What’s in a name? In his powerful and moving autobiography, Olaudah Equiano talks about his life as an enslaved person serving aboard different trading vessels. It was common for owners to rename their slaves, and Equiano was named after the 16^th-century hero, Gustavus Vasa.

When I was on board this ship my captain
and master named me Gustavus: and when
I refused to answer to my new name, which
at first I did, it gained me many a cuff. 

Equiano biographer Vincent Carretta notes that “slaves were often given ironically inappropriate names of powerful historical figures like Caesar and Pompey to emphasize their subjugation to their masters’ wills.” Naming a slave after a great liberator was particularly ironic; violently forcing him to accept his new name added injury to insult.

Courtesy of Burns Library, Boston College