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Breadfruit · (#57 (**permalink**))

[align=center]The roots of what many now deem normal[/align]

"Early slaveholders in Pennsylvania, like their counterparts in other states, assigned names to the people they enslaved as a means not only of identification--few slaveholders wanted to bother to learn the African name of the person he had just bought--but also as a means of defining their authority in the new relationship of master and slave.........."

"Very few slaves show up in records with their original African names intact. Slaveholders disliked and discouraged the use of names which sounded strange to them, and as noted above, the power to rename a person at will reinforced the role of the slaveholder as the person in charge. Only one known slave was registered with a name which may be African in origin. William Hay of Londonderry Township, Lancaster County (later Dauphin County) registered a 26 year-old female slave named "Dembigh" in 1780. "Dembigh" is very close to the African "Dembi," a traditional male name meaning "peace." No other instances of traditional African names have come to light, showing how completely original African names were suppressed in slaves brought to Pennsylvania. One additional instance, from Philadelphia County, does specifically mention the slave's African name, and helps to explain this phenomenon. The item is a runaway notice from 1763, which advertises for the return of "Jupiter, though it is likely he may call himself by his Negroe Name, which is Moeyon, or Oantee." Despite the slaveholder's awareness of his slave's original African name, he refers to him by the slave name "Jupiter," and no doubt used that name in official papers concerning this slave. If not for the escape of this slave, the African names "Moeyon" and "Oantee" would never have been known."

http://www.afrolumens.org/slavery/names.html