A listener in Buford, Georgia, says his mother’s maiden name was Barnett, and reports that he was told that the addition of an “e” to a last name was once an indication that the person was descended from slave families. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”E” After Family Names”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is John from Georgia.
Hello, John, how are you doing?
I am doing well. How about yourself?
Great. Where are you in Georgia?
I’m in Beaufort, Georgia. It’s about 40 miles north of Atlanta.
Okay, super.
Cool, welcome.
Welcome. What can we do for you?
Well, I’m calling because I had a friend who, or I have a friend, who at one time told me that his name, which was Brown, ends with an E, and he says you will find a lot of people with heritage that are slavery heritage that have an E at the end of their name.
And I hadn’t really thought about that until I met a guy with the last name of Green with an E at the end.
And then when I first found A Way with Words, I started looking at who you guys were and everything, and I saw Martha Barnette.
And I thought, well, that’s pretty neat, except she puts an E at the end of her name, and my mother, her maiden name is Barnette without the E at the end.
So we’re probably, well, we could be related.
Could be.
They’re all from Kokomo, Indiana area.
Okay, all right.
My family’s from Virginia and North Carolina.
Well, the Barnetts were from North Carolina.
Barnetts are from all up and down the East Coast, from what I gather.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a lot moved to Indiana, actually.
So we’re probably, you know, like Dick Cheney and Obama, we’re probably cousins.
That’s something to think about.
John, let me ask you, what’s the story? Did he explain more about the E on the last name and why he thinks it means that somebody comes from slave heritage?
We’re talking about somebody who was the descendant of slaves rather than the descendant of somebody who owned slaves, right?
Yeah, I gather.
No, he never really went in, and I never really checked him on it.
And we never discussed it a whole lot after that, but he’s from the Caribbean islands himself.
And so if I’ve got the story wrong, maybe he said people from the Caribbean islands area, and I just messed it up somewhere along the line.
But I thought he had said these were basically slave owners who would take the name and then change it, or somebody would change it for them.
Oh, really?
Like green or brown.
Oh, so this person was suggesting that adding the E sort of meant property of or something?
I don’t know. Maybe.
No, I’ve never, ever heard anything like that.
I think that these variable spellings are just a result of English being so variable and names sort of forming before they were standardized by print and that kind of thing, especially in isolated areas.
I can tell you about the Barnetts. We originally, the reason that I was saying that we might be related is that originally my family did go by the name Barnette without an E.
When they moved from the hills, they were hillbillies a generation or two ago, but when they moved from the hills to the big teeming metropolis of Taylorsville, North Carolina, my Aunt Mazo decided that it would be really cool to add an E to the end because it looked French.
That’s really true.
And so your Aunt Maisa must have been a woman of influence since she got the whole family to do it.
Yeah, well, I don’t think anybody cared.
I don’t know how many people were writing at that point, really.
Oh, I see. Okay.
I mean, I had an uncle who lived in a cave and made moonshine. Seriously.
But so I’m just saying that names have been really variable throughout history.
I mean, you see Shakespeare’s name spelled a whole lot of ways in his day, even by him.
Pardon me?
Even by him.
I think so.
I think so.
So I’ve never, ever heard of it being connected with slavery at all.
John, did that help?
It did.
You know, now at least I’m going to check him on it next time I talk to him.
Oh, yes.
And forward along whatever he has to say, because it’s a really interesting question.
If it turns out that it is supposedly a special clue with names, then that’s new information to us.
Yeah, and if you meet any rich relatives, don’t forget that we’re probably related.
In fact, I would love to be related to the Barnette Bank there in Florida, but alas.
Oh, no.
Absolutely.
John, thank you for calling today.
Thank you very much, and I appreciate your help.
Alright, bye-bye.
Say hi to the family, bye.
Do you want to call about onomastics? That’s nothing naughty, it just means names.
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