The legal status of slaves makes research particularly difficult.  Pennsylvania slaveholders discouraged the use of African names which sounded strange to them, and the power to rename a person at will reinforced the role of the slaveholder as the person in charge. Slave Names.  Stolen Africans were given slave names, to further prove commodification. They were indoctrinated and given names until they forgot their origins, parents and tribe. Other states embraced this process.  However, in contrast, additional research revealed that a larger percentage of slave holders seldom named newborn slave children.

 

The enslaved African in America often used names from their tribal rituals and customs in naming their children, thus preserving a portion of their unique cultural identity.  Even though, the American institution of slavery destroyed the African’s culture, practices and customs, some sources of belief and practices remained.  However misconstrue, they still remained. Practices among African Americans in the United States and those in western Africa indicate that it is more likely that the slaves chose the names of their children. The given name of a child, therefore, showed important connections between African American families.

 

There appears to have been a significant tendency toward the maternal line when the mother was alone, but when both parents were present, children were named after the maternal and paternal lines in nearly equal numbers. 

 

The "slave names" that so many blacks began repudiating in the 1960s, were neither given to them by slave owners nor were they usually the slave owners' family names. They were names chosen despite prohibitions, in order to symbolize family ties that were often stronger than those in today's ghettoes. Thomas Sowell.

 

In the case of my family, this research would substantiate the repetition of my descendant’s given names “Sterling, Jack, Robert, Frank, and George”.  Although, the latter three names are more common surnames,  “Sterling and Jack” were more repetitious during enslavement, and designates, despite the risk of the era, my ancestors preserverance and a determination for cultural expression.