The Many Spellings of Sezor Phelps
Sezor Phelps was enslaved by Charles and Elizabeth Porter Phelps. Purchased at the age of 18 by Charles in 1770, Sezor would be held by the Phelps family until he was sent to Fort Ticonderoga to be a servant to an officer during the American Revolution. Several records of Sezor have survived in the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers, Special Collections University Archives, which provide a look into his life on the property. Interestingly, the spelling of his name is not standardized between sources. This post will discuss these variations, and suggest potential reasons for the differences in spelling. While the record of enslavement refers to him as “Caesar” using the classical spelling, I refer to him using the spelling “Sezor” because it is the spelling associated with the one document he initiated.(1)
One interesting part of this puzzle is the naming conventions of enslaved people and why it was that an enslaved man would be named after the Roman statesman Julius Caesar. According to Peter Kolchin in his book American Slavery, 1619-1877, (1993) many early enslavers gave Roman names to their enslaved people ironically. Over time, as the reasons for these names were forgotten, these Roman names would be adopted by the enslaved themselves to connect with their African American ancestors.(2) This idea of ironic or mocking names gives us an explanation for the use of the name of a conqueror for an enslaved man, as well as the common use of such names during the time.(3) This view is also supported by Susan Benson in “Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation”, in which she emphasizes the power differential represented in the naming of another being and the use of names to “mark” the enslaved with uncommon and identifiable or ironic names.(4) Sarah Abel also discusses these naming conventions and the implications of the common names that were used, though primarily in the contexts of the Danish West Indies. One of the names discussed by Abel was “Scipio”, after the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, who lead conquests in Africa and was given the moniker “Africanus” in celebration of his victories.(5) Like “Caesar”, this name reflects the vast difference between the enslaved man and his namesake while making a cruel joke on the title “Africanus”.
The earliest document in the archive that references Sezor is a bill of sale, signed in 1770 by Charles Phelps and William Williams of New Marlborough, Vermont.(6) In this document, Sezor’s name is spelled in the classical Roman style (Caesar). This is the only legal document we have referring to Sezor, and reflects the power of the enslaver even in the “official” historical record. While this document, as a legal and financial record, would often be considered the most authoritative, we have chosen to use the document that we have that was initiated by Sezor himself, best reflecting his desires or intentions. This is also the only document that we have in reference to Sezor that is also connected to Charles Phelps, so we do not know how he may have spelled the name, though it likely would be in line with the official documentation.
Bill of Sale for slave (Caesar), 1770, Box 4, Folder 15, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
The second document referring to Sezor also has the most references to him, this being Elizabeth Porter Phelps’ memorandum book, which she wrote between 1765 and 1805. In this daily accounting of the activities at the homestead spanning some 60 years, she writes multiple entries detailing Sezor’s experiences.(7) Most of her entries about Sezor refer to him as “Cesar”, which is a Middle English form of “Caesar” used until the 1700s.(8) Notably, this form is one that appears in John Wycliffe’s Bible translation. Elizabeth’s entries about Sezor primarily discuss an injury he sustained early in his enslavement with the Phelps family and visits to Doctor Porter for his injured hand, but also reference him leaving and being sent to Fort Ticonderoga on her entry of Feb 22 1776. On December 22, 1771, she writes “Last Tuesday Cesar froze his finger”. We do not get any more about his injury until 1775, when Elizabeth writes about Sezor’s “terrible swelled hand, thot to be the rhumatizm”. The entry written on March 7, 1773 is interesting due to the shift in spelling, where she spells his name “Ceasar”, adding yet another spelling of his name to the count. He was referred to as such just this one time and never again in the documents we have access to. It is uncertain whether this was a misspelling on her part, a second but dismissed attempt to spell the name, or why she changed her spelling for just one entry.
