Maria Henrietta (Pinckney) Andrews - some of the overview notes seem inappropriate here.

The material about Pinckney = "pickaninny" doesn't seem appropriate to the profile, as it has no bearing on the origin of the old surname Pinckney (from Norman French,"Picquigny," in the Somme district).

I don't have any desire to erase or downplay slave history from the profiles, and any information regarding Eliza Pinckney Andrews' involvement in or thoughts on slavery (she was a published author and may have written about it) would be welcome. But this digression about pickaninnies (a W. Indian Creole word meaning CHILD, it's likely coincidental that the word and the name sound alike) doesn't seem to belong here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickaninny

Erica Howton

Following is the comment and the original source:

Pinckney name given to all children of African descent

mpinckney196 (View posts) Posted: 28 Feb 2009 10:17PM
Classification: Query

Surnames: Pinckney Pinkney

Pickney- Child, children, kids.

I guess you can say the "N" (The End) does not make a difference if you do not know the beginning. The first line is a copy and paste from a glossary of the Jamician language of Patois. The slaveholders of Charleston SC did not only give their slaves the name of "Pinckney" as mine surname is spelled or "Pickney" as yours; but their family's business placed the name of Pinckney on all the potential inventory from the shores of Africa thru the Carribean to the shores of South Carolina. Pinckney is a conjuntion of two words "pink" and "knee". We all know that the average age of the slaves brought to America was that of children and that they were carried by wooden ships which required alot of swabbing. This would mean that the men on these ship would most likely be on there knees in the rough seas so by the time they got to a shore to get their PRECIOUS cargo the blood showing thru their skin looked pink to mothers and fathers watching there children playing in the surf. So when the parents said Pinckney/Pinkney/pink knees the children were expect to come running. The etomolgy of a word is not hard to understand if you study the era in which the word originated. The majority of the slaves sold in America were sold in Charleston SC, the prominent family in Charleston were slaveholders with the last name of Pinckney, Pinckney is the name used to this day in Jamica. I have even heard some to say in Ethiopian children are called Pinckneys. I hope one day to meet a true Pinckney that still has some of the sales' receipts and would be willing to allow us to get closer to our roots. Do you think the word "pickanenny" could be Pinckney in another dialect?

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/boards/surnames.pinckney/331/mb.ashx