LITR 5731 2001 UHCL Student Research Project

LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, fall 2001
Student Research Project

Andrea Dunn
Dr. Craig White
LITR 5731 – Seminar in American Minority Literature
4 December 2001

African American Names and Naming: The Social Real and Fiction

Introduction

For it is through our names that we first place ourselves in the world. Our names, being the gift of others, must be made our own. They must become our masks and our shields and the containers of all those values and traditions which we learn and/or imagine as being the meaning of our familial past.

Ralph Ellison

I thought it best to begin this research journal with this quote from Ellison as it represents the complexity of the topic "African American names and naming in the social real and fiction". On the first reading of Ellison’s quote, I thought it eloquent and representative of the value many Americans place on names in relation to history and family. The name is a marker, an identifier through which familial, national and cultural histories are told. A second reading however, keeping in mind the particular (African American) population on which this research journal will focus, manifests a metatext or subsurface commentary on the history of slavery and the separations from history and family created by a violent journey through the Middle Passage in the 1600s. The names taken from the enslaved West Africans stripped them of a spiritual identity often conferred by a community in a naming ritual based in the physical-spiritual energy of nommo. A subsequent, often immediate, renaming of the now dehumanized slave-as-object is what I believe Ellison refers to, tongue-in-cheek, as "the gift of others". This "gift" is the legacy of slavery and its coinciding domination and dehumanization. These names that "must be made our own" also offer an opportunity for resistance however, a resistance apparent through the use of naming, unnaming and renaming as exemplified in the African American literary canon.

The importance of African American names and naming first peaked my interest during the slave narrative coursework for the Seminar in American Minority Literature. Reading the narratives made me question my previous assumption that today’s African American surnames are inextricably linked to ancestral slaveholder surnames. I found through research and by reading these works that some surnames are, in fact, those of previous slaveholders and those that are not were often randomly chosen names that represented hope or success to the newly freed slave. During my research I was embarrassingly reminded that not all African American genealogy is West African but sometimes East African and, therefore, slaveholder surnames are not a relevant issue in the onomastic study for all African Americans.

Likewise I found that the name changes often carry with them a metatext of power and domination, resistance, or even assimilation. For example, the very title of "The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, The African" speaks to reclamation of his name and identity – a resistant renaming. The cook and Mr. Burchell’s reference to Mary Prince as "Molly" and her owners’ appellation of "Mary, Princess of Wales," appear to not only to fragmentally but also fully rename her for their convenience. Frederick Douglass’ multiple name changes from Bailey, to Johnson and finally to Douglass offer a complex example of the movement from ‘given’ name to the taken name as a symbolic name-shifting representative of significant milestones in an African American’s life.

Of the more contemporary African American literary works, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon offers readers insight into not only the power of African American surnames but of given or first names, nicknames and place names as well. The character names Macon Dead, Milkman, Pilate, First Corinthians, Magdalena called Lena, Guitar, Hagar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Sweet and Sing Byrd seem almost magical and mysterious and beg for further investigation. President Lincoln, Mary Todd, Ulysses S. Grant, and General Lee all lived their lives on Lincoln’s Heaven. How significant are these names? How much of the naming in the text is related to the African American culture and how much is purely creative imagination? Are the names imbued with metatext or are they just marks on a page that differentiate characters from one another? How much of the story Morrison tells about each name offers insight into intended cultural reference? How much of the metatext is hidden from my view as a reader with little insight into African American naming practices? How much am I missing?

How much am I missing? Perhaps this is the question that gave me the most motivation for my research. By researching African American names and naming practices I hope to provide insight into what I suspect are the cultural gems hidden from the surface text. These ‘gems’, I hope, will allow readers of African American literature to interpret the significance of the character and place names used by each author. Perhaps a character name that seems odd, unique or particularly mysterious is, in fact, not so when read within the context of African American names and naming practices. Or perhaps the name given or even the context in which a name is given as explained in the surface reading of an African American literary work will offer some sort of metatext that represents the struggle, assimilation or resistance of the African American community.

I start my investigation by first offering a discourse on the philosophy of proper names (philology) and the history of names and naming or onomastics. Texts such as The Theory of Proper Names: A Controversial Essay, Names and Descriptions, The Nature of Necessity, The Language of Names and Family Names: How Our Surnames Came to America offer insight into the philosophical debate over the importance of proper names as ‘essence’ and into naming practices in America.

To follow, I investigate African American names and naming practices. With help from J.L. Dillard’s Black Names and a chapter from Family Names: How Our Surnames Came to America titled "The Africans: They Chose Their Own Names" I offer a comparison and contrast of African American names and naming, as applicable, to that offered in the first section. Additionally, genealogical websites offer some helpful information on current attitudes and trends in African American naming which round out the section.

I follow with a study of naming in literature with an emphasis on African American literature. This research includes a review of Debra Walker King’s Deep Talk: Reading African-American Literary Names and is supported by several articles from two journals ( African American Review and the Black American Literature Forum ) and the ever so helpful Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

The conclusion for this research offers a summary of what I learned, how this knowledge will contribute to my readings of African American literature, how it applies to the objectives of the Seminar in American Minority Literature, and finally, considerations, questions, and comments for further investigation and research on the topic.

Names and Naming: Philosophy, Psychology, and the American Way

A man’s name is not like a cloak that merely hangs around him, that may be loosened and tightened at will; it is a perfectly fitting garment. It grows over him like his very skin; one cannot scrape and scratch at it without injuring the man himself.

Goethe, Dichtung and Wahrheit

Perhaps what Goethe speaks about here is the ‘essence’ provided by a proper name. Like some philosophers, Goethe’s beliefs contradict those of philosopher John Stuart Mill who argued that names were "meaningless marks set upon things to distinguish them from one another" or in other words have denotation but no connotation (Gardiner 1). "Proper names," he says, "are attached to the objects themselves, and are not dependent upon the continuance of any attribute or object" (Plantinga 78). As part of the discussion of this debate between philosophers regarding the ‘essence’ of proper names, it is helpful to remember the history of the proper name.

The term came from the Greeks whose nomen propium meant a ‘genuine’ name as opposed to the general name or common noun (tree, horse, man) (Gardiner 4). The discourse on proper names, proper nouns and proper words comes from the field of philology or historical linguistics. Philologist Dionysius Thrax, a student of Aristarchus in second century B.C., defined a proper name as a noun that "may be used both commonly and individually" which, he says "signifies individual being" (Gardiner 5). This so-called entity name suggests not only individuality but also perhaps the essence to which Goethe referred to in the quote above. Certainly we can say proper names "express such trivial properties as being either human or not…and the like" (Plantinga 79) and, while I might misuse the term ‘essence’ in philosophical terms, I theorize that humanness is the very essence that we attach to proper names. If not, why then do we object to the idea of relinquishing names and referring to ourselves by number?

