Afro-Caribbean Names

Structure & order

European order is used throughout: [GIVEN] [SURNAME], frequently [GIVEN] [GIVEN2 …] [SURNAME], since multiple given names are common and prized.

A defining feature is multiple, context-dependent names rather than a single fixed structure. Under slavery a person might carry, by context:

[AFRICAN NAME (among Africans)] / [EUROPEAN "OFFICIAL" NAME (for the master)] / [CREOLE NICKNAME (among fellow slaves)]

In modern usage the layering persists as:

[OFFICIAL / "TOWN-HALL" NAME (nom de mairie)] + [NICKNAME / "HILL" NAME (nom des mornes)]

Given names

• Sources of given names: standard European Christian names ("Mary," "Jim," "Dick," "Polly"); names of admired public figures, especially British/American politicians, generals, and colonial governors, bestowed on boys for their "exemplary value" (e.g. Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Gladstone, Lloyd, Clement, Orde, Hugh after Governor Sir Hugh Foot); names of admired sportsmen, West Indian mothers in the 1920s–30s named babies after visiting MCC cricketers, sometimes after a whole team.
• Classical / literary / mock-heroic names imposed by masters under slavery: Cicero, Charlemagne, Cleopatra, Juno, Hercules, Cato, Pompey, Hannibal, Othello, what Ira Berlin calls "a kind of cosmic jest," the more insignificant the bearer the grander the name.
• African day-names marked the day of birth (Akan): Cudjoe, Kofi, Quaco, Abba, Phibbah, Quashie. These lost temporal precision in the diaspora and were often anglicized (see below).
• Francophone given names built on "France": Françoise, Francine, Francette, Marie-France, François, Francis, Frantz (the colonizer's name "inscribed" in the bearer's own, Burton's reading of Frantz Fanon).
• Selection customs: "onomastic overkill" (naming a child after an entire team or list of figures) and onomastic inventiveness are culturally valued. Among 20th-c. African-Americans, parents combined "black" and "white" names, used initials as forenames (J.C., J.J.) to block derogatory abbreviation, and coined invented names (Ornette, Thelonious; later La Quisha, Tashina, Tawana, Zakiya).
• Gender marking: carried by the European given name itself (Mary/Jim, Françoise/François). The article notes male naming culture is far more documented; female naming "requir[es] separate study."

Family names & patronymics

• Acquisition of surnames under/after slavery: slaves were generally denied surnames (a surname "betokened generational continuity and adulthood"). On baptism and at emancipation they took surnames, overwhelmingly the surnames of plantation whites: owners, attorneys, overseers, senior book-keepers, and also missionaries (e.g. Knibb in Jamaica). In the British Caribbean these were eagerly adopted; the resulting surname corpus still maps to island/national origin (Hinds, Hibbert, Beckford, Campbell, Cameron, McMorris (Jamaica); Marshall, Greenidge, Holder (Barbados); Gilkes (Guyana); Warner (Trinidad); Shillingford (Dominica)).
• North American contrast: ex-slaves more often chose new names, symbolic surnames (Freeman, Newman, Liberty), and avoided the great slave-holding families' names and their masters' first names.
• Francophone "invented" surnames (Martinique, 1848): the registres d'individualité invented surnames for ~150,000 freed blacks because békés (resident white planters) refused to share their aristocratic patronyms (de Lucy de Fossarieu, Gallet de Saint-Aurin, Cassius de Linval). Invention methods:
  • Classical/historical: Achéen, Timoléon, Philoctète, Césaire.
  • Moral qualities: Constant, Confiant.
  • Doublets from the ex-slave's own first name: Louis Louison, Flore Florel, Solange Solan.
  • Place names: Adelaide Ansegrand (from Grand Anse).
  • Matronyms, mother's (and grandmother's) first name(s): Louis Rosine ("Louis son of Rosine"), Rose-Rosette, Marie-Jeanne, Marie-Rose.
  • Anagrams: Compère → Erepmoc; Marcel → Celmar/Celma; Félix → Lixfé.
  • Whimsical: Apocal, Fetnat; Jean Néacé (from "j'en ai assez!").
  • Consequence: French-department surnames still function as signifiers of race (a coloured Martinican rarely bears a great béké name).
• No native gender-suffix or particle system is described; the only "particles" are the inherited French aristocratic de forms held by the békés, generally not transmitted to the formerly enslaved.

How to address someone

• The nickname, not the given name, is the standard everyday form of address among Afro-Caribbean men (Bird, Dizzy, Goochie, Judge). Many Bermudan men appear in the phone book only under their nickname.
• Allonym-titles / mock-aristocratic titles are pervasive as address-forms: calypsonians ("Mighty —," "Lord —"), Jamaican deejays ("Ranking —," U-Roy, Yellowman), jazz royalty (Duke, Count, King, "Sir"), "Dons" of the Jamaican underworld, and Rastafarian "Ras —"/"Prince —"/"Prophet —" prefixes.
• Among the Saramaka Maroons great caution governs address: an individual's gadn ne ("big name," "true name") is integral to reputation and not used lightly; lesser registers include piki ne ("little names/nicknames") and seketi ne ("song names").
• A man who returns to church membership drops his nickname and is mortified to be addressed by it; nicknames belong to the "reputation" sphere, official names to the "respectability" sphere.
• Formal European salutations (Mr./Mrs./Sir + surname) apply to the official name in colonial and civic contexts (general knowledge).

Pitfalls for software

• One person, many names. A single individual may legitimately answer to an official name, a hidden/African name, and one or more nicknames; the "real name" on civic record (the mairie) coexists with an unofficial nickname identity. Parsers should not assume one canonical full name.
• Hidden African day-names under European spellings: Cudjoe→Joe, Kofi→Coffee/Cuffee, Quaco→Jacko, Abba→Abby, Phibbah→Phoebe. A European-looking given name may encode an African one.
• Day-names lost their meaning in the diaspora: "Sambo" (orig. second son) was applied to any male child; calendar-name equivalents drifted (a "January" might be born in July).
• Surnames encode the master, not the family line: they were taken from owners/missionaries/whites, so a surname signals plantation/island origin rather than biological descent; many people on one estate share a surname (also consecrating "shipmate" bonds).
• Matronymic surnames in Martinique: a "surname" may historically be a mother's or grandmother's first name.
• Anagram and pun surnames (Erepmoc, Lixfé, Celmar) look opaque and are not transparently derivable.
• Surnames as race signifiers in the French departments; absence of béké surnames among coloured Martinicans is structural, not accidental.
• Nicknames dominate male address and are highly productive, often mock-heroic ("Mungo the Dentist," "Tiny Satan," "Captain Tired"); women have nicknames far less often and less self-dramatizingly.
• Rastafarian "dreadtalk" name-play: "Ras"/"I-" prefixes and syllable substitution (Bustamante→"Bustamente," "I-men," "Ises"), reflecting a belief that "the name is the person" and embodies power, a magical nominalism running through the whole system.
• Islamicized / Africanized renamings among 20th-c. African-American musicians (Curtis Porter→Shafi Hadi, William Evans→Yusef Lateef, Cassius Clay→Muhammad Ali) and Brazilian-footballer mononyms (Pelé, Didi, Garrincha).