Slave name

Not to be confused with Slavic name.

Name given to an enslaved person

Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

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Historical

Antiquity

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* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Slavery in al-Andalus ‎
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* Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
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* 21st century

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Naval

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By country or region

Sub-Saharan Africa

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East, Southeast, and South Asia

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* Indonesia
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Australia and Oceania

* Australia
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Europe and North Asia

* Sex trafficking in Europe
* United Kingdom
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* Denmark
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North Africa and West Asia

* Afghanistan
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Religion

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Opposition and resistance

* Abolitionism
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* Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90
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* songs
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* International law
* Third Servile War
* 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
* Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]

Related

* Common law
* Forced labour
* Fugitive slaves
* laws
* convention
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* Indentured servitude
* List of slaves
* owners
* last survivors of American slavery
* List of slavery-related memorials and museums
* Slave catcher
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* Slave narrative
* films
* songs
* Slave name
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* breeding
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* Washington
* Jefferson
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* Emancipation Proclamation
* 40 acres
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Iron bit
* Emancipation Day

* v
* t
* e

A slave name is the personal name given by others to an enslaved person, or a name inherited from enslaved ancestors.

## Ancient Rome

[edit]

See also: Slavery in the Roman Empire

In Rome, slaves were given a single name by their owner. A slave who was freed might keep their slave name and adopt the former owner's name as a praenomen and nomen. As an example, one historian says that "a man named Publius Larcius freed a male slave named Nicia, who was then called Publius Larcius Nicia."[1]

Historian Harold Whetstone Johnston writes of instances in which a slave's former owner chose to ignore custom and simply chose a name for the freedman.[2]

## Middle East

[edit]

See also: History of slavery in the Muslim world

By Islamic law, non-Muslim foreigners (kafir) were by definition legitimate targets for enslavement, since the Muslim world of dar al-Islam was by definition at war with the non-Muslim world of dar al-harb ("House of War"), and non-Muslim war captives were legitimate to enslave.[3] After capture, non-Muslim slaves were normally converted to Islam and given a new name.

In the Ottoman Imperial Harem during the era of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, for example, the new cariye slave girls and concubines (sex slaves) were upon arrival customarily converted to Islam and given a new name, typically a Persian or Turkish name signifying the name of a flower or a bird, such as for example Nilüfer ('water lily').[4] Since a person in Ottoman society was normally referred to by the name of their father after their personal name, female slaves, whose fathers where unknown and not Muslims, were given a paternal name associated with God, normally Abdallah: according to preserved records, 97 percent of female palace slaves at the Ottoman Imperial Harem were named bint ('daughter of') Abdallah.[5]

Example of this were Gülbahar Hatun (mother of Selim I). The discovery of inscriptions (vakfiye) and others documents, where she was called Ayşe Gülbahar bint Abdüllah, proves that she had Christian slave origins, since this is the traditional slave name by which slaves who converted to Islam were indicated.[6][7][8][9]

## United States

[edit]

Further information: African-American names

After they became free, African-American former slaves were free to choose their own names.[10] Many chose names like "Freeman" to denote their new status, while others picked names of famous people or people they admired, such as US Presidents like George Washington.[11] Other commonly chosen names were "Johnson", "Brown" and "Williams", which had been popular before emancipation.

There is a common misconception in the United States that African Americans derive their last names from the owners of their enslaved ancestors. For example, in his 1965 book, Message to the Blackman in America, Elijah Muhammad wrote, "You must remember that slave-names will keep you a slave in the eyes of the civilized world today. You have seen, and recently, that Africa and Asia will not honor you or give you any respect as long as you are called by the white man's name."[12]

Echoing this, Malcolm X said:

> "The slave master who owned us put his last name on us to denote that we were his property. So when you see a negro today who's named Johnson, if you go back in his history you will find that his grandfather, or one of his forefathers, was owned by a white man who was named Johnson. My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather, who got it from the slave master. The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery."[13]

As a result, some organizations, including Muhammad's Nation of Islam and the black nationalist US Organization encourage African Americans to abandon their slave names.[14] In reality some ex-slaves did choose to take the name of their former owner, but generally that was not the case.[10]

Some African-Americans would later change their name after a religious conversion (Muhammad Ali changed his name from Cassius Clay, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X) from Malcolm Little, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr, and Louis Farrakhan changed his from Louis Eugene Walcott, for example)[15][16] or involvement with the black nationalist movement, in this latter case usually adopting names of African origin (e.g., Amiri Baraka and Assata Shakur).[17]

## Other references

[edit]

Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor stated in 2017 that she had changed her legal name to Magda Davitt, saying in an interview that she wished to be "free of the patriarchal slave names."[18] On her conversion to Islam in 2018, she adopted the Muslim name Shuhada' Sadaqat.[19]

## See also

[edit]

* Nation of Islam

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Roman Nomenclature". vroma.org. Archived from the original on November 19, 2020. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
2. ^ Johnson, Harold Whetstone; Johnston, Mary; Names of Freedmen; 1903, 1932; forumromanum.org[usurped]
3. ^ Erdem, Y. Hakan. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 1800–1909. London: Macmillan Press, 1996.
4. ^ Peirce, L. P. (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Storbritannien: Oxford University Press. p.35
5. ^ Argit, B. İ. (2020). Life After the Harem: Female Palace Slaves, Patronage and the Imperial Ottoman Court. Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p.67
6. ^ Cite error: The named reference `gülbahar` was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. ^ "Consorts Of Ottoman Sultans (in Turkish)". Ottoman Web Page.
8. ^ Anthony Dolphin Alderson (1956). The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty. Clarendon Press.
9. ^ Cite error: The named reference `leslie` was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
10. ^ a b Craven, Julia (2022-02-24). "Many African American last names hold weight of Black history". NBC News. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
11. ^ "Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves' Surnames Like Brands?". The Root. 16 June 2017. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
12. ^ Message to the Blackman; Muhammad, Elijah; Chapter 24; seventhfam.com
13. ^ "Hey, Black America, Let's All Ditch Our Slave Names". Medium. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
14. ^ "NGUZO SABA (The Seven Principles)" From : US Organization website
15. ^ "Louis Farrakhan Biography". Database. Biography.com. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
16. ^ "Muhammad Ali Biography". Database. Biography.com. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
17. ^ Deburg, William L. Van, Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, NYU Press (1997), p. 269, ISBN 0-8147-8789-4
18. ^ "Sinead O'Connor's mother 'ran a torture chamber'". The Independent. 2017-09-12. Retrieved 2019-10-25.
19. ^ "Sinead O'Connor (Shuhada Sadaqat): 'I'm rebuilding life' | The Point Of Everything". Retrieved 2019-10-25.

* v
* t
* e

Personal names and anthroponymy

Personal name|

* Birth name
* Given name
* Surname
* Patrilineal/Matrilineal
* Affixes
* Nobiliary particle

By sequence|

* First name
* Middle name
* Last name

By trait|

* Diminutive
* Double-barrelled
* Epithet
* Animal
* Common
* Plant
* Eponymic
* Matronymic
* Metonymic
* Mononymic
* Occupational
* Patronymic
* Surname
* Sobriquet
* Teknonymic
* Toponymic
* Surname
* Patrial
* Unisex
* Virtue

By life situation|

* Aptronym
* Birth name
* Code name
* Maiden and married names
* Necronym
* Posthumous name
* Temple name
* Placeholder name
* Notname
* Regnal name
* Slave name

Pseudonyms (list)|

* Art name
* Bugō
* Nicknames
* list
* Hypocorism
* Monarchs
* Nom de guerre
* Pen name
* Heteronym
* Ring name
* Shikona
* Stage name
* List
* Mononyms
* Username

By culture
Surnames
by country|

| East Asian|

* Amami
* Chinese
* Courtesy
* Art
* Generation
* Titles
* Japanese
* Korean
* Manchu
* Okinawan
* Indigenous Taiwanese
* Vietnamese

|

Northern Asia
and Central Asia|

* Kalmyk
* Mongolian
* Sakha
* Tibetan

Muslim world
and Western Asia|

* Afghan
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* Azerbaijani
* Bengali
* Berber
* Coptic
* Mandaean
* Pakistani
* Pashtun
* Persian
* Sindhi
* Somali
* Tatar
* Turkish

Oceania|

* Australian Aboriginal
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* Hawaiian
* Māori

Sub-Saharan Africa|

* Ashanti
* Democratic Republic of the Congo
* Eritrean and Ethiopian
* Ewe
* Ghanaian
* Igbo
* Yoruba
* Zimbabwean

Europe,
North America
and Australasia|

* Albanian
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* Ashkenazi Jewish
* Basque
* Estonian
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* Greek
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| Baltic|

* Latvian
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|

Celtic|

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Germanic|

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Romance|

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Slavic|

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* Suffixes

Indosphere (South Asia
and Southeast Asia)|

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* Indian
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* Ancient Tamil country
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By religion|

* Christian name
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* Saint's name
* Buddhist surname
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* Jewish name
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* Theophoric name

Manners of address
List of
authority / honour|

| Styles|

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|

Titles|

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Related traditions|

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Related|

* Acronym
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* Category:Lists of names

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