African-American names

African-American names are an integral part of African-American tradition. While many Black Americans use names that are popular with wider American culture, several specific naming trends have emerged within African-American culture.

History

During the period of chattel slavery in the United States, enslaved Black people remained legally nameless from the time of their capture until American slavers purchased them. A separate Black American naming culture was imposed by early White slavers who renamed their slaves with Biblical, classical Greek and Roman, and mythological names that both showed off the slave owner's erudition and were not commonly used for Whites. Examples from pre-1808 slave roles include Chloe, Ceaser (stet), Homer, Philbe, Polidore, Scipio, and Venus.

The Book of Negroes, originally published in New York in 1783, shows that the most common Black names in Colonial America, among both free and enslaved people, included these classical choices along with place-names such as London, Dublin, and Boston. Nicknames were commonly used as proper names, given to more than a third of Black females at the time. These nickname-names included Sukey, Sally, Betsy, Jenny, Sam, Jack, Jim, and Billy.

Economic historians Lisa D. Cook, John Parman and Trevon Logan have found that distinctive African-American naming practices happened as early as in the Antebellum period (mid-1800s). However, those early names are no longer used.

Paustian has argued that black names display the same themes and patterns as those in West Africa.

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.