The most personal document we have, the one that Sezor himself initiated, is Sezor’s own letter from Fort Ticonderoga dated September 30th, 1776.(9) It is unknown whether he wrote this letter or dictated it as we do not know whether or not Sezor was literate. While there were no literacy laws for enslaved people in Massachusetts, it was still very uncommon and we have no other documentation of his ability to read. Furthermore, depending on which hand was injured, that could also have had an effect on his ability to write. Our view of this document is complicated by the many factors that we do not know, whether evidence has been lost to time or is held in an attic, basement, or repository, waiting to be found. The writer of this letter spelled his name “Sezor”, an entirely phonetic spelling of the name by someone entirely unfamiliar with the classical tradition. This further indicates that Sezor was not literate, as one of the primary practices of literacy is the writing of one’s name. This spelling is also the most interesting, as it represents both Sezor’s own self-expression of his name and an attempt of an enslaved man, and likely a literate servant, to reconstruct a name that they were unfamiliar with as best as they knew how.
Letter from Sezor (Caesar) Phelps to Charles Phelps, 30 September, 1776, Box 4 Folder 12, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Each source represents a different level of education of the author and of familiarity with the classical tradition. There are several factors that could explain the differences in spelling. The first factor, being education, would put William Williams, as a wealthy man who was likely classically educated, putting the proper spelling of his enslaved man on the bill of sale. This is our highest level of familiarity and understanding of the name. We then move to Elizabeth, who, while literate, would not have been classically educated and may have either had a vague understanding of Latin or had a brief glimpse of the bill of sale and attempted to reconstruct what she saw. In either case, she would know the basic construction of the name, but not the details that actively clash with most English spelling guidelines. Our final level is Sezor himself and/or the scribe, who would not have any familiarity with the spelling or meaning of the name, and only have the phonetic cues to attempt to construct it.
Another possible reason for the naming discrepancies is the lack of large-scale or widespread standardization of English in the time period. It is important to note that while there were several different dictionaries created and multiple attempts to standardize spelling from the 15th century onwards, this was a long process that would go on well into the 18th century.(10) As such, it is hard to say how much of the spelling is influenced by non-standardized spelling versus differently standardized spelling. Furthermore, many of these attempts were not as widespread as Webster’s Speller, the first comprehensive spelling standardization of American English, which was not published until 1783, seven years after our last information on Sezor. This offers an explanation for many of the less standard or familiar spellings of common words in Elizabeth’s diary, notably in her spelling of “Satterday” as well as other instances of double letters being dropped in her writings, such as “asist” and “weding”. To this end, it is entirely possible that each person, or at least those who were literate, would have had a different spelling for a name, and as long as they could tell who was being referred to it was not considered important, especially in writings kept for personal use.
Regardless of the status of standardization, this would likely not directly have an effect on names, as unlike many other words, which can be standardized into a “proper” form, names are much more fluid, having many different spellings that are all considered “correct”. As such, while the timing of the widespread standardization of language may have played a role in the unstandardized spelling of Sezor’s name, it is likely much more connected to levels of familiarity with the Classical tradition and the name “Caesar” itself being strangely pronounced for its spelling due to shifts in Church Latin.
Finally, I think it is important to note that the name “Caesar” itself is not an intuitive name by any means, and even alongside other classical names would have been more difficult to spell. To understand the strangeness of the name “Caesar”, we need to delve into a few different topics, namely the difference between classical and church Latin and the differences in pronunciation between the two. In classical Latin, Caesar would be spoken [ˈkäe̯s̠är], very similar to the German “kaiser” which originated from it.(11) In classical Latin, no space or time was wasted on silent letters, everything had a purpose and had a specific sound associated. The letters “c” and “k” both represented the hard “k” sound, and “ae” represented the diphthong [ae̯], which was pronounced similar to a long “i” in “fine”. With this understanding of the original pronunciation of the name, it is also important to note the multiple changes in linguistics and shifts between languages that caused us to get to the modern /ˈsizəɹ/ pronunciation due to the divergence between Ecclesiastical, or church, Latin and classical Latin.
