Many African American last names hold weight of Black history

Kossula: That’s the name author Zora Neale Hurston used when she greeted Cudjo Lewis, the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade and the subject of her nonfiction book “Barracoon.” He was delighted at being addressed by the name his mother gave him, according to Hurston’s account of the hours they spent in 1927 piecing together his life on that balmy summer day in Alabama.

“My name, is not Cudjo Lewis. It Kossula,” he said in Hurston’s book, which was published posthumously in 2018. “When I gittee in Americky soil, Mr. Jim Meather he try callee my name, but it too long, you unnerstand me … Den I say, ‘You callee me Cudjo. Dat do.’”

Kossula’s renaming illustrates the complicated and fraught origins of many Black American surnames. But his experience is not singular; it was the rule. When Africans were enslaved and brought to America, any identifiers that could have tied them to their homeland or families were broken. Naming, particularly after emancipation, was a complex matter influenced by newfound agency, and the reasons behind choosing a particular surname varied. But the conclusion was always informed by a medley of reverence and power.

“To refer to a person by their given name is to recognize the individual as a person,” wrote Reinette F. Jones, a librarian at the University of Kentucky whose research includes Black families and enslavement in the state. “When African Americans gained their freedom from enslavement, they also gained the freedom to name themselves and their children.”

Enslavement, a centurieslong campaign designed to strip its victims of any essence, both erased names and severed family histories. Before emancipation, those fleeing an enslaver would change their name to remain anonymous. After emancipation, once they could formally establish who they were absent of the enslaver’s influence, many Black folks chose the surname Freeman or Freedman. Others went with Washington, Williams, Brown or Johnson — surnames typical before enslavement that remain ubiquitous today. Some newly freed Black folks who could read chose unique names they saw in newspapers despite lacking a connection to that family. Some named themselves after aspirational Black figures like Frederick Douglass.

Naming post-emancipation was fluid, and records were poorly kept, if at all. There are accounts of people having one surname in 1870 and changing it by the next census alongside shifts in spelling as generations went on.

People seemed to feel both the freedom to push aside anything related to enslavers or to keep given surnames because of some connection to them.

Much of what is known about Black surnames come from Civil War records. Formerly enslaved Africans were, typically, enlisted by white military administrators who filled out their initial documents.

Another rich source is the Civil War pension records where veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops often had to explain any name changes to a white special investigator. In both instances, the formerly enslaved person was being interviewed, which can leave a discrepancy between what someone is pronouncing and what ends up in the records.

It gets trickier if the enlistee is known by their enslaver’s last name but identifies themselves differently, said Brandi Brimmer, an associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s African, African American and diaspora studies department.

“There’s tremendous variation and pattern,” Brimmer said. “It’s a moment where people who are coming from an oral culture are now having to engage with government bureaucracies and having to engage with surnames that certainly have meaning within their communities, but now have implications.”

Meaghan Siekman, a genealogist of the Newbury Street Press with the New England Historic Genealogical Society, described a case where the individual she researched took a surprising surname. She eventually learned that someone with that last name previously sold their family.

While the family likely adopted the surname, she said, over the course of “a couple of generations, even during slavery,” it became their own.

But it’s a common misunderstanding that newly freed Black folks always took the name of their enslaver. Unless the surname is unique, explained genealogist Kenyatta Berry, that likely wasn’t the case.

“If you know that your ancestors took the last name of their enslaver, what’s the relationship between them and their enslaver?” Berry, who is also the host of “Genealogy Roadshow” on PBS, said. “Did they take that name because they grew up on that plantation? Or is there some type of family relationship to why they chose that surname after emancipation?”