It seems that the proper name (given or surname) offers some intangible essence of who we are and describes in some way how we see ourselves or how others might see us. By removing a proper name, some philosophers argue, the physical essence remains the same and as such, proper names are only the meaningless marks Mills references. However, the voluntary or involuntary change or removal of a proper name has the capacity to change the psychological essence, the identity.

As part of this identity (or distinguishing character or personality) the name ties us to family, history and culture, and in some cases, spirit. Take, for instance, the name Gaius Julius Caesar. According to Hook, "the praenomen (Gaius) correspond[s] to our given names. The nomen or nomen gentilium (Julius) identifie[s] the clan or tribe (gens), which usually consisted of a number of families sharing this name. The cognomen (Caesar) designate[s] the particular family with the gens" (ibid. 9). The name here works as classification and connection, denotation and, in the sense that Julius Caesar conjures the ‘essence’ of the tragedy and drama of the life of Rome’s last dictator, connotation.

Now, why did you name your baby "John?" Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named "John."

Samuel Goldwyn (attributed)

Multiple names like that of Gaius Julius Caesar were not common after the fall of Rome however, and by the Middle Ages in England there was little variety in given names. Popular American names included the Puritan tradition of naming children for esteemed virtues like ‘Hope’, ‘Faith’, and ‘Charity’ while names like John, Peter and like were taken from the Bible.

‘Second names’ used to differentiate, for instance, John from the hill from John from the dale, John the tailor, John the son of Robert or John the white (for his white hair) were usually either place names, patronyms, occupational names or descriptive names (ibid. 12) and the connections to family, history and culture in this case reached back, in those times, perhaps only one generation. For instance, sons did not always inherit their father’s designations and these ‘second names’ only became surnames once they were passed down from one generation to the next (ibid.). Interestingly, the surnames found in the England of the Middle Ages have been carried forward to modern day America and today, "not more than one American surname in twenty…can be classified with assurance in any category other than the big four: places, patronyms, occupations, and descriptors." (ibid. 18). Genealogical studies tracing these surnames to pre-immigrant ancestry and beyond offer some Americans a sense of family, history and culture.

Of course, these descriptors hark from England and America is home to immigrants from all over the world. Hook recognizes this in his work Family Names: How Our Surnames Came to America and therefore dedicates three of the six ‘parts’ to his book to The British and the Northern Europeans, the Southern and Eastern Europeans, and those "From the Rest of the World." Each part contains a chapter about the cultures from each region of the world. From The English of the Jamestown Colony to the Swiss from the Alpine Valleys, from the "Speakers of Spanish" to the Greeks, from the Jews to the Japanese, Hook reviews the names and naming practices of each culture while incorporating history and onomastic discourse in each chapter.

Perhaps here it is helpful to discuss the field of onomastics and its pertinence to this research. Prior to beginning this research project I was only familiar with terms ‘linguistics’ and ‘philology’ (linguistics, meaning of course, the study of human language and the contemporary to the more classical scholarship of philology). Text after text used in this research refers to ‘onomastic’ studies or quote the ‘onomastician’ Genovese. Using the context of the works I was reading I assumed that the term onomastic meant the study of names. To be sure, I looked the term up in The American Heritage Dictionary that defines onomastics as "the study of the origins and forms of proper names" ("Onomastics," def. 1b). On the Internet I found The American Name Society Home Page, an organization dedicated to onomastic research that "was founded in 1951 to promote onomastics, the study of names and naming practices, both in the United States and abroad" ("American"). It is a non-profit organization that investigates the meaning and cultural, historical, and "linguistic characteristics" of names (ibid.). The society publishes Names: A Journal of Onomastics, which would be an excellent resource for someone interested in American name-related studies. For this research I relied on texts by onomasticians or that reference onomastic studies with a specific focus on American and African American names and naming. As seen above, and throughout the remaining research, onomastic studies (such as Hook’s Family Names) are the key to unlocking the significance (historically or categorically) of proper names.

The onomastic study of African names in Hook’s work will be discussed in a subsequent portion of this journal, however, for now, Hook’s insight into the history of name changes with regard to immigrant surnames will serve as a precursor to a discussion of the name changing experienced by Africans forcibly brought to the United States.

If a surname is a connection to your family, history and culture, the voluntary and involuntary name changing experienced by immigrants settling in America fractured this connection – sometimes more drastically than others. Hook points out that some immigrants made an "alteration" to their name or were forced to accept an alteration "willy-nilly because a customs officer misspelled the name at Ellis Island or because an employer insisted that he couldn’t hire someone" with their name’s ethnic underpinnings. Some immigrants resisted change, others accepted it as an "imperative part of the Americanization process" (Hook 322).

Reasons for name changes varied and included: transliteration if the immigrant’s language alphabet was not Roman, avoidance of potential spelling and pronunciation problems, illiteracy which led to the incorrect spellings or variations in spelling of the names on official documents, a desire to "break completely with an unhappy past," and the adoption of honored and respected names of earlier ‘arrivals’ with the hope that the same respect and chances for success would transfer to the newly arrived (ibid. 324). Other name changes included: full translations (such as Braun to Brown), partial translations (such as Wasservogel, or waterbird, to Waters or Bird), shortening by amputation (such as Lukasiewicz to Lucas), beheading (as in Koenigsberger to Berger), dropping of the middle (as Jacobson to Jason), phonetic spellings (as in Treu to Troy), transpositions (such as Aron to Arno), and Anglicization (as in Mittwoch to Wednesday) (ibid. 326).

A human being’s name is a principal component in his person, perhaps a piece of his soul.

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

As Hook’s Family Names offers onomastic insight into the history and role of the surname, Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays’ work The Language of Names is perhaps more helpful to the study of the given name.

Disappointingly, The Language of Names is written in a much less academic tone than Hook’s Family Names and appears to be more conjecture than research. This is not to say that information provided in the text is not valid or valuable, however, it seems less credible that the other texts written by true onomasticians. With statements like, "Compared to naming a character, naming a baby is a breeze," (Kaplan 174), there is a sense that the authors offer only broad strokes of potentially rich topics and use almost a lazy language to convey some of their potentially most important ideas. As literary writers, Kaplan and Bernays interject statements like the one above to indicate they are by no means onomasticians. In fact, it appears that the duo read some of the same onomastic texts as I and offer summaries of much the same quality I offer in this research paper. The difference here is that, as a student I feel obligated to report the facts as facts and couch opinions as such. Kaplan and Bernays apparently do not. As a student offering opinion or conjecture I feel obligated to support my arguments while Kaplan and Bernays write several obviously personal statements and leave them to stand alone as fact. In this sense, portions of the book read as first drafts, or at least hurried drafts.

