As late as the end of the eighteenth century no one bothered about the naming of the slaves, and we find them entered in the Worthy Park estate book as Villian and Mutton, Baddo, Woman and Whore, but towards the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth, when Lewis writes, we find that even the Rose Hall slaves, and Rose Hall slaves were backward, had been christened, most of them. Hannibal, a Creole, that is a slave born in the island, aged 54, of good disposition, appears to have been content with his old slave name; but Ulysses, of the same age, and also a Creole of good disposition, becomes Henry and adds Palmer because that was the name of his owner. Shemonth and Adonis, both Creoles of 42 and 39, make no change, perhaps the owner would not pay for their christening, neither does Aaron, an African of 44, though how they knew the age of an African unless he had been bought as a baby I do not know. Out of fifty male negroes nearly half changed their names, but some who did not were children, so perhaps they were christened in the ordinary way; The names they chose seem to have been singularly commonplace. Why should Adam, aged 6, become William Bennett? Or Othello, who was older, J. Fletcher? Why should Robert, a quadroon 3 years old, become Lawrence Low, and why should Isaac, 12, become simple J. James? Out of sixty women and girls only six of mature age neglected to change their names. None of the older women are married, but some of the younger ones add their married names. Still, matrimony was not much in favour, either with slave or free. Lady % Nugent, twenty years before this book was entered up, is always worrying about it. “See Martin's daughter soon after breakfast. It is a sad thing to see this good, kind woman, in other respects so easy, on the subject of what a decent kind of woman in England would be ashamed of and shocked at. She told me of all her children by different fathers with the greatest sangfroid. The mother is quite looked up to at Port Royal, and yet her life has been most profligate as we should think at least in England.” And so, I suppose, these slave women who were entered in the book about twenty years after Lady Nugent left the island, Cecelia and Amelia and Maph and Cowslip, who was christened Mary Paton, and May who became Hannah Palmer, never bothered about matrimony. What made Sussanah Johnston become Elizabeth Palmer I wonder, and why did Kate become Annie Brindley, and why was Frankie, who was only 32, and valued at £90, neither christened nor married? I don't know that Sabina isn't a prettier name than Eliza, but a Creole negro slave of a hundred years ago evidently didn't agree with me. Eve aged 9 became Ellen, and to change a negro Venus to Eliza Stennet is bathos indeed.