coloured folk: to clarify

[Wilson Gray]

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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