Central African Names and African-American Naming Patterns

Abstract

OR many years, historians have tried to understand how elements of African culture survived among African Americans. One line of investigation has focused on naming patterns, since such patterns can reveal the extent to which concepts of family, lineage, and kinship were retained beyond the Atlantic crossing. Recent research challenges the old idea that masters assigned names to slaves or that slaves imitated masters' systems of naming. If African-American naming patterns are not simply derivative of the slave experience or imitative of Euro-American systems, then the possibility of African contribution and nomenclatural persistence becomes much stronger.' One of the first African naming patterns to be recognized was the Akan custom of giving names.2 This pattern can be documented in America. A day name was given to a baby according to the day of the week on which it was born. Slaves in both North America and the British Caribbean often bore such names, and because the names were frequently given in Akan form (for example, Quaquoe or Cuffee) they stand out as African in inventories and advertisements.3 Even when day names were given in