The first point of divergence between the Ecclesiastical and classical Latin was the decline of Latin as a commonly spoken language. While there were always regional usages and dialects, after Latin fell out of common usage Ecclesiastical Latin began to much more strongly reflect the regional usages in the most powerful states in Europe, namely, the kingdom of the Franks. Ecclesiastical Latin was standardized under Charlemagne as part of his educational reforms in the late 8th century.(12) As a result of this, Ecclesiastical Latin follows many of the same rules of pronunciation as French, leaving behind many of the hard letters that characterized Classical Latin. This process would become even more noticeable with the rise of French as the Lingua Franca, or international language used between states that do not share a language, as French pronunciation became a mark of status and education. The Great Vowel Shift in England between 1400 and 1700 also impacted the pronunciation of the name in English, as the letters “ae” began to represent a hard “ee” sound rather than the [ae̯] diphthong.(13) Each of these shifts made “Caesar” a loan name from a dead language whose nearest relative had completely shifted from the pronunciation of the time, resulting in a name that was not pronounced anywhere near how it was spelled and was not spelled to English spelling conventions even before the standardization of English pronunciation.
Notes
Letter from Sezor (Caesar) Phelps to Charles Phelps, 30 September, 1776, Box 4 Folder 12, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993). 45.
Leah Grandy, “Naming Culture in the Book of Negroes,” Naming Culture in the Book of Negroes | The Loyalist Collection, (2018). PMH Staff, “Caesar, Cato, Pompey - Why Were Enslaved People given Greco-Roman Names?,” Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site Virtual Wing, (March 2023). Susan Wegner, “Classical Names and Concepts Used in the Service of Slavery.” Antiquity and America.
Susan Benson, “Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation,” An Anthropology of Names and Naming, 2006, 177–99.
Sarah Abel, George F. Tyson, and Gisli Palsson, “From Enslavement to Emancipation: Naming Practices in the Danish West Indies,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 2 (April 2019): 332–65.
Bill of sale for slave (Caesar), 1770, Box 4, Folder 15, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Elizabeth Porter Phelps Diary Entry, Box 7, Folder 1, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Caesar (n.1), Forms,” December 2023.
Letter from Sezor (Caesar) Phelps to Charles Phelps, 30 September, 1776, Box 4 Folder 12, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Jack Lynch, “Samuel Johnson and the ‘First English Dictionary,’” The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries, September 24, 2020, 142–54.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Caesar (n.1), Etymology,” December 2023.
Roger Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France (Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1982).
Robert Stockwell, “How Much Shifting Actually Occurred in the Historical English Vowel Shift?,” Studies in the History of the English Language, July 30, 2002, 267–82.
Citations
Abel, Sarah, George F. Tyson, and Gisli Palsson. “From Enslavement to Emancipation: Naming Practices in the Danish West Indies.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 2 (April 2019): 332–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417519000070.
Benson, Susan. “Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation.” An Anthropology of Names and Naming, 2006, 177–99. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511499630.010.
Grandy, Leah. “Naming Culture in the Book of Negroes.” Naming Culture in the Book of Negroes | The Loyalist Collection, 2018. https://loyalist.lib.unb.ca/atlantic-loyalist-connections/naming-culture-book-negroes.
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.
Lynch, Jack. “Samuel Johnson and the ‘First English Dictionary.’” The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries, September 24, 2020, 142–54. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108553780.013.
Stockwell, Robert. “How Much Shifting Actually Occurred in the Historical English Vowel Shift?” Studies in the History of the English Language, July 30, 2002, 267–82. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197143.2.267.
Wegner, Susan. “Classical Names and Concepts Used in the Service of Slavery.” Antiquity and America. Accessed July 13, 2024. https://bcma.bowdoin.edu/antiquity/classical-names-and-concepts-used-in-the-service-of-slavery/.
Wright, Roger. Late Latin and early romance in Spain and Carolingian france. Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1982.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Caesar (n.1), Etymology,” December 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/4997121486.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Caesar (n.1), Forms,” December 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6980508813.
PMH Staff. “Caesar, Cato, Pompey - Why Were Enslaved People given Greco-Roman Names?” Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site Virtual Wing, March 15, 2023. https://www.philipsemanorhall.com/blog/caesar-cato-pompey-why-were-enslaved-people-given-greco-roman-names.
Archival Materials
Letter from Sezor (Caesar) Phelps to Charles Phelps, 30 September 1776, Box 4 Folder 12, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.
Elizabeth Porter Phelps Diary Entry, Box 7 Folder 1, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries
Bill of sale for slave (Caesar), 1770, Box 4 Folder 15, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers (MS 1148). Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst Libraries.