Of course, as I stated before, Kaplan and Bernays do not front themselves as onomasticians. In contrast, they almost make light of the field: "Onomastics is an ungainly word, with irrelevant echoes of mastectomy, mastication, masturbation, and the paving material called mastic," (ibid. 217) before offering a brief overview of the field. Ironically, as stated before, the duo appears to owe much to the onomastic studies that enable them to speak to at least some of the topics included in their text.

It must be said that I read The Language of Names after reading through several of the more academic and complex onomastic studies mentioned in the introduction. Perhaps comparing this loose and relaxed text that, the authors admit, is an investigation written to satisfy a personal curiosity about the importance of names to a more scholarly onomastic study a bit is unfair. If I had read The Language of Names first I might be less critical. And here I digress from critique and highlight some of the more helpful information in the text with regard to given names.

Come, in fairness,

Tell me the name you bore in that far country;

How were you known to family, and neighbors?

No man is nameless – no man, good, or bad,

But gets a name in his first infancy,

None being born, unless a mother bears him!

Homer, The Odyssey

Kaplan and Bernays describe names as "cultural universals" in the sense that most societies use names and make the point that "full personal names, last and first taken together, stand at the intersection of opposing pulls: they set the bearer apart as an individual but also provide the bearer with family and extended kinship ties, and so focus on both the present and the past" (ibid. 16). The individuality of the given or first name as expressed here offers an opportunity to investigate the function of the first name and the importance of it within varying cultural contexts.

In many cultures, "naming touches psychic substrates associated with superstition, ritual" spirituality and magic (ibid. 17) Onomancy, for instance, an "ancient practice for divining names" involves the application of alphanumeric value to names believed to determine social status and behavior (ibid. 17). As will be discussed later, African naming ceremonies are believed to imbue spirit and are only performed after a waiting period of seven to nine days. Additionally, in some cultures, the knowledge or speaking of secret names can rob an individual of power. In others, naming a child after a living person is taboo as the act confuses the angel of death who might mistakenly take the "wrong victim" (ibid 18).

On a more social level, first names offer a vehicle for personal address and association. However Kaplan and Bernays contend that "…what others call us and what we call ourselves has a more than nominal importance and is not just a social convenience….Names are profoundly linked to identity and to private as well as public declarations of self and purpose; they have considerable affective power and, however unacknowledged in daily usage, a magical role as well, the power to change people’s lives" (ibid. 22).

Herbert Barry III, a University of Pittsburgh psychologist found a connection between the phonetics of names and their popularity (ibid. 111) which, Kaplan and Bernays suggest, might "[feed] into the ear’s reaction to a name, some of it conscious, the rest under water" (ibid. 107). Additionally, Dr. Clarence P. Oberndorf concluded in a study published in 1918 that name and identity are, in fact, related, declaring "the name a person bears is often a determining factor in influencing definite psychic reactions, such as scorn, pride, or shame, upon the person himself" (ibid. 119). For example, Vincent Van Gogh and Salvador Dali, both named for dead brothers, were haunted by the expectations of their uncertain identities (ibid. 15).

‘Vincent’ and ‘Salvador’ might have faired better had they changed their names. Perhaps the name changes of Mother Theresa (a.k.a. Agens Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Mozart (a.k.a Theophilus Mozart), Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Yasir Arafat allowed for some change in popularity or identity that modified their destiny. It would be interesting to know how their lives might have been different (or the same) without the name change.

Where these given or "birth names…mainly say something about the people who attached them" and the imposition of their beliefs, hopes and dreams on the newborn, nicknames, Kaplan and Bernays argue, "carry more freight than birth names" in the sense that "they describe, record, imply, deride, or deplore something specific about the person to whom they are attached. (ibid. 114). Epithets work in much the same way and are equally as difficult to dismantle as nicknames. All three types of names are given, but where the birth name is "owned" by the named, the nickname or epithet is owned by the namer. The nickname and epithet are also formally undocumented, unmarked and therefore not easily changed by the named. This differentiation between the named and the namer is a significant factor in the onomastic study of African American names and naming as addressed in the following section.

African American Names and Naming in the Social Real: A History and Tradition

The black Africans who survived the dreaded "Middle Passage" from the west coast of Africa to the New World did not sail alone. Violently and radically abstracted from their civilizations, these Africans nevertheless carried with them to the Western hemisphere aspects of their cultures that were meaningful, that could not be obliterated, and that they chose by acts of will not to forget.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey

Such is the point J.L. Dillard makes in his book Black Names. Dillard argues against those that believe black cultural patterns in America were lost as a result of slavery and that "Blacks had no great influence on American naming patterns" (Dillard 11). Dillard contends that while research supporting the argument for African American cultural and name acculturation is based on formal naming patterns, informal naming patterns tell another story.

Remember that studies of formal naming patterns include research on legal documents and African Americans were typically excluded from historical record keeping during and for several years following slavery. Legally prohibited from owning land, marrying, or making contracts, slave names often went undocumented except for auction records that often listed slaves by first name only or not at all, but rather in an inventory type method for accounting numbers of bodies serving the farm or plantation ("Research"). The importance of informal naming, however, lends credence to Dillard’s argument.

Alternative, informal names for food: ‘John Constant’ for cornbread, ‘Billy Seldom’ for wheat bread, and ‘Ole Ned’ for bacon (ibid. 8) and the renaming of plantations to ‘De Swamp’ and ‘De Lower Swamp’ exemplify the ways in which slaves used informal naming to keep African culture alive in America (ibid. 12). Informal naming was also a form of resistance for many slaves. Dillard cites Genovese and a Duncan Clinch Heyward report: "It was one thing for ‘Ole Massuah’…to give his plantations such names [Rotterdam, Amsterdam, etc.] and quite another to get his Negroes to call them by these names" (Dillard 11).

To support Dillard’s argument that African naming patterns were not lost during the era of slavery, informal place names, like ‘De Swamp’ and ‘De Lower Swamp’ as mentioned above, are believed to be derivatives of African naming patterns similar to today’s Jamaican Creole place names. David DeCamp in Dillard writes: "Jamaicans enjoy naming things. The place names of Jamaica are a source of onomastic delight: e.g., Maggoty Pen, Look Behind, CornPuss Gap, Me no Sen’ You no Come, Half Way Tree" (ibid. 12). Caribbean place names like ‘All for the Better and Profit’, ‘Upper Love’, ‘Lower Love’, ‘Jealousy’, ‘Dot’s Folly’, ‘Hannah’s Rest’, ‘Judith’s Fancy’, ‘Bethlehem’, and ‘Slob’ are also reminiscent of African naming patterns (ibid. 12).

