AD: Sambo as a slave name

[Wilson Gray]

In 1961, while in the Army, I myself met a NEGROE FELLOW named
_Davidica_. He was from North _Carolina_.

Coincidence?

(He eventually changed his name to "David.")

-Wilson

On Dec 19, 2007 3:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: AD:  Sambo as a slave name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here's a later ex. just to show that the name was not all that rare:
>
>   1768 in Lathan A. Windley _Runaway Slave Advertisements_ (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press ) IV 29: Two NEGROE FELLOWS, one named CAROLINA, and the other SAMBO.
>
>   "Carolina" seems an odd name for a "fellow," but cf. "Tex."
>
>   JL
>
> "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
> Subject: AD: Sambo as a slave name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> OED2 has as its earliest citation for "Sambo" sense 2 ("A nickname
> for a Negro") "1704 Boston News-Let. 2 Oct. 2/2 There is a Negro man
> taken up supposed to be Runaway from his Master,..calls himself Sambo."
>
> According to Newbell Niles Puckett, there is a slave named Sambo in a
> Maryland record of 1692.
>
> "Names of Negro Slaves", in _Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrell_
> (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), p. 158, col. 2.
>
> Puckett does not give a specific citation, but it is presumably one
> of the sources cited in note 4, p. 158, the two most likely being
> Caterall's _Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro_
> (3 vols.) and Donnan's _Documents Illustrative of the History of the
> Slave Trade in America_ (4 vols.). I don't intend to follow this up
> myself, but perhaps 1692 and Maryland will be sufficient for someone
> to locate the source in one of these seven volumes.
>
> Joel
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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