I guess there are many reasons for the change of name. As for cruelty and beatings, I do believe that there were some masters who did not beat their slaves. I would think that the majority would not beat them since the cost of slaves was very high. It would not make sense to risk the health and ability to work of that slave. I don't like to think of people being beaten or owned. I know it happened though and would think that any master who hired an overseer, would dictate the rules of discipline to his overseer. I would hope that if a man chose not to beat his slaves that he would fire any overseer who did. I've read many of the interviews with former slaves that were transcribed by the WPA. Some were mistreated and others dearly loved their owners considering themselves a member of that family. I read more than one account where the slave owner provided a wedding ceremony for their slaves who chose to marry with dress and reception. Surely there was kindness as well as cruelty. Not a proud time in history. In a message dated 1/16/2006 1:38:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, ray@atc.edu writes: You guessed it. I had always heard that slaves took their owners last name when they were freed. But he looked at several studies and found different results. If I remember correctly, on average only about 15% took their owner's name. I had not heard the reason you listed. My thought was that if your owner was cruel, you would not want to be reminded of it all the time by your name. My son extrapolated further and wondered if that meant that only 15% of the slaves had kind owners. Edward Ball says in "Slaves in the Family" he was told by the Balls that they never beat their slaves. In his research, he found that discipline was the job of the overseer, so the overseer beat the slaves, not the owner. The one time where he did find where a Ball beat a slave, seemed to be to protect her from a harsher beating by the overseer. I suppose the definition of 'kind owner' was relative to the times and best left to those who were slaves.