Pompey, nickname for Portsmouth

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/11/2006 10:29 AM, you wrote:
>Pompey may have been a common slave name in the US.

Probably was.  One might look at:

* Greene, Lorenzo J[ohnston]. “The New England
Negro as Seen in Advertisements for Runaway
Slaves”. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1944), 125–146.

and the index in:

* Greene, Lorenzo Johnston. The Negro in Colonial
New England, 1620–1776. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1942. Reprint: with a new
preface by Benjamin Quarles. New York: Atheneum, 1969.

It was also one of the three names used by
Hawthorne in "Old News I" to epitomize slaves --
"But, without venturing a word in extenuation of
the general system, we confess our opinion that
Caesar, Pompey, Scipio, and all such great Roman namesakes, ..."

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org