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For it is through our names that we first place ourselves in the world. Our names, being the gift of others, must be made our own.… They must become our masks and our shields and the containers of all those values and traditions which we learn and/or imagine as being the meaning of our familial past.

And when we are reminded so constantly that we bear, as Negroes, names originally possessed by those who owned our enslaved grandparents, we are apt … to be more than ordinarily concerned with the veiled and mysterious events, the fusions of blood, the furtive couplings, the business transactions, the violations of faith and loyalty, the assaults; yes, and the unrecognized and unrecognizable loves through which our names were handed down unto us.54

Rather than reveal a sordid past, the names assumed or revealed after emancipation reflected a new beginning—an essential step toward achieving the self-respect, the personal dignity, and the independence which slavery had compromised. “We hardly knowed our names,” recalled Sallie Crane, a former Arkansas slave. “We was cussed for so many bitches and sons of bitches and bloody bitches, and blood of bitches. We never heard our names scarcely at all.” Describing “the most cruel acts” inflicted upon him as a slave, William Wells Brown singled out the order that he drop the name his mother had given him. (The master had wished to placate his nephew, also named William, who had recently taken up residence on the plantation.) “I received several very severe whippings for telling people that my name was William, after orders were given to change it. Though young, I was old enough to place a high appreciation upon my name.” Until his escape, he went by the name of Sandford, but the moment he reached a safe haven he adopted his old name “and let Sandford go by the board, for I always hated it. Not because there was anything peculiar in the name; but because it had been forced upon me.”55

During slavery, many blacks only had a given name. Although most slaves appear to have named their own children, the master might arbitrarily assign a name, borrowing heavily from classical, biblical, and simplified Anglo-Saxon appellations; the naming process also afforded him a chance to indulge in some humorous whims, and some did so at the expense of the slave’s dignity. Masters might permit certain favorites and slaves who exercised authority over other slaves to adopt their own surnames; the less privileged were apt to have the same surname as the master—a convenient way to identify the plantation to which they belonged. To allow the slave to use his own surname, Jacob Stroyer recalled, “would be sharing an honor which was due only to his master, and that would be too much for a negro, said they, who was nothing more than a servant. So it was held as a crime for a slave to be caught using his own name, a crime which would expose him to severe punishment.” Numerous ex-slaves, then, like Wash Ingram of Texas, recalled only that “we always went by the name of whoever we belonged to.” In South Carolina, a teacher in a freedmen’s school tried without success to induce one of the pupils to state her surname. “Only Phyllis, ma’am,” she would reply. Finally, an older student interceded, exclaiming, “Pshaw, gal! What’s you’m title?” The pupil then understood what was demanded, and she gave the name of her former master.56

More often than many masters realized, slaves adopted their own surnames. “When the white folks speak of them they say ‘John, that belongs to Mr. So and So,’ ” Robert Smalls testified during the war. “But among themselves they use their titles.… Before their masters they do not speak of their titles at all.” Plantation records rarely listed slaves by surnames, and the vast rice plantations owned by the Heyward family in South Carolina were no exception. Some of the more prominent blacks, however, like “old blacksmith Caesar,” were known by both their given names and their surnames. And “among themselves,” Duncan