coloured folk: to clarify

[Jonathan Lighter]

There's also Phyliss Schlafly, but she's different.

JL

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: coloured folk: to clarify
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 6:34 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> > As for knowing from her name that Phillis was coloured, Phillis and Chloe
> > were stereotypical names for black women; Cuff is an African name, but
> > parallel to Phillis and Chloe were the names Pompey and Cato for men. Â
> Cato
> > Alexander kept a very well-known roadhouse in the east 50s, I think, for
> > decades, the 1820s and after; it was very popular with a sporting crowd.
> > Â Otherwise, I'm not sure that I have encountered an actual person named
> > Phillis, Chloe or Pompey. Â (Encountered while time-travelling in early
> 19th
> > C NYC, that is.)
>
> Interesting, in view of the fact that, IME, _Phyllis_ is still quite a
> popular name amongst the distaff colored - my own acquaintance with
> the name dates from Phyllis, fraternal twin of Charles, whom I met in
> the first grade and who was a classmate of mine through graduation. At
> that point, as was then the universal custom among followers of The
> One True Faith, she went on to an all-girl high school. However, I had
> no idea that, even at such an early date, the name was already so
> popular as to be stereotypical!
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> OTOH, I know _Cuff_ and its variants only in the form of the surname,
> _Cuffey_ and, even here, I'm not certain that it's not a variant of
> Irish _Coffey_ <har! har!>, having nothing to do with, ultimately,
> _Kofi_.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> OTOH, I know _Cuff_ and its variants only in the form of the surname,
> _Cuffey_ and, even here, I'm not certain that it's not a variant of
> Irish _Coffey_ <har! har!>, having nothing to do with, ultimately,
> _Kofi_.
>
> There was once a novel, The View From Pompey's Head. IIRC, Pompey's
> Head was the name of a town in SC and the Pompey after whose head the
> town was named was a slave. I've long been under the impression that
> these names of Greek and Roman origin were the *true* _slave-names_ -
> as opposed to "slave-names" in the Nation-of-Islam sense - imposed by
> the masters showing off their erudition to other masters and not names
> that the slaves had truly chosen for themselves, in any reasonable
> sense of _choose_, as well as being a mockery of the unfortunate
> bearers f those grandiose, white-folks names.
>
> Saint Louis's colored YWCA is named for Phillis Wheatley. OTOH, the
> colored Y*M*CA is merely named after its address: Pine Street.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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