Digitizing Guardianship Registers in Senegal (1895-1910): Naming as Evidence and Ethical Concern

Drawing from research on liberated minors, formerly enslaved children whom the colonial state in Senegal entrusted to guardians following their emancipation, this article describes the process of building a database consisting of identifying information about formerly enslaved children in early colonial Senegal based on data originally collected in the early twentieth century, and it uses the database to ask both historical and ethical questions about naming practices and aliases, experiences of unfreedom, and the agency of marginalized African children. Of the 1,324 liberated minors who entered guardianship in Saint-Louis from 1895 to 1910, for example, at least 114 of them took on another name at some point, a fact that raises interesting questions about naming, name changes, and agency. I argue that names contain fragmentary evidence about their bearers' cultural or linguistic background or geographic origin, and, more importantly, that aliases can offer insight into social networks or self-fashioning. Yet reproducing names from colonial inventories in digital history projects could reinscribe oppression and violence and, in some circumstances, could contribute to stigma and shame among descended communities. As such, scholars should include them in databases and other digital history projects, but only if ethical concerns can be addressed and resolved.