I’ve Got a Name

Anglo-American surnames: unreliable historical narrators

Like the pine trees linin’ the windin’ road

I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name

Like the singin’ bird and the croakin’ toad

I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name

And I carry it with me like my daddy did

But I’m living the dream that he kept hid…

Jim Croce [1973]

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Who Changed or Modified Their Names in Colonial Times in North America?

Most people see their surname as almost immutable evidence of their ancestry or ethnic heritage, yet the Americas and Caribbean were colonized in part by non-Anglo people who often changed their names to “fit-in”.

Other non-Anglo groups who were not colonizers – indigenous peoples and the enslaved – often assumed an English name or had one foisted upon them.  This might occur upon enslavement, emancipation, conversion to Christianity, or as a simple attempt to assimilate into the dominant culture.

There were many other groups of people with reason to change their names:

Adoptees
Bandits, Criminals, Outlaws, and Pirates
Illegitimate or “base-born” children
Orphans
People hiding from family or creditors
Spies
Traders

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Listed below are some non-Anglo ethnic groups who rarely kept their original names.  Even when they attempted to do so, their names were almost always modified or corrupted by English-speaking record takers:

Free dual- or multiple-identity ethnic groups (Métis, “half-breeds”, Melungeons, et al)

Free indigenous North American peoples (Lenape, Iroquois, Shawnee, Catawba, Tuscarora, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Yuchi, Pamunkey, and hundreds of other tribes, bands, and nations)

Free indigenous South American and Caribbean peoples (Arawak, Taino, and any number of other tribes, bands, and nations)

Enslaved and formerly enslaved peoples of African, Malagasy, indigenous, and mixed ancestry.

South Asians (free and unfree, including Lascars and Portuguese Goans)

Gaelic speaking people (Scots, Manx, Irish)

Welsh speaking people (including speakers of Breton from Brittany in NW France)

Jewish people (Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and other Jewish groups including Black Jewish of South America, West Africa, and Caribbean)

Romani people (especially Eastern European Slavs, French Manouche, Iberian Calé/Gitanos/Ciganos, Welsh Kale, and German Sinti)

Also:

Armenians
Azore Islanders
Basques (from Basque Country now in both France and Spain)
Czechs (including Bohemian Jews at Roanoke Colony in 1585!)
Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes
Dutch (including those from New Amsterdam, Dutch Suriname, Dutch East and West Indies and Flemish speakers)
Finns
French speakers (including those from Switzerland, Belgian Walloons, and French Caribbean)
German speakers (including those from Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy, and the various regions of Germany itself)
Greeks
Hungarians
Italians (including Waldensians)
Minorcans, Majorcans
North Africans (Arabs, Berber/Amazigh, et al)
Poles
Portuguese (including Creoles from various Portuguese colonies)
Sami (formerly known as Laplanders)
Spanish
Turks

All of the above non-Anglo peoples have been documented as being present in pre-Revolutionary British Colonial America – and there were no doubt other ethnic groups less well-documented.

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Many people assume that formerly enslaved people of color invariably took the surnames of their former enslavers, but the story is far more complex.

Many of the formerly enslaved (and particularly those not of exclusively African heritage) had remembered histories and names from the period before enslavement.

While the enslaved of primarily African heritage were often wrenched from a homeland thousands of miles distant, with little hope of maintaining any meaningful cultural continuity in the Americas (due to the intentional break-up of their ethnic communities), there were many, many others held in bondage who experienced slavery in close proximity to the still nominally free members of their local cultural community.

For example, an enslaved multi-ethnic person in Alabama or Mississippi with known free Choctaw ancestors might have chosen to use an English or Spanish family surname first assumed during the 1600s and 1700s when the Choctaw first traded with Europeans.  These earliest “borrowed” surnames often have more to do with respect for a local priest/clergyman, or intermarriage with a trader, than anything to do with a slaveholder.

This makes the respect and study of such surnames important as a potential source of clues regarding historical ethnic mixing and migration in colonial times.