I was talking to a friend of mine today at work (he’s black, I’m white) and we were joking around ablout how somebody in one of our families must of been fooling around because we both have the same last name.
Now my friend and I were only joking but it really got me to thinking. How did blacks get their Americanized last names?
IIRC most of the slaves took the surname of the slave holder.
This accounts for the last names being the same as or very similar to those of white Americans.
I believe also that many took the names of famous Americans (often presidents), which is why there are a lot of African-Americans named Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Jackson, etc.
Could they choose or did some organization bestow their legal names?
Freedman and Freeman are also common surnames among African-Americans.
You know, I’ve actually heard that before but I didn’t believe it. Why the hell would anyone want to carry on the name of their captor? 
American blacks have always been a self-defining people. There are instances of African slaves being whipped and beaten because they defiantly rejected the English, Portuguese, French and Spanish surnames imposed on them, as documented in Alex Haley’s Roots.
It was a common practice for slaves – if they used or were allowed last names at all – to use the family name of whatever slaveholding family happened to own them. It was common practice for such slaves to have their last names changed as they were sold to master to master.
DelawareEng. When slaves took their own identities, it was by personal choice and an informal matter unregulated by government. This is one of the reasons why family Bibles are still acceptable proof of identity and family lineage.
What Otto said about freed slaves adopting presidential last names is true, but that tended to happen en masse among the newly emancipated slaves in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.
SHAKES. Many, many slaves however, especially those who continued to sharecrop on their master’s property after being emancipated, tended to keep their master’s last names as pass it on to their children, especially if they used it since birth.
Later in the 20th century beginning in the last 1940s, when the possibly apocryphal W.F. Fard began the Islamic sect The Nation of Islam that many American blacks – enthralled by his bizarre gospel of white devil white men reversed-bioengineered by mad Dr. Yacub – began to adopt Islam as their religion and reject any form of of their "slave names’, including a “slave diet” of kale, collard greens, mustard greens, etc, – although this last stricture has been largely relaxed by many black American Muslims in the last few decades. Prominent American black Muslims are probably already known to you, but they include sports figures like the former Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali and Lew Alcindor, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Malcolm Little – Malcolm X, later El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. Activist Stokeley Carmichael famously changed his name to Kwame Toure
Later still, in the 1960s and 70s, it was the vogue for African culture among some American black youth that prompted them to assume African and faux-African identities, particularly first names for themselves and their children, which is how I got the name Askia Moshe Kinshasa… Many people also got matching last names, too: Dr. Maulana Karenga, inventor of the African American holiday of Kwanzaa, was born Ron N. Everett, son a Baptist minister. NAACP president Kweisi Mfume was born Frizzell Gray.
An interesting aside – among native Africans the reverse is trie – many Christian Africans with Biblical and English first names and tribal ethnic last names are now adopting African cultural first names, the reverse of the African-American experience.
Then there’s the whole stage name phenomenon of many rappers and hip-hop artists like the individual members of the Wu Tang Clan, Outkast, Ludacris, etc.
And then there are folks like the up-and-coming Democrat Barak Obama who got his name from his father, a Mr. Obama who came to the US from Kenya in order to go to college, with no influence of slavery, politics, or ideology.
Minor nitpick but Kenya was a British colony at about that time (independance was 1963). Is there any evidence that the naming style of Mr Firstname Surname was a native Kenyan tradition? Somehow I doubt it, it’s just a British influence rather than an American one.
The use of the honorific “Mr.” and the naming order might be concessions to the Western tradition of Mr.+Firstname+Surname, (or American influences, since Barak Obama’s mother is a white American) but the actual ethnic names “Barak” and “Obama” seem to be genuinely Kenyan. One poster at Tanzanet (a Tanzanian message board) was speculating that his name is native to Northeastern Kenya.
Has anyone here read his autobiography yet? I understand he goes into some detail about his absentee father and Kenyan heritage.
In some cases slaves had their master’s name, the slave Nat Turner was owned by Sam Turner. But slaves were often sold or traded away, so a slave might end up with a surname derived not from the present owner but an earlier owner of his ancestor.
Also, keep in mind some slaves were fathered by white men, and may have taken a European surname through ‘birth’ - even if their father’s rarely acknowledged their half-black children.
Also some changed their names, Frederick Douglass was born with the name Augustus Bailey, and went by several ‘aliases’ as a young runaway slave.
I don’t know if this was common in the United States (aside from Louisiana or Florida), but in Spanish or French colonies African slaves as well as Indians were often given surnames when they were first baptised. Usually very common names were given, because European surnames were part of being “Christian” instead of pagan, and little thought was given to originality. In many parts of Mexico, it seems like most of the people have the same group of about ten surnames, while among Spaniards or Cuban-Americans there is more variety. Are some surnames far more frequent among African-Americans? Is there a short list of names that account for the majority of African-American surnames?
Even if the firstname+surname thing was due to colonial influences, that in no way means the names themselves are anything but Kenyan. Aside from that - Britain is hardly the only place in the world where surnames arose.
Immigrants to America are under some pressure to give both names - even if they don’t have both. I know this because when my father’s family came over they stumbled over the surname thing - they didn’t have any. Really. European hite folks who didn’t have surnames until the 20th Century and their immigration to America. (They were assigned one off a list when they arrived) So even if the elder Mr. Obama didn’t have a surname in the sense many in the West mean them, he might have adopted a clan name or the village of his birth or his occupation as the surname - a not unusual occurance for those coming to this country.
The name would still be Kenyan.
Hey, are you Askia from Walker? I was just telling my son about your name a couple of weeks ago, still remember the Rose part too 
it’s funny i googled your name and here is a conversation about names. Hope all is well. Angie
Hey, are you Askia from Walker? I was just telling my son about your name a couple of weeks ago, still remember the Rose part too it’s funny i googled your name and here is a conversation about names with you speaking about your name. Hope all is well. Angie
I regret to inform you that the poster known here as Askia passed away several years ago. Not sure if it is the person you mean, but the reference to Rose suggests it may be. Here is his memorial thread.
Angelia, we generally close very old threads on this board, particularly in circumstances like this, so I am going to close this one. If you find some other topics of interest here, please feel welcome to post in other threads.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator