I've been reading a fair amount about the North American slave trade recently and I've noticed amongst the Toms and Betsies there were a fair number of slaves with names like Scipio, Titus, Brutus etc. Did this signify anything beyond the slave owner's love of the classics?
It also signified the slave owner's wish to show off how erudite he or she was. There wasn't any real depth to it beyond that as far as I'm aware, although the slave-owning Southern elite did love to play the aristocracy and may have been trying to make some kind of emotional link between themselves and the Roman lords and ladies they named their slaves for.
Peter Kolchin does a very good job of explaining slave names in American Slavery: 1619-1877. There are sections in Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone, and Herbert Gutman's The Black Family that cover slave names, too.
To do a quick-and-dirty summary: Naming conventions changed over time. African-born slave parents often gave their children African or Creole names. American-born slave parents often gave their children a name born of either African tradition or other naming convention. I don't recall the specifics, but there were common names for children born on a particular day of the week, there were common names for first son, second son ("Sambo" was common here, IIRC,) etc.
Slave owners, on the other hand, could either respect the parentally-given name, or, more frequently, give another name. These names, often those of classical Roman or Greek 'famous' people were given as a sign of condescension. To have the power to call someone who was legally sub-human a great, powerful name was satiric and humorous in intent.
Kolchin is really good on this -- short and concise. The book is well-worth your time.