Follow
Geni naming conventions - enslaved Americans
See the projects Geni naming conventions and Geni naming conventions - data entry for general guidance.
- Use ordinary case. Name Preference Settings can be used to change how names are displayed to your personal preference.
- Place the last name a person was born with in the Birth Surname field and the last name they died with in the Surname field. All other names and nicknames go in the “also known as” field, comma separated.
- America was colonized by different European countries. Names were regulated by the “mother” entity. Historically, in British America, the majority of women changed their surname when they married. This however was not the case in the French colonies, as example. So follow the naming conventions for the European entity in those cases.
- Immigrants from other countries may best be shown using both their original language name and their anglicized name. Additionally, a name change is well depicted by use of both “original” and “last” names.
- Early native Americans peoples did not traditionally have a surname. Leave birth surname and Last Name / Surname fields blank. See Native American naming conventions.
- Enslaved persons may have acquired a surname, but may not have been born with one, so “birth surname” should be blank. See more at Naming conventions for enslaved Americans.
Slavery in the US is believed to have begun in Winyah Bay, now South Carolina, in 1526 and continued until 1865. During this 339 year period, slaves were only known by a single name and by who their owner were.
Kenneth Welsh made the statement:
- "From my research over the years, I have found that the "average slave," a 35-year old man or woman, would have maybe 5 or 6 last names, and 2-3 first names. The first name was usually kept, as they went from master to master, but the last name changed more frequently. Also, most slaves were not "called" by both names, just the first name, "Moses," "Tom" or "Issa." Only on bills of sales, auction listings or family documents were both names used."
- Keeping this in mind and after a public discussion, we have come of with the following guidelines that should help all Geni.com users the information needed to do their own research.
All US slaves should be put in the project Enslaved Persons in America
If the owner owned a lot of slaves, associated projects could be opened or opened for that owner as a subproject of Slavery in the United States
- Format as
- FN: as known
- MN: (blank)
- LN: (blank)
- Birth surname: (blank)
- Display name example: Ned, slave of Agnes Witt
- AKA... List of other slave owners EX; Ned slave of John Blue, Ned slave of Fred Ugly
- About.. any other information that may be helpfull to other researchers
- Sources... all sources should be uploaded to the profile so other researchers can see it
- Ethnicity.. "Black" or "Mulatto" etc (as per source)
- Occupation.. Job title if known EX.. Worked in Main House, Farmer, Cotton Picker
Slave name
< Wikipedia >
There is a common misconception in the United States that African Americans derive their last names from the slave owners of their enslaved ancestors.
The reality is that former slaves were free to choose their own names after they became free.[4] Many chose names like 'Freeman' to denote their new status, while others picked names of famous people or people they admired, such as US Presidents like George Washington.[5] Other commonly chosen names were 'Johnson', 'Brown' and 'Williams', which had been popular before emancipation. For a variety of reasons, perhaps 20% chose to continue using the name of their former owners.[6]
African-American names
< Wikipedia >
History
Black slaves remained nameless from the time of their capture until they were purchased by white American slaveholders.[1]
It is widely held that prior to the 1950s and 1960s, most African-American names closely resembled those used within European-American culture.[2] Even within the white American population, a few very common names were given to babies of that era, with nicknames often used to distinguish among various people with the same name.[3] It was also quite common for immigrants and cultural minorities to choose baby names or change their names to fit in within the wider American culture. This applied to both given names and surnames.[3][4]
Recent research by economic historians Lisa D. Cook, John Parman and Trevon Logan has found that distinctive African-American naming practices happened as early as in the Antebellum period.[5][6] However, those early names are no longer used by Black people.[5][6]
Paustian has argued that black names display the same themes and patterns as those in West Africa.[7]
With the rise of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the wider counterculture of the 1960s, there was a dramatic rise in African-American names of various origins. San Diego State University professor Jean Twenge believes that the shift toward unique black-American baby names is also the result of the cultural shift in America that values individuality over conformity.[3]
In 2004, Fryer et al. examined the rapid change in naming practices in the early 1970s, with the rapid adoption of distinctively black names, especially in low-income, racially isolated neighborhoods.[8] They favor an explanatory model which attributes a change in black perceptions of their identity to the Black Power Movement.
Influences and conventions
- French names
- Afrocentric and inventive names
- Muslim names
- European and Biblical names