Slave naming patterns: Onomastics and the taxonomy of race in eighteenth-century Jamaica

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 325-346

  Burnard, Trevor ^a  

^a Lirunel University

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33751363160     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219500551550     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Diaries of Thomas ThistlewooJ (hereinafter DTT), July 3, 1782, Monson 31/33, Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln (hereinafter LA). I am grateful to Lord Monson for permission to cite from these diaries. References to the diary are by date and volume number.
2. The primary sources used for white names are Baptisms, 1722-1758, Kingston Parish Register, Baptisms and Marriages, I, Island Record Office Spanish Town, Jamaica (hereinafter IRO), and for slave names, Inventories iH/i 1/3/16 (1732) and Ili/i 1/3/33 (1753), Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Jamaica (hereinafter JA).
3. Gad Heuman, Bcluvcn Black and \ITiitc: Race, Politics, and the Free Chlorals in Jamaica, iy$21865 (Westport, lySi), 10-15.
4. Daniel Scott Smith, "Child-Naming Practices, Kinship Tics, and Change in Family Attitudes in Hingham, Massachusetts, 1641 to 1880," Journal of Social History, XVIII (1985), 543.
5. See also David Hackctt Fischer, "Forenames and the Family in New England: An Exercise in Historical Onomastics," in Robert M. Taylor, Jr., and Ralph J. Crandall (eds.), Generations and Change: Genealogical Perspectives in Social History (Macon, 1986), 215-241;
6. Smith, "Continuity and Discontinuity in Puritan Naming: Massachusetts, 1771," William & Mary Quarterly, LI (1994), 67-91;
7. Gloria L. Main, "Naming Children in Early New England, " Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXVII (1996), 1-27;
8. Burnard, "European Migration to Jamaica, 16551780," William & Mary Quarterly, LUI (1996), 781-783;
9. Darrett 15. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, "'In Nomine Avi': Child-Naming Patterns in a Chesapeake County, 1650-1750," in Taylor and Crandall (cds.), Generations and Change, 246-247.
10. Probably many second names were the names of godparents-usually not noted in the records.
11. Of 154 free coloreds or free blacks living in Kingston, 1745, 37 (24 %) had only one name. Kingston I'oll Tax Lists, Kingston Vestry Records, lu/2/6/1, JA.
12. Jerome S. Handler and JoAnn Jacoby, "Slave Names and Naming in Barbados, 1650-1830," William & Mary Quarterly, LUI (1996), 692- 697;
13. Cheryll Ann Cody, "There Was No 'Absalom' on the Ball Plantations: Slave Naming Practices in the South Carolina Low Country, 1720-1865," American Historical Rericn; XCII (lyS?), 572-573;
14. John Thornton, "Central African Names and African-American Naming Patterns," William & Alary Quarterly, L (1993), 727;
15. John Inscoe, "Carolina Slave Names: An Index to Acculturation, " Journal of Southern History, XLIX (1983), 527-554;
16. Charles Joyner, Down by the Rirersidc: A South Carolina Slai'c Community (Urbana, 1984), 217-222.
17. Melville Herskovits and Franklin Frazier laid the classical formulations of the naming debate sixty years ago. For an insightful modern contribution,
18. see Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective (Philadelphia, 1976).
19. John Taylor, "In Multuni l'arvo or Taylors Historie of His Lifo and Travclls in America and other parts," 3 vols., Mss. 105, Institute of Jamaica, Kingston. The balance of evidence seems to support whites naming blacks rather than the other way around in North America as well. Robert "King" Carter explicitly noted, "I nam'd [new slaves] here & by their names we can always know what sizes they are of &; I am sure we repeated them so often to them what sizes they are of & would readily answer to them"
20. (cited in Ira Merlin, "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America," William & Mary Quarterly, LUI [1996], 251- ITT, July 15, 1750, Monson 31/1, LA.
21. Ogo was a common African plantation name in liarbados. Handler and Jacoby, "Slave Names and Naming in liarbados," 6y8.
22. DTT, July 20, 1750, Monson 31/1; January 3, 1756, Monson 31/7; February 27, 1758, Monson 31/9; and April I, 1762, Monson 31/13, IA.
23. DTT, June 26, 1751, Monson 31/2; June 23, 1750, Monson 31/1, LA; Philip Morgan, "Slaves and Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: Vineyard l'en, 1750-51,"Willaimm & Mary Quarterly, LII (1995), 57-58, 64, 69-73.
24. For the significance of names in West Africa, see Thornton, "Central African Names;"
25. H.A. Wieschhott, "The Social Significance of Names among the Ibo of Nigeria," American Antliwtwliyiit, XLIII (1941), 212-222. In his autobiography, Olaudah Equaino explained that "our children were named from sonic event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding, at the time of our birth"
