[TontoKowalski]

What an interesting post! Particularly the part about the classical Greek names.

I ask the following question from a standpoint of "not knowing, but wondering" (and because your post indicates that you've invested some time in researching the names) and not from some other motive to stir up a stink:

Did slaveowners name the children of slaves, or were the slaves themselves allowed to choose the name?

[summer]

THAT is an excellent question! I am curious about that as well.

[FUMETTI]

Hi there!

Yes, for the most part slaveowners gave them their names, and surnames, so blacks tracing their ancestry usually find out that their surname was that of their last slaveowner before freedom (that was the case for Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey).

When blacks were free, they were frequently shedding their classical names and adopting names of heroes like Washington, Lincoln, and abolitionists like Lloyd and such.

Occasionally black slaveowner surnames were dropped. Case in point was Frederick Douglass. He was born Frederick Bailey but became Douglass upon his escape to Rochester NY.

[livius]

I don't know about slave times, but one of the things that poor rural blacks in the South (and probably elsewhere) sometimes did was to ask the doctors at the clinics to name their babies. Mencken, in his famous book, The American Language, tells a horrible story about (white) doctors who gave black babies names such as Urea or other medical terms, and one truly terrible case in which the child was named "Positive Wasserman." It's hard to imagine such cruelty being practiced upon poor, illiterate and trusting folk, and I hope these doctors either repented later or are now suffering the unpleasant recompense for their deeds, which they probably thought very funny at the time.