It is no coincidence that the place names ‘Jealousy’, ‘Dot’s Folly’, ‘Hannah’s Rest’, ‘Judith’s Fancy’, ‘Bethlehem’, and ‘Slob’ sound much like American names for boats and other vehicles or property. While ships have historically been named (think of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria), the more expressive names used on today recreational and boating craft might have been derived from the Jamaican (and possibly earlier African) practice of cart naming. Cart names in Jamaica are named using three categories: names derived from other names (of places, persons, political parties, etc.), names derived from topics in current events, and newly-created names which express personal mood or aspirations of the owner (ibid. 13). Within this context of Jamaican place and cart naming, the place and animal names from Toni Morrison’s works (Bottom, Not Doctor Street and Lincoln’s Heaven; President Lincoln, Mary Todd, Ulysses S. Grant, and General Lee) do not sound unusual but rather like extensions of the cultural naming practices derived from African ancestry.

How do proper given and surnames fit into this argument?

Within recent years, African naming has become the subject of some attention in the United States. The Black consciousness movement motivated many African Americans to give up what they believed to be their slave names in search of a more relevant identity (think of Malcolm X, Kareem Abdul Jabar, and Muhammad Ali). Taking a Muslim, Xhosa or Swahili name (or in some cases, a combination of such) became a popular expression of resistance and self-identity, a searching for ones roots (ibid. 17).

On an African names website the author suggests: "Your name is your identity and a window on your culture and self. Your name links you with your past, your ancestors, and is a part of your spirituality. Taking on an African name if you are of African descent or culture is a way to make these cultural linkages" ("Name Site"). The website offers visitors a menu of African names sorted alphabetically and includes each name’s meaning, ethnic origin, country and gender identification. The site also suggests "much importance is attached to the naming of the child. The hopes of the parents, current events of importance and celestial events that may have attended the birth are all given consideration in naming the child" ("Name Site").

Skeptics of this movement to rename oneself or one’s child in a ‘more African’ tradition (such as that sponsored by the website) point out that the Xhosa and Swahili languages often used for these renamings were not commonly spoken by the communities of West Africans from which slaves were taken and that, ironically, many of the African American parents naming their children for African world leaders such as ex-President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana do not realize the name Kwame is simply a day name for males born on Saturday (Dillard 18). Likewise, in the spirit of nommo, "the spiritual-physical energy of ‘the word’ that conjures being through naming" that is "the seed of word, water, and life in one that brings to the body its vital human force called the nymama" (King 37), a child who changes his or her name "defies the traditions of the West African ancestors and spiritual forces" they are in fact attempting to honor (King 54).

Additionally, Dillard suggests that many African names were, in fact, not lost but carried from the coast of West Africa and have remained in use in the New World. Sometimes these names were anglicized or modified, but the cultural pattern is still apparent. The male day names Quashe, Cudjo, Quaco, Cuffee, and female day names Juba, Beneva, Cooba (spelled Cubah or Cubbah) and Abba (or Abah) are still found in American birth records. These names represent the day-naming practice slaves carried with them from Africa. Dillard reports that "finding the day names, relatively unaltered, in the plantation records is an easy matter….There are, it is true, come disguising practices which add complexity to the problem" (Dillard 19).

One of these "disguising practices" included a direct English translation such as calling the slave by their American English day name (Friday or Monday) – reminiscent of the immigrant surname changes mentioned previously in this research. Other slave names like Quack were often thought to be cruel jokes played by slaveholders when in fact they were derived from an African day-name (in this case, Quaco). Dillard supposes too that Squash might have been a derivative of Quashee, and Phoebe a derivative of Phiba or Phibbi (which means a female born on Friday) (ibid. 19).

Anglicization, like that experienced by the immigrants mentioned previously in this research, turned Cudjo to Monday and then to Joe, or translated Quaco to Wednesday then to Jacco, Jacky or Jack. Dillard cites Genovese in suggesting that the slaves themselves might have performed many of the African to English translations as whites most probably did not understand African names or naming patterns well enough to translate the names (ibid. 21). Additionally, Slave names like Hercules, Cato and Hagar were not considered unacceptable to slaves as they were similar to the African heke, Keta and the Mende Haga (ibid. 20).

Often times, the mother of a slave child would name her own children and, although many slaves were illiterate, many chose their children’s names from the Bible (Williams 524). Classical and more pompous names like Caesar and Gustavus Vassa were generally given by slave owners. The less acceptable Latin names were often Africanized by the slaves, as in the example of Hercules and Cato above (ibid.).

The names whites "bestowed" on their slaves were very similar to white given names. According to Hook, Niles Newbell Puckett found that from 1619 to 1799 the following were the most common male slave names: Jack, Tom, Harry, Sam, Will, Caesar, Dick, Peter, John, Robin, Frank, Charles, Joe, Prince, Ben, George, Tam, James, Piet, Cato, Daniel, Simon, Abram, Jacob, Lew, Sambo, Stephen, Thom, Andrew, Bob, Cof, Francis, Joseph, Pompey, Isaac, Jupiter, Ned and York.

Other less popular names probably more closely related to African patterns included: Anque, Bamba, Batt, Bendo, Boomy, Boyyas, Bumbo, Burrah, Ciah, Commenie, Cub(b)ah, Cudah, Demmee, Ducko, Ebo, Roben, Fait, Gato, Gumba, Jobah, Joo, Kinck, Lando, Mingo, Nease, Pinna, Qua, Quack, Quaco, Quam, Quamana, Quamina, Quamno, Quas, Quashoo, Quay, Roos, Sackoe, Sawney, Sem, Simbo, Sive, Tanoe, Taynay, Temba, Tomma, Wann, Warrah, Yamboo, Yaumah, and Yearie (Hook 290). A similar list of female names are also included in Hook’s work.

According to the website "African-American Names: History and Tradition," day names, like those mentioned above, made up 15 to 20 percent of slave names in the Carolinas and that before 1750, "14 percent of African-American babies were given pure African names at birth and 25 percent were given names influenced by African names" ("African-American"). The site also indicates that place names were also used for slave names. The place sometimes signified an important place to the slaveowner and sometimes also the slave but almost always represented the place at which a slave ship arrived or from which it came.

Word names like the Puritan ‘Charity’, ‘Hope’, and ‘Providence’ were also used for and by slaves as an extension of the spirit of nommo and the African belief that names have the power to shape one’s life (ibid.).

After the 1800s African Americans began naming children after relatives, particularly grandparents. Additionally, some grandparents chose the baby’s name (both are African traditions). The use of Biblical names doubled from 1720 to 1820 as a result of the African-American conversion to Christianity and after 1865 blacks began dropping names "too closely identified with slavery, Pericles becoming Perry, Willie formalizing his name to William" (ibid.).

