Documented African Names and the Classifications of African Slaves in Colonial Cuba, 1824–41

Between 1824 and 1841, the Anglo-Spanish Court of Mixed Commission in Cuba was responsible for compiling registers for 10,391 liberated Africans, or emancipados, found aboard 42 different slave ships. These registers are a unique historical source because they provide biographical data for each individual, including: port and date of embarkation, African and Christian names, sex, age, nación (ethnicity/nation), height, physical descriptions (body marks); and in some cases, the Christian name, nación and owner of the African-born interpreters who were used during the registration process.  Based on an analysis of a sample of documented names from the Bight of Benin and Biafra, it has been possible determine likely ethno-linguistic origins. This paper examines the results of the interpretation of a sample of 3,983 documented names belonging to people who boarded slave ships at six different ports, including: Popo, Ouidah, Lagos, River Brass, Bonny and New Calabar. For this study, three names specialists from Africa were chosen to interpret this sample because of their diverse ethnic backgrounds and expertise of the Bight of Benin interior. Olatunji Ojo (Yoruba), Abubakar Babajo Sani (Hausa) and Umar Hussein (Dagomba) volunteered to interpret this sample independently from each other. Collectively, these specialists are familiar with well over 20 dialects found in the region and could identify likely ethnolinguistic origins for about 85% of the sample. This methodology disaggregates colonial nación terms, such as Lucumí, Mina and Arará, and the dozens of sub-classifications, such as Lucumi-Ello, Mina-Popo or Arará-Mahin. The results of the names data will be presented alongside the nación classifications and sub-classifications in order to argue that the upwards of 75% of the sample likely identified with the Oyo Empire, which collapsed between c. 1817 and c. 1836.