i really need a haircut. i mean, really really. really. it's really starting to bug me. really.

in the 2000 USA census there were 163,036 people with the last name washington and 90% of them were african-american. according to an article i read online today and plan to ruthlessly plagiarize -- uh... i mean respectfully summarize -- right now, this percentage is "a far higher black percentage than for any other common name".

why? one wonders.

the first president of this great nation was george washington. george's family came over from england in 1656 and george's father's father's father, john, married the well and a good dowry combined with his wisely working the nascent real estate market resulted in john's eventually owning more than 5000 acres.

5000 acres. 78.125 square miles is 50000 acres, approx the size of cleveland, so john washington owned land 1/10th the size of cleveland.


john passed this land to his son who passed it to his son who passed it to his son, george. along with land, george's daddy bequeathed to him 10 human beings. weird, huh? when george married martha, she was a wealthy widow with a few humans in her portfolio. george also purchased slaves "to work the lands he aggressively amassed". i don't know how much land he amassed, but i do know that as time went on, ol' george grew more and more aware of the cognitive dissonance caused by the tension between slavery and the proclaimed freedoms of the new nation. over the course of many years, george changed his mind, became opposed to human bondage, resolved not to purchase any more black people.

as an aside, here's an interesting portrait which was painted from an image created by anthropologists of what martha may have looked like, based on pictures of martha that we're used to seeing - those frumpy portraits from her later years.

george was known as a relatively kind slaveowner, gentle by the standards of the time. he provided good food and medical care. he recognized marriages and refused to sell off individual family members. not to say that he didn't work his slaves hard or that he always behaved honorably.when he was president, he shuttled slaves between his philadelphia residence and his virginia estate to evade a law that freed any slave residing in pennsylvania for six months. that's not conduct becoming a US president, is it now?

but after no doubt giving the subject considerable thought, george decided that he'd not perpetuate this legacy. in his will, he granted immediate freedom to the one slave who was by his side through the entire revolutionary war and he stipulated that after martha's death, the remaining 124 of his slaves would be free. and, not only merely free, but he also ordered that the younger ones be educated or taught a trade, and he provided a fund to care for the sick or aged. now, that's more like it, george!

in this picture, george looks a bit like my paternal grandmother. huh.

12 american presidents were slaveowners and of those, 8 presidents owned slaves while in office and of those, george is the only one who set his free.

so, why are so many black people today named washington? well, it's not because slaves routinely took the name of their owner. that's a misconception. however, it is true that many slaves were given only one name, and after the civil war when many slaves were freed, the big plantation owners were powerful men and it behooved the freed slaves to take on the name of their former owners. it's a big ironic, isn't it, that they'd want to align themselves with the very people who had exploited them. one reason they'd do this is that some west african cultures placed high value on ancestral villages, and the american equivalent would be the plantation where your family was from. maybe it wasn't great, but it was your home, and in claiming the name, you claimed a certain geographic identity.

the name + race analysis done using 2000 census data was not repeated in 2010, so looking at the 2000 data:
- washington was 138/1000 most common american names. 146,520 or 90% of those washingtons were black. 5% (8,813) were white.
- jefferson was the second-blackest name, 75% african-american.
- only 16,070 people had the last name lincoln and only 14% were black.
- jackson was 53% black.
- williams was the 16th-blackest name, at 46%. there were 1,534,042 total williamses, including 716,704 black ones, so although the percentage was smaller than for washington, there were more blacks named williams than anything else.
- the name black was 68% white, many more white blacks than black blacks.
- the name white was 19% black.