In the early twentieth century, black and white names were more similar than ever before but began to diverge during the Black Nationalism movement of the 1960s (ibid.). As stated previously, the taking of Muslim or African names became popular, as did the taking of unique names. This trend was so popular that from 1973 to 1985, 31 percent of black girls and 19 percent of black boys in New York were given unique names (ibid.). Many of the more unique names are those borne of mixtures of various African languages. For example, Tiyor Siyolo is a mixture of the Sutus ‘wise one’ and the Zulu ‘bringer of happiness. Thanayi Anane is Xhosa for ‘child of happiness’ and Swahili for ‘soft and gentle’ (Dillard 17).

It must be noted that, while names like today’s LaKeisha appear to be part of this unique naming practice, adding prefixes like "La" was not uncommon in the nineteenth century naming practices of the African American community in Louisiana "where the ‘La’ prefix was affixed to many names, first as well as last" ("African-American Names"). Likewise, the suffix Keisha, which on first glance appears exotic, is a derivative of the Biblical name Keziah (ibid.).

Interestingly, the "African-American Names" website points out that "for whites, the tendency to choose unique names drops off as the child’s mother’s education rises…but for blacks, mother’s education does not affect the chances that she’ll choose an individual name for her child" (ibid.). In other words, race is more likely to influence unique naming than class.

Surnames, usually not used by African Americans until after the Civil War (Hook 286), were more difficult to adapt to traditional African patterns and generally followed a more traditional European style. While in captivity, many slaves were either not given surnames, held their master’s surname or were given phrase names to distinguish them from other like-named slaves (Big John or Old Jim, for instance) (ibid. 289). While "some 3 percent of male blacks in the South retained, or perhaps, readopted, African forenames, after obtaining their freedom" (ibid, 293), the majority chose to adopt a more traditional European surname. The assumption that slaves chose their most recent master’s surname is not true in every case. While not representational of the general African American population, it is interesting to note that 84 percent of the first runaway slaves had surnames different than that of the slave owners they fled. This I suspect was not only to distance oneself from the horrors of captivity but also as a sort of protection ("Research"). While some freed slaves did take the name of their either their last or a previous master, others adopted names that either offered some level of respect within the white community or reflected their hopes and aspirations (Dillard 23). The surname Holiday, for instance, was chosen by a family friend’s ancestor to express his sentiments regarding freedom.

Changes to surnames were not unusual, as exemplified by the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass who changed his last name from Bailey to Johnson and then to Douglass. African Americans changed surnames freely until the beginning of World War I when employers of African American laborers required full names. Likewise, Social Security laws became a stabilizing force in the African American surnames as did the legal documentation of marriage and property ownership (Dillard 24).

Perhaps more important than surnames though were the nicknames or acquired names applied and chosen by slaves – names that could be assigned by family members and acquired, chosen and changed at will.

NAMES

Mama picked them

from a loam of dead

relatives, resurrections.

One kick

& she named Ned

after Paw-paw.

Claimed she smelled

his pipe in her dreams.

Sheila Marie after an aunt

who passed the week

she was born. Margaret

Louise for two grandmothers.

But as if simple

appellations to place

next to Weight & Length,

mama, three weeks after

color set in, gave nicknames.

Most were shortened

first names or pairs

of initials. Shape & action

doled the rest.

My brother’s head fit

like a doorknob

in her hand. Knobby.

The "K" left off

his headstone.

Ioda stuck

her month-old hand

in the sugar

& licked it clean;

named her Ginger

Bread, Ginger sticking

thirty years now.

Each name fills us with a heft of folklore.

Bucket. Quick.

Monchie. Turkey Legs.

Their mystery bold

On our tongues,

ancestral scars insisting

on our redemption.

— minkah makalani

Some slaves were known by names other than their given name. "Mammy" was one nickname used for a female cook that was applied by white slaveholders (Williams 524). Nicknames, however, as Dillard points out, were "largely beyond control of owners, draft boards, and other such oppressive agencies" and therefore "obviously enough, the domain of onomastics which could be most completely controlled by the slaves – and, therefore, where retention of African patterns would be most likely" (Dillard 24). These nicknames, or acquired names, are a part of the West African tradition of name-shifting.

Name-shifting is defined as "the ease with which a Negro may assume one name after another, especially in dealing with whites" (ibid. 26). Some freed slaves, like Sojourner Truth, chose completely new names for themselves – shifting their name from slave name to a chosen or acquired name upon the significant event of release from slavery. Dillard suggests that, while Sojourner Truth’s name does not on the surface read etymologically African, the structure of the name is reminiscent of the name-shifting that takes place in West Africa when a man leaves his home or "traditional setting and family" or works away from home. "The vehicle of this name-shifting is Pidgin English, the most useful language for a West African worker when he moves into a polyglot environment where his tribal language will no longer suffice" (Dillard 25). Other acquired names of Pidgin English origin include: I Go Try (I’ll Try), Banana Ret (Ripe Bananas), Bad Belly, Botter Bia (Bottle of Beer), Chop Massa (Master of Eating – Gourmet), Day di Go (Day is Passing), Fine Boy, Free Boy, Gita Massa (Master of the Guitar – Guitarist) (ibid.).

Nicknaming was seen as a prerogative assumed by the Southern slave: A "redubbing process by which a nickname was given a child instead of his own" (ibid. 35). Many times this nickname was considered a ‘secret name’ not to be shared with whites. Interestingly, as the poem above suggests, parents were often the ones who first "redubbed" the child the more descriptive name (ibid.). The tradition of this acquired or nicknaming pattern is apparent in African American and white cultures today, originally entering the homes of and being absorbed into present day white culture through slavery’s ‘mammies’ (ibid.).

Athletes, entertainers and musicians have all retained the pattern of nicknaming. Jazz historians know that names like ‘Jelly Roll’, ‘Satchmo’, ‘Yardbird’, ‘Lady’, and ‘Prez’ were all "derived from attributes of the musicians or from events in their lives" (ibid. 30). Entertainers like ‘Stringbeans and Sweetie Mae’ or ‘Butterbeans and Susie’ were black comic dancers (ibid.). Today names like ‘Puff Daddy’ or ‘Ice T’ are not unusual in the rap music scene. One need only remember Puffy Daddy’s recent name change to ‘P. Diddy’ and Prince’s symbolic name change to see the present day representation of African acquired and nicknaming patterns in combination with the pattern of name-shifting. White athletes and entertainers like Roger ‘The Rocket’ Clemens and ‘The Boss’ (Bruce Springsteen) – to name only a few – are evidence that this pattern has crossed into white culture as well.

Based on this research, I would agree with Dillard in arguing against the idea that African American personal names are merely "reflections of European patterns" (ibid. 35). In fact, I would argue, taking into consideration the types of naming patterns the dominant culture uses for place naming, vehicle and property naming, and nicknaming, for example, that rather than Africans and African Americans adopting European naming patterns it might be more accurate to say that Americans have adopted just as many African naming patterns. What might be lost in this adoption though, are the undertones and history that made the naming and renaming not only important, but in some instances a necessity for African Americans. Perhaps this is the point that African American writers attempt to make when choosing literary character names and naming plots.

