The ‘Inácios’ family: naming practices and memories of slavery (coastal Rio Grande do Sul, 19^th and 20^th centuries)

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the naming practices adopted by the descendants of enslaved people living along the coast of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It looks at three generations of a specific family over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We analyzed inventories, wills, parochial documents, and recorded interviews, which allowed us to reconstruct family trajectories and identify naming practices. We deconstruct denominations into first names, surnames and teknonyms, and we go beyond the vertical ties that linked these people to slaveholding families, focusing also on their horizontal connections. Through their naming practices, these people recorded the memory of relatives, and in doing so re-created links to their enslaved ancestors. These connections can in turn represent the re-creation of African lineage systems.

Keywords:
former slaves; naming; solidarities; slavery memory; ancestry