26. (Philip D. Curtin [ed.], Africa Rememberd: Narratives' by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade [Madison, 1968], 79).
27. See Burnard, "Theater of Terror: Domestic Violence in Thomas Thistlewood's Jamaica, 1750-1786," in Christine Daniels and Michael Kennedy (eds.), Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America 1640-1865 (New York, 1999), 237-253,
28. for a fuller explication of Thistlewood's slave management techniques. 12 Berlin, "From Creole to African," 262, 265.
29. John H. Lean, "The Kanalisation of Society in Eighteenth Century Jamaica," unpub. UA Honours Long Essay (University of Canterbury, New Zealand, lyyS).
30. For works that infer African ethnicity from African names, see Lorena S. Walsh, from Calabar to diner's Grove: Tlw History of a Virginia Slai'C Community (Charlottesville, 1997), 300;
31. Douglas V. Armstrong, The Old I'illage ami the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination ofDrax Hall Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica (Urbana, 1990), 36-39.
32. "List of Negroes January i, 1778," York Estate, Gale-Morant Papers, 3/c, Exeter University Library, Devon, England. For the declining percentage of Africans in the Jamaican slave population over time, sec
33. Michael Craton, "Jamaican Slave Mortality: Fresh Light from Worthy Park, Longville and the Tharp Estates, "Journal of Caribbean History, III (1971), 1-27.
34. Inventories, 115/11/3/33/127, 226 (1753), JA.
35. Craton, Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaver and Plantation Life in Jamaica (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 203, 206, 213, 218, 220
36. For censuses of livestock, sec mr.July 15, October 5, 1750, Monson 31/1, LA. For other listings, see "List of Negroes and Stock," January i, 1784, Spring plantation, St. Andrew, Sniyth Mss., AC/WO 16 (27) 120 (f), Bristol Record Office, England,
37. Morgan, "Slaves and Livestock in Eighteenth Century Jamaica," 53, 73-76;
38. Edward Long, History of Jamaica (London, 1774), II, 356-372.
39. Although many Europeans were customarily known by diminutives of their Christian name, diminutives were seldom used in formal documents.
40. Curiously, no female was named after a place.
41. Craton, Scantling for the Invisible Man, 157;
42. Handler and Jacoby, "Slaves Names and Naming in liarbados," 691.
43. David Barry Caspar, Bondmen anil Rebels: A Case Study of Master-Slatv Relations in Antigua (Ualtimore, 1985), 132. Unlike in Jamaica, Auba and Cubbenah were common but Quacow, Quaw, and Quashcba were unknown in liarbados.
44. Handler and Jacoby, "Slave Names and Naming in liarbados," 698-699.
45. Handler and Jacoby, "Slave Names and Naming in Barbados," 698-699;
46. Walsh, From Calabar to Carter's Grove, 159-161.
47. Franklin Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York, 1978), 64.
48. For an early use of Sambo as a generic slave name, see Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1657), 49-50, 54.
49. Craton, Swelling for the Invisible A Am, 296-304.
50. Sample of Kingston, Manumissions, 1B/11/6/5-9, 11, 13, 18-22, Kingston Poll Tax, 1745-70.
51. Kingston Vestry Records, 1B/2/6/1-6, JA; St. Catherine Parish Register, 1672-1764, Kingston Parish Register, 1722-74, IRO.
52. Richard Hill, Lights and Shadows of Jamaica History (Kingston, 1859), 104.
53. See, in particular, a law passed in 1761 to limit colored inheritances: 2 George III, December ly, 1761, Laws of Jamaica, i6Si-i$j7 (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica, 1837).
54. For a similar process in Saint-Domingue, see John Garrigus, "Colour, Class and Identity on the Eve of the Haitian Revolution: Saint-Domingue's Free Coloured Elite as Colons Americains," Slavery and Abolition, XVII (1996), 20-43.
55. Craton, Searching for the Invisible Man, 341.
56. The Guardian, 10 April, 2000, has an obituary of Bernard Alexander Montgomery Grant, the radical Guyanese-born British M.P., born in 1944 and named after two of Britain's wartime generals.
57. For West African naming patterns, see Handler and Jacoby, "Slave Names and Naming in Barbados," 690-691;
58. Thornton, "Central African Names and African-American Naming Systems," 730-732;
59. and the works cited in 11.14. For two especially insightful works on how African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans transformed white practices into new cultural forms, see Shane White and Graham White, Stylin': African-American Expressive Culturefrom Its Beginnings ta the Zoot SHI'I (Ithaca, lyyS);
60. Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Rnrer, Opposition, ami Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, 1997). For Michel de Certeau's opposition/resistance distinction,
61. see "On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life," Social Text, III (1980), 3-43.