African American Names and Naming in Literature: Writing and Resistance

We are rooted in language, wedded, have our being in words.

Language is also a place of struggle.

The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves –

To rewrite, to reconcile, to renew.

Our words are not without meaning.

They are an action – a resistance.

Bell Hooks, Talking Back

In the book Names and Naming in Joyce, Claire A. Culleton suggests that in fiction, names function as "untapped resources that extend our study of genealogy, history, sociology, folklore, literature, philosophy, and other disciplines outside of linguistics" that "enhance our ultimate understanding of the writer…" (Culleton 4). In literature, Culleton suggests, names work on and below the surface in ways that vary based upon the intent of the author, the reader’s life experience and the cultural and historical contexts within which they were written and are read (ibid. 27) and that names function not only as markers that reflect character but function also as determinants or predictors (ibid. 32). Additionally, the act of naming or renaming carries with it political import in the sense that the ability to name implies a level of power or dominance and the act of renaming by rejection, truncation, misspelling, or mispronunciation symbolizes "nominal sedition" or, in some instances, rebellion (ibid. 96). Ragussis in Acts of Naming suggests that "while fiction recharges with power the names of people, it does so most profoundly by claiming not that names are natural or that destinies are shaped by a powerful name, but that people shape destinies – others’ and their own – by the immense power they accord to names" and that, in literature, names and naming often become the "center of a matrix of action" (Ragussis 11). It is this center of action and the importance of names and naming that Debra Walker King addresses in her text Deep Talk: Reading African-American Literary Names.

King’s work explores the metatext of names and naming in African American literature by first reviewing the importance of African American names and naming practices in a similar form to that offered in the previous section of this research. King interjects the discussion of nommo with examples of its use in African American literature such as in the title of William H. Robinson’s Nommo: An Anthology of Modern Black African and Black American Literature, the name of a female character in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and the use of the force of nommo in Morrison’s Beloved. King also offers methodologies for interpretation of names and naming and then explores what she calls the "extended metatext" in Ernest J. Gaines A Gathering of Old Men and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose. While some brief examples from this latter examination might be helpful to this research, I believe the first portion of her book, "The Process of Interpretation" and it’s chapters: "On the N(yam)a Level", "Reading Through Names and Naming", "Unpacking, Categorizing, and Interpreting Treasures", and "Onomastic Resistance and The True-Real" are the most helpful to a student new to literary onomastics and African American literary research – especially for those students, like me, who have not yet read the works by Gaines and Williams mentioned above.

Much like Culleton, King believes that names are more than markers and character descriptors but are, for what she calls the "active reader", active forces in literature in that "they create and, sometimes, become the stories or identities they call forth" (King 4). King suggests that names and the acts of naming in literature offer the active reader (the reader who reads past the surface level of the text), a level of "deep talk" that not only enhances the surface story, but tells a story of its own. By examining the methods for reading names and naming, exploring the "use of naming as a strategy of covert writing", uncovering the "onomastic desire" of names, and by examining the importance of active reading, King leads the reader through the layers of deep talk in African American literature (ibid. 5).

King offers the reader access to the canon’s literary deep talk by not only discussing the importance of understanding and reading African American tradition and culture, but by describing the difference of traditions, cultures and experience as "vehicles for historical content and intepretation" that "bring a different type of awareness, depth, and meaning experience to the reading of names" (ibid. 10). In that the subsurface reading that takes place in active readership is hypothesis based upon the reader’s familiarity with sociocultural aspects of African American culture, it must be noted that much of the metatext in African American literature is imbued by the reader and is not always purposely placed by the author. This is not to say that the metatext is fictional or invalid, but to say that perhaps much of the metatext is subconsciously written and assumed by the cultural and historical contexts of the writer. One vehicle for this metatext is character-naming (ibid. 11).

King’s work addresses those personal and phrase names categorized as "poetic names" however not all personal and phrase names are poetic (ibid. 64). Poetic names comment upon, subvert and undermine the surface text. Rather than the connotative or denotative markers inactive readers see in poetic names, active readers, King says, read poetic names from many places: cultural, ancestral, social, attitudinal, and allegorical (ibid. 65). King uses the name Pilate from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as an example. The name, Pilate, King suggests, "signals the presence of a deep-level intertextual impulse that repeats and revises the biblical story of salvation and redemption from which the name originates" (ibid. 15).

Poetic names also function as narrative, positional, and object effects in that they supplement narrative action, change or challenge character roles, and destabilize and refocus the topic. The "eruption of the true-real" is another discursive effect of poetic names that "grows out of a name’s sustained accumulation of historical content, and its interpretation [that] reveals an ideological message that either supports or revises surface messages" (ibid. 15).

King explains that poetic names in African American literature are subject to multiple "sociolinguistic lifeworlds" (or historical and cultural contexts) that determine the "value and voice" of names and naming (ibid. 17). In some African American literature, for instance, this value and voice is based on a hierarchy of white domination – where white namers have more power than African American characters. "Beneath the surface, a struggle for dominance occurs that usually results in one of two events: either the resisting name reshapes defining elements within the hostile lifeworld or the surface by signifying upon its master namers and the names they control through irony, pastiche, and parody, or it is itself reshaped by hostile contact" (ibid. 18). The namelessness of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, for instance, on the surface might represent the African American man’s inability to resist hostile contact but, King argues, it also contains a metatext of allusiveness and invisibility that is resistant to the surface text of white domination (ibid 19).

Namelessness represents one of the three forms of unnaming. Unnaming, supranaming, and renaming all build subversive force in African American literature. Supranaming, or name supplementation "occurs when speakers use two or more names frequently and interchangeably to identify one character or when words and phrases in a surface narrative suggest alternate names that do not themselves appear in the text" (ibid. 21). Unnaming is represented by namelessness, the loss of name or the silencing of a name and renaming "occurs when a name is redefined, reaccented, or revised as a homonym of itself; when a lost name is reclaimed; or when a new designator contains the original names as part of its graphic makeup" (ibid. 21).

Evidence of these forces is apparent in texts from the Seminar in American Minority Literature coursework. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Mary Prince as Molly and Mary is representative of supranaming. Macon Dead’s real name in Song of Solomon was silenced for future generations – an example of unnaming. Precious Jones renamed herself several times in Push. Outside of the coursework, the self unnaming of Kiswana in Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place provides a discourse on the problems associated with the taking of African names (as discussed in the previous section of this research) (ibid.54). In each of these examples, the name serves "as an emblem of lost identity and inequality as well as a voice of irony and subversion" (ibid. 22).

