From Enslavement to Emancipation: Naming Practices in the Danish West Indies

Sarah Abel,George F. Tyson,Gisli Palsson

doi:10.1017/s0010417519000070

Sarah Abel, George F. Tyson + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417519000070

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Abstract

AbstractIn most contexts, personal names function as identifiers and as a locus for identity. Therefore, names can be used to trace patterns of kinship, ancestry, and belonging. The social power of naming, however, and its capacity to shape the life course of the person named, becomes most evident when it has the opposite intent: to sever connections and injure. Naming in slave society was primarily practical, an essential first step in commodifying human beings so they could be removed from their roots and social networks, bought, sold, mortgaged, and adjudicated. Such practices have long been integral to processes of colonization and enslavement. This paper discusses the implications of naming practices in the context of slavery, focusing on the names given to enslaved Africans and their descendants through baptism in the Lutheran and Moravian churches in the Danish West Indies. Drawing on historiographical accounts and a detailed analysis of plantation and parish records from the island of St. Croix, we outline and contextualize these patterns and practices of naming. We examine the extent to which the adoption of European and Christian names can be read as an effort toward resistance and self-determination on the part of the enslaved. Our account is illuminated by details from the lives of three former slaves from the Danish West Indies.

Highlights

The act of naming, and of recognizing ourselves by the names we are given, often seems such a universal aspect of human experience as to be second nature
As with the urban black communities, this pattern points to a progressive preference for choosing Christian names for newborn children among this rural enslaved population, in tandem with the dwindling of its African-born members following the abolition of the slave trade in 1803
Our second case is of another African-born woman, Mercy, whose transition from enslavement to petty entrepreneur, free property owner, wife, and widow is documented in a series of name changes recorded primarily in the remarkably complete set of land and head tax registers (“Matrikler”) that

Summary

Introduction

The act of naming, and of recognizing ourselves by the names we are given, often seems such a universal aspect of human experience as to be second nature. Our account has mainly dealt with secular naming acts and contexts: for instance, marking the entry of African captives into the New World colonies, denoting the sale of chattel from one owner to another, and signifying a legal change in status from slave to free person.

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