Black People : Surnames from Slavemasters

StefiA

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Jul 24, 2010
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This is really just an enquiry into how people feel about this topic - I've got no real idea what's accepted as normal black thinking on this or whatever. SURNAMES - now for most people in the world these come from just 3 things as far as I can see - the job your ancestor did, the name of where you came from and the name of your father - but with african americans there's a fourth way and maybe (?) the only way which is the name of the people who thought they owned your family way back - now because I'm as Obama would say a mutt my real full name is like quite long - its a whole load of Italian with an english name stuck on the end - now that english name is the name of the people in Georgia who were holding my grandpa's family prisoner - so in no way is it really my name and the more I come to know about what went on back in those days the less appropriate it seems to have that persons name on my passports, drivers licence etc etc. Does anyone else have that feeling? If so what do you do about it? - like I could just use my mother's Italian surname, but if you're all black that's not an option. Or do people think its good to keep those names for some reason?
 
This is difficult to try to answer.

I can understand you wanting to change your surname. It'd signify you being a free person rather than one bound via history to a slavemaster.

But I can also understand you keeping it as a sort of marker of history that shouldn't be forgotten.

Other people can probably give better answers than I have but I wanted to respond anyway.
 
@MS234

"I don't see how choosing your mother's Italian surname equates to names carried by african american which we were forced to take?
Names that were beaten into our ancestors."


No you've not understood what I meant - I'm not equating them.
What I'm getting at is this - presumably everyone who was kidnapped and shipped over to the US had their own African names...
Now to be honest I don't know if all Africans today have first names AND surnames but that's a whole nother thing...
Anyways lets say you were called Ned Thomas by the people imprisoning you...
Now down the line your descendants are still called Thomas...
Now I know there's no way probably that any african american can know what their original family name from Africa was...
But, do some people feel that being called today by the name of a slaver from way back is something they'd rather change - like Sophia commented - to demonstrate your freedom or is it people's idea that they should keep those names as a perpetual reminder of the fact that their family experienced this and survived?
Now the bit about my name is really just a side issue since I'm not pure black - so I still have a surname I could use that is from my family's past, but not the enslaved past - basically just take me out of the equation totally - cause like I said I'm a mutt. I'm more interested in whether african americans would like to change their names to more African ones or keep the ones that like you say were beaten into them.
 
I'd say that this is probably the case of all Afrikans in the diaspora, with the exception of those who are fortunate enough to retain their Afrikan names and surnames...Marriage aside, if you follow the PATRILINEAL (male) line back though any family, i.e, the offpring of any males, whose names have gone unchanged by marriage...you'll eventually hit a brick wall in the form of a slave-owning family- that'll be the origin of the name in question. I have a celtic surname (from my dad, I'm not married yet), with no other conceivable celtic links whatsoever....

Hotep :)
 

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