There has been a separate black naming tradition in this country since the first slaves were brought to America and given distinctive names by their masters. Over the centuries, African-American names continued to evolve separately from white-American names via different ethnic customs, religious practices, geographic traditions, and the Roots phenomenon of the 1970s. The result: A lexicon of black names that’s become only more separate from white names over time.
Early plantation owners renamed their newly arrived slaves, trading their African names for classical names designed to show off the owners’ erudition. The slave masters, who in the beginning also named the slaves’ babies, deliberately chose names that were not used for whites and that were also unique on the plantation.
Slaves themselves tended to use their owner-imposed names when with whites and their African names or other nicknames among themselves, an early antecedent of the double-naming still common today as evidenced by rap names. Contemporary African-Americans sometimes have a “proper” name used for school, work, and society at large, and a nickname coined by family or friends that’s used at home or in the neighborhood
Classical names from Greek and Roman mythology and history that accounted for one-fifth of the names given to slaves before 1800 include:
Female Names
Chloe
Cleopatra
Cleo
Daphne
Diana
Dido
Flora
Juno
Minerva
Phoebe
Sappho
Thisbe
Venus
Adonis
Augustus
Bacchus
Caesar
Cato
Cicero
Cupid
In Colonial times, as many as twenty percent of enslaved people in the Carolinas bore African names, most notably day names, which relate to the day of the week on which the person was born. The West African day names, often translated to English cognates such as Judy for Juba or Joe for Cudjoe, are:
Sunday
Quasheba (F); Quashee (M)
Monday
Juba (F); Cudjoe (M)
Tuesday
Beneba (F); Cubbenah (M)
Wednesday
Cuba (F); Quaco (M)
Thursday
Aba (F); Quao (M)
Friday
Phebe, Phibbi (F); Cuff, Cuffee (M)
Saturday
Mimba (F); Quame, Kwame (M)
Names were also chosen that signified months of the year, seasons and holidays. Some of these that have survived on the roles include: Monday, Friday, Christmas, Easter, March, and July.
African American Place Names
Place names, sometimes signifying a site of importance to the enslaver, sometimes relating to one meaningful to the African American parents, were also commonly used. As many as a quarter of enslaved men and boys received a place-name in the mid-1700s. Among those found:
Aberdeen
Africa
Albemarle
America
Baltimore
Barbary
Boston
Carolina
Congo
Dublin
Glasgow
London
Norfolk
Richmond
Williamsburg
Windsor
York
African American Word Names
Most avant-garde sounding to our modern ears are the word names used for and by African Americans, signifying everything from the weather to virtues à la the Puritan naming traditions. Their use relates to the African belief in the power of a name to shape personality or influence fate or impart a certain quality – though many are far from uplifting. Some virtue and word names recorded among early African American names are:
Carolina
Chance
Chance
Charity
Diamond
Duke
Earth
Eartha
Forlorn
Fortune
Fortune
Freeze
Freeze
Gold
Goodluck
Hardtimes
Honor
Hope
Jewel
Justice
Biblical Names
After 1800, most African Americans chose their own names, often naming children after grandparents, which served to extend a family’s roots back to Africa. The other major development in the nineteenth century was the conversion of many blacks to Christianity, and their adoption of biblical names. Popular choices included:
Girl Names
Boy Names
In the mid–nineteenth century, free blacks in New Orleans began adopting the French-style “De” and “La” suffixes for babies’ names, often indicating paternity that may have not been acknowledged by society at large. John’s son, for instance, might become DeJuan. This form still flourishes among blacks today.
Nickname Names
After abolition, many African Americans distanced themselves from names identified too closely with slavery: Pericles might have become Perry, Willie formalized his name to William. In the early twentieth century, black names and white names were as alike as they would ever be. Still, there were meaningful differences. A detailed survey of black female names in Augusta, Georgia, in 1937 shows many informal forms of names on the white popularity lists—Lillie instead of Lillian, for instance, or Janie instead of Jane—that reflected blacks’ subordinate position in society. The most popular include:
Addie
Annie
Belle
Bessie
Carrie
Charlie
Daisy
Dessie
Dollie
Essie
Etta
Fannie
Fanny
Freddie
Gertie
Goldie
Hattie
Janie
Jessie
Johnnie
Black Hero Names and African Names
Black and white naming patterns began to diverge sharply again in the 1960s and 1970s, with the rise of Black Nationalism and ethnic identity. The typical black girl born in a black neighborhood in California in 1970 was given a name that was twice as common among blacks as it was among whites, according to Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics. By 1980, that baby would get a name that was twenty times more common among blacks.
Still today, black parents are statistically more likely to choose a name that’s one-of-a-kind. Other popular names among African-American parents include names of black celebrities —Venus (Williams), Aaliyah, Denzel (Washington) LeBron (James); Black heroes -- Booker (Washington), Malcolm (X), and Zora (Neale Hurston); and even the color black (Ebony and Raven). Some parents choose place names—Kenya, Nairobi—and the popular name Nia relates to the holiday Kwanzaa.
Muslim & African Names
Over the past decades many black parents have also looked to Muslim and African names for their children. Some favorites:
Pamela Redmond
Pamela Redmond is the cocreator and CEO of Nameberry and Baby Name DNA. The coauthor of ten groundbreaking books on names, Redmond is an internationally-recognized baby name expert, quoted and published widely in such media outlets as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, CNN, and the BBC. She has written about baby names for The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and People.
Redmond is also a New York Times bestselling novelist whose books include Younger, the basis for the hit television show, and its sequel, Older. She has three new books in the works.
