At least 116 of Georgia’s 159 counties are named after slave owners.
Of the 44 counties not named after slave owners, only 3 souls stand out as individuals that for whatever reason, could have, but did not partake in the ownership of human beings (i.e. Paulding, Dodge and Laurens). The rest of the 44 are things (e.g. Peach, Union) or Native American descriptors (e.g. Catoosa, Chattooga), heroic soldiers that died young, Northerners or Europeans. (Emanuel county was named for a very wealthy landowner, but whether he owned humans couldn’t be definitively determined.)
The statistic reflects the circumstance that almost anyone with money owned humans. Wealth in the antebellum South was stored in enslaved black men and women. At the time of the Civil War, nearly half of all the wealth in the South was proved by title to human beings. This is reflected in the way the state identified itself and named itself.
Many, many counties are named for some wealthy politician that seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Many counties are named for Civil War and secession heroes including Jeff Davis and Stephens counties, named for the president and vice-president of the Confederacy.
Has Georgia ever renamed a county based on principle?
Indeed. Bartow County was originally Cass County, named after General Lewis Cass, who was secretary of war in the Andrew Jackson administration. Cass was largely responsible for removing the Cherokees for the land that bore his name. However, he was later known as a unionist, an anti-secessionist. Worse, he was rumored to be an abolitionist, although he was a slaveowner as well. The Georgia legislature deliberated on Cass’ legacy and resolved that it wasn’t proper to have a county named after someone whose views were so unsavory for the time. Thus, in 1861 Cass County became Bartow County, named after another slaveowner and prominent Confederate casualty of the Civil War. This was symbolic, as the state couldn’t rename every town name that it didn’t like. However, it could change at least one that it found inappropriate. Who’s to say that couldn’t happen again.
Orange: Named after slave owners
Click here to see the chart for each county.