# Did this actually happen regarding family naming conventions following the US Civil War? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2023, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757 "2023-03-05T19:01:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/41 "2023-03-07T21:14:23Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > The data for **Atamasama** ’s cite probably comes from the U.S. Census - that’s what I’ve seen cited for similar presentations before. Generally, the numbers that cited the census are in agreement with the graphs I’ve seen here. Thanks, that is good info. 👍 ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/42 "2023-03-08T05:21:48Z")
Still it isn’t clear if that chart means percentage of all whites, or of white households - which would make a significant difference, when you consider it could mean more than half of households or about one quarter of households. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/43 "2023-03-08T15:34:24Z")
It represents households. Here’s an essay that breaks it down. I believe the chart also represents slaveholding states, which includes a few like Delaware who did not join the Confederacy. If you consider only Confederate states, the percentage is more like 30%. > **[The Extent of Slave Ownership in the United States in 1860](https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of-slave-ownership-in-the-united-states-in-1860/)** > > I’ve touched on this before in other posts. See here, here, here, and here. In an effort to minimize the importance of slavery, modern neoconfederates will focus on the percentage of slave ow… ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/44 "2023-03-08T17:28:40Z")
Thanks. Interesting link. The part touched on, but not really emphasized - there are assorted factoids and anecdotes that many households owned one or two slaves as unpaid domestic servants. (Jim in _Huckleberry Finn_, and Dredd Scott’s situation come to mind.) Given the value of slaves at the time, it would be a combination of cheap labour and an very saleable asset should the family fall on hard times. Also, given the value of a slave back then, this would imply these households would be upper middle class. (I assume a value of about $1,000 pre-war would represent a very sizable asset - Google suggests that’s about $36,000 today). The abolitionist rhetoric of the time did not tend to suggest compensation for depriving owners of their “property”. Plus, poorer farmers might obviously aspire to acquiring a cheap farm hand or several, rather than adopting the abolitionist view. And local merchants sold more to those richer folk, so would have an incentive not to have the economic system devastated. Not to mention (although the _1619 Project_ does) the real threat and fear of a slave rebellion was a constant strong driver for the status quo for the entire white population in areas with a large slave population. That would create additional larger factions with the incentive to fight for their right to own slaves, whether they did own or not, in addition to the small percentage of plantation enterprises. And again, remember that the richer, upper layers of society tend to dominate the ruling faction in any state. The idea that only an elite of much less than 10% cared about slavery at all is a less-than-polite fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Drum\_God](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drum_god/32/44_2.png) [@Drum\_God](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drum_God)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/45 "2023-03-08T18:13:19Z")
The whole idea that 75% of the white Southern population did not own slaves is, in my opinion, utterly irrelevant. A person who did not actually own a slave still could easily derive benefit from the enslaved. For a modern example, I work for a charter company that owns over 100 motorcoaches (big buses). I own exactly zero buses, but, I certainly benefit from someone (a company) that does. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/46 "2023-03-08T21:50:12Z")
Yes, my point too. The majority of the richer folk (who called the shots politically) presumably benefited off the economic activity of the day, whether because they were lawyers, or merchants selling to people, or even tradesmen like tailors or bakers or transporting produce. In half the southern states, close to 50% of the population were slaves. The economic adjustment of abolition would have been staggering. It would have complete destroyed the economy - imagine for example today, if suddenly everyone’s automobile were taken away and we all had to walk. Or house. Humans have a remarkable capacity to rationalize the inhumane when it benefits them. The only thing more devastating would be losing a war and having entire cities and towns looted and burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands killed. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/47 "2023-03-08T23:44:52Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > The only thing more devastating would be losing a war and having entire cities and towns looted and burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands killed. So they got both. They lost their slaves _and_ had a lot of their infrastructure wrecked and their population killed. That destruction was in service of a vitally good cause: the end of slavery. But from the South’s ruling class/race perspective, it was a pretty disastrous outcome. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/48 "2023-03-09T18:29:54Z")
