquets can be based on characteristics such as physical appearance. For instance, Theron "Apple" Davis , a reputed Castlegate gang member of the 1980s and '90s, was so called, some cops say privately, as a nod to the shape of his head.

Or they speak of one's ability to dodge danger on the streets of modern-day Dodge. Three times in 1988 alone, police say, purported Humboldt Raiders leader "Swervin' " Mervin Reese was able to elude bullets fired off by rivals in Boston.

Or, as the Lucerne crew demonstrates, they designate a hood's role in the gang enterprise and allow him to crow about his exploits while concealing his true identity.

Willie "Money" Sims , police say, earned his wages of sin selling crack.

James A. Walker's handle, as Boston Police Sergeant John J. Ford noted in an affidavit last month, also was no idle thug title.

"Walker has been given the street name of "Gunna," Ford wrote, "due to his penchant for firearm-related violence and has this name tattooed on his right hand."

That's the same way, Ford wrote, that Jermaine "J Burna" Taylor acquired his tag -- a hip-hop version of burner-equals-gun street slang.

Perhaps the most powerful inner-city gang member in Boston's recent history was the transplanted New Yorker who, authorities say, came here in the 1980s to unite the Hub's individual crews under his ruthless reign.

Darryl Whiting , later unseated by undercover police heroics and sentenced to life in prison, was such a notorious figure that in 1999 Miramax made a movie, "In Too Deep," base d on his exploits, casting LL Cool J as the Whiting-like gang godfather.

Owing to his once-lofty perch, Whiting, naturally, carried an almighty appellation. He was known to his acolytes by a single word:

"God."

Ric Kahn can be reached at rkahn@globe.com.