Another term King uses to describe the function of poetic names and naming in African American literature is "onomastic desire". King categorizes the onomastic desires of poetic names into referent-oriented desires, single-voice objectified desires, and double-voiced signifying desires (ibid. 24). Referent-oriented desire is the persona of a character within a particular piece of fiction. Single-voice objectified desire is used to signify characteristics, to describe and to narrate the character. Examples are titles, forms of address and epithets that comment on or narrate character for the author (ibid.). Double-voiced signifying desire consists of three subcategories: single-directed double-voiced desire, multidirectional double-voiced desire, and active signifying desire. These forms of desire speak to not only the reader but to the other characters and other names in the text (ibid. 27).

King "unpacks" the name Pilate from Morrison’s Song of Solomon as an example of renaming and onomastic desire. In this case the name, Pilate, remains graphically the same throughout the story but the "interpretive function" of the name changes. King reviews the dominant themes of Pilate as: a referent of character (a marker), a fragmentation that comments on the author’s family history (apparently Morrison’s grandfather named her mother Ramah by selecting it from the Bible without considering its context), a discourse that parodies the name ("Christ-killer") and a rejection and revision (of biblical meanings by Jake) (ibid. 87).

The name Milkman in Song of Solomon represents the unnaming that "occurs when a name phrase, name, or nickname replaces the original designator, forcing it from the text entirely; when an epithet, or another pejorative name, functions as the primary signifier for a character; or when a sense of namelessness, nullification, or a loss of historicity dominates either a name’s deep talk or a character’s subject positions within a text " (ibid. 92). While it can be argued that any literary canon uses the forces of naming, renaming, supranaming and unnaming to provide metatext (as exhibited in Culleton’s work), perhaps it is in the use of names as resistance that African American literary names and naming become most significant.

"Brother Professor, do you know what they call a black man with a Ph.D.?"

"No. What?"

"N----r." (my exclusion)

From the Autobiography of Malcolm X

King’s chapter "Onomastic Resistance and the True-Real" uses Kimberly Benston’s essay "I Yam What I Am" to describe the ways in which the use of names call upon an entire history of the use of the name or phrase (in this case an epithet) and give it a double edged quality that wedges the term between two "lifeworlds" (ibid. 115). This "intersection, negotiation, disagreement, and agreement with one or more alien worldviews," King argues "stratifies it and enriches its performance as a force of onomastic resistance" (ibid. 116). The Nation of Islam’s X is another example of this onomastic resistance in the "true-real" in that it speaks to a history violently lost, a new identity taken, and "a mandate to wait for God’s renaming" (ibid. 119).

King uses Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster place to examine the use of onomastic resistance and the true-real in African American literature. In Beloved, the spelling of Beloved’s name conjures Paul D’s memories of the true-real of slavery and the invocation of Beloved’s name conjures up histories for Sethe, Denver and Beloved (ibid. 120, McKible 231). "By calling the name of a child murdered by her own mother to protect that child from slavery, the characters in Beloved unleash the past, disjoint and revise it, and unlock the promise of days to come" (McKible 232). The phrase name ‘the tall yellow woman in the bloody green and black dress’ in Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place speaks to the true-real of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s and to the unity of African American women regardless of social status or sexual preference (ibid. 127). In each of these works the true-real events of slavery and the Black Power movement are used as subversive forces in the metatext of character names.

Adam McKible’s essay " ‘These are the Facts of the Darky’s History’ ": Thinking History and Reading Names in Four African American Texts", Sigrid King’s "Naming and Power in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God", and Kimberly W. Benston’s " ‘I Yam What I Am’ ": Naming and Unnaming in Afro-American Literature each provide evidence from African American literary works that support King’s argument – that it is the true-real that culturally and historically contextualizes the undercurrent message of resistance in African American literature and that which makes the names and naming in African American literature so powerful, so meaningful, and so rich.

Overall DeepTalk is an excellent source for students of African American literature. While difficult to read at times, the discussion of names and naming was very helpful. What helped most were the applications of King’s theory to African American literary works. In some instances I felt that King was reading a bit too much into the poetic names, but, as she pointed out earlier in her work, the metatext is not always what the author intends it to be but what the reader reads it as based on life experience and cultural and historical context. The essays mentioned above left the reader wanting more and King’s book offers it. Reading the essays and texts mentioned in this research previous to diving in to King’s work is highly recommended. A background in names and naming in literature is essential for wading through some of the text’s heavier chapters.

Toni Morrison: "The fathers may soar and the children may know their names"

Under the recorded names were other names, just as "Macon Dead," recorded for all time in some dusty file, hid from view the real names of people, place and things. Names that had meaning….Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness.

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

The richness of names is one of Toni Morrison’s hallmarks as an African American writer. As noted in the previous sections, names like Macon Dead, Milkman, Pilate, First Corinthians, Magdalena called Lena, Guitar, Hagar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State, Sweet and Sing Byrd, President Lincoln, Mary Todd, Ulysses S. Grant, and General Lee all seem almost magical and mysterious and beg for further investigation. During an interview with Thomas LeClair in which he questions Morrison about the importance of naming in Song of Solomon in particular, Morrison speaks to the importance of names in her family and community as her source of inspiration (LeClair 375).

According to Debra Walker King, Morrison’s mother was named Ramah in much the same way her characters in Song of Solomon were named: indiscriminately from the Bible. Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in February 1931 and changed her first name to Toni during her education at Howard University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953. She changed her name once more when she married Harold Morrison after receiving her Master of Arts in English from Cornell University in 1955 (Mobley 508).

As an editor at Random House in New York City, Morrison worked with African American writers like Muhammad Ali (a.k.a. Cassius Clay), Angela Davis, Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, and Gayl Jones (Mobley 508). Morrison also edited The Black Book, a collection of African American life in America published in 1974 just following the Black Power movement of the 1960s and early 70s. Her work on this book gave her "a sense of self" as an African American and motivated her to include historical and cultural elements of African American life in her work (Mobley 509).

Morrison began writing and integrating African American culture into her writing while teaching at Howard University from 1957 through 1964. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Sula followed in 1973, Song of Solomon in 1977, Tar Baby in 1981, Beloved in 1987, Jazz in 1992, and Paradise in 1998. "Dreaming Emmett", a play by Morrison based on the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till was first produced in 1986 (Davis 412 and Gates 423). Interestingly, Morrison references Emmett Till’s lynching in Song of Solomon. "The job of recovery is ours," Morrison said in an interview with Christina Davis. To Morrison, the "names that bore witness" such as Till in Song of Solomon are "part of the historical experience of Blacks in the United States" (Davis 413). Morrison’s work is part of her effort to resummon and reclaim the past (Davis 413).

As a result of her research, work and acknowledgement of this need for reclamation, Morrison became affected by the idea of the lost African name, the resistance to using names applied during slavery, the importance of biblical names, and the power implicit in the act of naming someone or something (McKay 396). Morrison has lived this search: "I never knew the real names of my father’s friends. Still don’t….If you come from Africa, your name is gone" (LeClair 375).

