Peter, regarding the African American spiritual "If He Changed My Name", you asked "Did black people get new names when they were baptised? Or is it just a metaphor.

Here's my response to your question- it's a metaphor of a person's name being added to the "Book of Life" as a new "saint" (meaning a person who has just been baptized). The belief was/is that a newly baptized person being a brand new person in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the church. The phrase "If He change my name" also probably most strongly alludes to how Saul's name was changed to Paul upon his conversion to Christianity.

That Saul/Paul Biblical reference was similar to African traditions in which individuals changed their names or have their personal names changed or were given nicknames and praise names to reflect different circumstances that occur in their lives.

There are a number of historical and more contemporary examples of African American people changing their names. From my reading I'm aware that some Black people who escaped slavery changed their names to help them escape notice of slave catchers or to reflect their new status as free people. Also, historically, some African Americans changed their names to reflect or reinforce an aspect of their nature-for instance "Sojourner Truth (1797 – November 26, 1883) was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth.

Another example of a prominent African American who changed his birth name was Black Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist Malcolm X. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little and was also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

And in the 1970s to date, a number of Black musicians, athletes, and artists, and "regular people" have changed our birth names (sometimes our whole name but also sometimes just our first names) to reflect our conversion to lslam and/or to reflect our afro-centric sentiments.

However, there is no across the board tradition that I'm aware of among Black American Christians of having our personal names or our last names changed when we are baptized. That said, there is a tradition in some African American churches (particularly in fundamentalist churches such as the Church of God In Christ (COGIC) congregations) of using a title before the last name -or dependent on the ages of the persons and the circumstances, the first name of an adult- who is "saved" (baptized)-for instance "Sister Jackson", "Brother" Michael or "Mother Williams:. (Interestingly enough, I've not heard the title "Father" used for male church members who aren't part ministers, but that could be because of my relative lack of experience with this religious denomination).