SEMANTIC ENIGMAS



Why do so many African Americans have Welsh names - Venus Williams, Colin Powell, Floyd Patterson? Common thought relates the names to slave owners, but there werevery few Welsh slave-onwers in the American South. Most Welsh immigrants to the US ended up in the steel and coal industry in the North. Martin Price, Dinas Powys Wales Given that seaports in South Wales were great shipping centres and handled much of the 'triangular trade', it is possible that slaves taken from Africa were named after sea-captains or crew on the ships that transported them to America, or the names of the people who owned the vessels. Mike Fehle, Weehawken, NJ USA In the Philadelphia region (N.E. USA) there was a very large Welsh community that settled the area (and that legacy lives on in place names such as Bala Cynwyd and Schuylkill). The towns that bear these old Welsh names are also the richest parts of the area to this day and money, not geographic location was the only qualification for slave ownership. It appears that the questioner is mistakenly under the impression that slavery was always limited to the agricultural south. I am sure that many of the names have thus originated from this area. Richard Peel, Philadlephia, PA USA Two qualifications to the previous posters: Williams and Patterson are not exclusively Welsh names. Patterson is a fairly common Scottish name - a large proportion of African Americans have Scottish names, due partly to the fact that many Scots emigrated or were exiled/deported to the Carolinas after the 1745 uprising, and many of those who survived became slave owners a generation or so later and gave their names to their slaves. (Incidentally, in so doing they were merely passing on the highland Scottish custom by which all the members of a clan took their surname from the clan chief, whether or not they could trace any blood relation.) Colin Powell was born in the US but his parents came from the Caribbean ( I believe Jamaica) to the US. Schuylkill is not Welsh at all but Dutch, as are many placenames in New York State and elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic region. Linda Gardiner, Sherborn, MA USA The only thing the slave traders and owners did to the last names of many of their slaves was stripped them of it. That's about it. Adam A Guzman, Ocoee United States May I make a suggestion here again? I don't think black people have the last names of slave owners. Doesn't make sense. Why would anyone want the last name of a family that caused them misery? Black people have the last names of heroes (who were mostly Welsh and Norman). The Welsh were barely involved in slavery. Adam A Guzman, Ocoee United States



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