Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/99

 were to undergo in time remarkable transformations owing to the looseness and inaccuracy of pronunciation which distinguished the negro. Traces of the originals are still discoverable in names which would have seemed wholly alien to the Greek and Roman ear. Having peopled the Colony with gods, prophets, and generals so far as names could impart these characters, the planters who in the seventeenth century sued out patents on the basis of negro head rights, turned to inanimate objects as designations for their slaves; thus, there were a number of Baskets and Buckles. Great events in history were also employed, such as the Reformation. Physical features too were used in the construction of the lists of names; Barebones and Rawbones were not uncommon. The name of the place from which the slave had come was sometimes added to his Christian name; among the negroes belonging to John Carter of Lancaster County were Accomac Jack and Barbadoes Dick.

So numerous had the slaves become towards the close of the seventeenth century that a planter, stocking a new estate with slaves, was not compelled to rely entirely on the merchants engaged in importing negroes. They could be secured in the Colony of his fellow-planters. The proportion of those who were born in Virginia must now have been important, and it was this class that was justly regarded as being most desirable. In the inventory of the property of John Carter of Lancaster, one of the largest slaveholders in the Colony, great care was taken to distinguish the negroes of Virginian birth from those who had been imported, and there was a marked difference