To get back to the OP - how important or varied were names. I fairly regularly encounter people with the same surname as me, basically not related. I remember in grade school at least 2 instances of kids whose surnames were the same but no relation. I imagine that given the limited pool of British immigrants, there were a limted number of surnames - so changing your name was less useful if the surname adopted by slaves could be attributed to Smith down the road or Smith a town away. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/49 "2023-03-09T19:02:28Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Some_ Roman slaves. _Servi poenae_ did _not_ have that right. It is a good rule of thumb that any broad statement about Roman society needs to be followed by phrases like this, involving modifiers like “some” or “not always” or “not exactly.” Their society was dazzlingly complicated in ways and in areas we don’t have equivalence to today. It can take some study to just understand how their frickin’ names worked. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/50 "2023-03-09T19:09:44Z")
Also, if I’m anywhere in the processing or distribution chain for, say cotton, my livelihood is threated if it can’t be harvested cheaply. Even a Liverpool loom worker had financial incentive to support the Southern cause. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2023, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/51 "2023-03-09T20:00:16Z")
Well, they did, and paid reparations for it. IIRC the UK paid the USA after the war reparations for actively supporting the confederacy. As discussed on an earlier thread - the phrase “cotton pickin’ hands” had specific meaning. Cotton had sharp pricks, and picking cotton resulted in innumerable tiny cuts that turned into callouses and made the hands thick and rough. It was a very undesirable job, and workers with the option to leave for better jobs mostly would. Not only that, but picking cotton - the major work of southern slaves, on plantations - was a month or so of frantic dawn-to-dusk labour followed by 11 months of not much to do. During the downtime paid workers would not get paid, also incentivizing them to go elsewhere. This is why slavery strongly benefited the southern plantation economy. During those 11 months the option for saving money involved feeding the slaves as little as could be gotten away with. All in all, slavery was an unfortunately good fit for the southern plantation economy. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2023, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/52 "2023-03-12T21:32:45Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > > Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia around 1799.[18] Little is known of his early years.[19] His owner, Peter Blow, moved to Alabama in 1818, taking his six slaves along to work a farm near Huntsville. In 1830, Blow gave up farming and settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where he sold Scott to U.S. Army surgeon Dr. John Emerson.[20] After purchasing Scott, Emerson took him to Fort Armstrong in Illinois. A free state, Illinois had been free as a territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and had prohibited slavery in its constitution in 1819 when it was admitted as a state. In 1846, Dred Scott returned to St. Louis and tried to purchase his freedom from Mrs. Emerson, who refused. The Scotts then decided to pursue their freedom through the courts. > > So he was originally owned with 6 other slaves, Nitpick: Five other slaves. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/53 "2023-03-13T16:22:40Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > All in all, slavery was an unfortunately good fit for the southern plantation economy. It is remarkable how many different economic decisions both then and now depend vitally on privatizing the decision’s benefits to a few well-placed people while also spreading all the concomitant downsides onto others. With little or no thought given to an honest accounting of the net cost or net benefit across everyone. Much less how ill-served the worst-affected are. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2023, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/54 "2023-03-24T14:27:25Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > So they got both. They lost their slaves _and_ had a lot of their infrastructure wrecked and their population killed. > > That destruction was in service of a vitally good cause: the end of slavery. But from the South’s ruling class/race perspective, it was a pretty disastrous outcome. At least they lost a war with other white people. It could have been _much_ worse; imagine a scenario where slave holders ended up on the losing end of massive and violent slave uprisings like in Haiti. Which was basically the nightmare scenario they used to justify all maner of cruelty and oppression to enslaved and free people of color alike. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2023, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/55 "2023-03-24T17:02:09Z")
Wouldn’t the Federal government have supported ANY effort to put down a slave rebellion regardless of the position of the federal government on slavery itself? At least for the next 100 years. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2023, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757/56 "2023-03-24T17:35:16Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > > [@Drum\_God](#): > > > > the former owners changed the spelling of “Smith” to “Smyth” so as not to be associated with their former slaves. > > I know this “Smith/Smyth” was just an example to illustrate the point. However it may be worth pointing out that in the 19th century, spelling of names was not always fixed. A person could be recorded as “Smith” on one official document and “Smyth” on another, with the family eventually settling on one or another spelling (or different branches of the family settling on different spellings). It may appear in hindsight as though the family has deliberately changed its name, where in fact there was no such intent Indeed. My own surname is a four-letter, fairly common Anglo-Celtic name that has nonetheless been spelled five different ways in the course of my family’s 230 years in America. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-this-actually-happen-regarding-family-naming-conventions-following-the-us-civil-war/980757.md?page=2)