Integrating African history with African American history, Morrison mixes biblical names with what she terms "pre-Christian" names "to give the sense of a mixture of cosmologies" experienced by Africans brought to American soil (LeClair 375). Likewise, the very theme of Song of Solomon is the explicit search for a name, an identity. Place names like Lincoln’s Heaven (Song of Solomon) and Bottom (Sula) speak to the economic underpinnings of racism and African American naming patterns that express the hope and resistance of the African American community (Byerman 106). Not Doctor Street and No Mercy Hospital "are forms of counternegation of the white world that delimits the black one" (Rubenstein 150).

Complicated plots with significant metatext are a trademark of Morrison’s work. While some accuse her of writing "above" the more general literary audience in the African American community, Morrison argues that, instead, her writing reflects her respect for the "emotional and intellectual intelligence of black people" (Davis 413). By exploring the complexity of the African American community, its "imagination as well as the problems," Morrison’s work speaks to the cultural, ancestral, social, attitudinal, and allegorical forces at work within the African American community (Davis 413).

She must be doing it well because, as to date, Morrison has received: a National Book Award nomination, the Ohana Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, two American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Awards, the New York State Governor’s Art Award, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Melcher Award, the Before Columbus Foundation Award, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Award, the Modern Language Association of America’s Commonwealth Award, and the Chianti Ruffino Antico Fattore International Literary Prize. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an active member of the National Council on the Arts, and has received numerous lecturing and fellowship positions (Gates 423 –424).

Primary Bibliography

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: The Penguin Group, 1970.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf, 1973.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: The Penguin Group, 1977.

Morrison, Toni. Tar Baby. New York: Knopf, 1981.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Morrison, Toni. Paradise. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Secondary Bibliography

Byerman, Keith. "Beyond Realism." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Christian, Barbara. "The Contemporary Fables of Toni Morrison." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Davis, Christina. "Interview with Toni Morrison." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Edelberg, Cynthia Dubin. "Morrison’s Voices: Formal Education, the Work Ethic, and the Bible." American Literature 58.2 (1986): 217-237.

Gates, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Chronology." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

King, Debra Walker. Deep Talk: Reading African-American Literary Names. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

LeClair, Thomas. "The Language Must Not Sweat: A Conversation with Toni Morrison." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

McKay, Nellie. "An Interview with Toni Morrison." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. "Toni Morrison." The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster and Trudier Harris, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Rubenstein, Roberta. "Pariahs and Community." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Van Tot, Naomi. "The Fathers May Soar: Folklore and Blues in Song of Solomon." 13 Sep 2001. 13 Sep 2001. .

Conclusion

The lordly right of bestowing names is such that one would almost be justified in seeing the origin of language itself as an expression of the rulers’ power.

Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

While I tend to write in a more essay-style format, the journal format used in this project allowed me to explore several subtopics at a higher level than that required by an essay, thus allowing for a bit of flexibility and a greater latitude. This allowed me to touch on several topics long enough to satisfy my level of curiosity about each of them. Likewise this research not only allowed me to explore a topic relevant to American Minority Literature but also to incorporate the topics of essence, domination and resistance important to my coursework in Cross-Cultural Studies. In conducting this research, however, I found that it opened up many more topics for potential study. For instance, I would have liked very much to add more information about essentialism as it relates to cultural representation and, as a tangent to both that topic and the topic of nicknaming, that of name-calling and its place in race, gender and class relations.

The ‘cultural gems’ I hoped for in the introduction did manifest in the sense that I now know that many African American names are not as exotic as I once thought. This is an important point in a Cross-Cultural Studies context in that so many times when one studies a culture, the ‘critical gaze’ often times exoticizes the "other." Understanding the origins of African American names and naming now allows me to read these names with less of the "otherness" I had most probably previously imbued upon the names. Likewise, it was important to learn that European immigrants as well as African Americans were forced to change their names. Of course here the difference is between the voluntary immigration of the Europeans versus the involuntary migration forced upon the West Africans. Nevertheless, both situations speak to the power behind the "lordly right of bestowing names." Probably the most important point, however, is the argument that African American cultural patterns were not completely lost during slavery. In a sense, those that might believe this are not giving the enslaved West Africans enough credit. The "emotional and intellectual intelligence of black people" Morrison spoke of in her interview with Christina Davis is undermined by assumptions that European culture was so superior that it completely washed away African culture. Gates was correct in his statement that "Africans nevertheless carried with them to the Western hemisphere aspects of their cultures that were meaningful, that could not be obliterated, and that they chose by acts of will not to forget." Not only is American culture ripe with African names and naming traditions, the dominant culture owes many of its names and naming traditions to African Americans.

With regard to African American literature, the topic of resistance with regard to names and naming is fascinating. Learning to read the names and naming plots in African American literature will add an entirely new dimension to my reading of the canon and understanding of each author’s metatext. This literature is important within the context of my coursework as well, especially in the sense that it speaks to assimilation and resistance, involuntary participation and literature as an agent of voice. Knowing now that names and naming in the African American literary canon often represent their own aspects of resistance and voice gives the literature a new richness and fullness that I might have not ever discovered had I not conducted this research.

In terms of variety, priority and unity, the journal format proved to be a bit of a treat and a challenge. When I first began to wrap my mind around the topic (which was originally simply African American Names and Naming), I began to understand that I needed to historically and culturally contextualize the topic, compare it with the dominant culture’s assumptions and structure, and apply it to literature. The outline submitted for the research proposal reflected this understanding however, as I began to write I realized that I could potentially write entire research papers on each of the subtopics mentioned above. I felt a bit challenged by the journal format, specifically it’s sectional quality. Originally I envisioned the journal to be much more like a group of small essays only tied together by the introduction and conclusion. As I wrote, I felt myself favoring the essay-style format and was forced to stop and rethink my writing strategy and writing structure several times. In doing so, I made a conscious effort to give each subtopic equal priority without limiting the arguments or subject matter. Additionally, I attempted to unify the journal by making note of the topics that blurred the subtopic boundaries. One of the most exciting and challenging aspects of this research was finding the crossover points and leaving them for a subsequent section. Patience and strategy were the keys to keeping this paper topical, readable and, hopefully, interesting.

Works Cited

"African-American Names: History and Tradition." Parenting.com 11 Oct 2001. 11 Oct 2001. .

American Name Society Home Page. 10 Nov. 2001. .

Benston, Kimberly W. "’I Yam what I Am’: Naming and Unnaming in Afro-American Literature." Black American Literature Forum 16.1 (1982): 3-11.

Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Group, 1987.

"Black Names." Xrefer 11 Oct 2001. 11 Oct 2001. .

Byerman, Keith. "Beyond Realism." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

Christian, Barbara. "The Contemporary Fables of Toni Morrison." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993.

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