From their parents, ha. ha.

Ok real answer. During and after the Civil War millions of freed men and women picked their own surnames. Choosing a surname was important symbolically, as it represented a heritage that connected generation, but also practically, because getting married, enlisting in the Union army, or starting a savings account required a surname. Marriage, enlistment, and bank records are, not coincidently where historians have gathered much information on the topics.

Some people , like Lucas Barrow, chose their former owner's names. Though in the case of this Union recruit, the clerk wrote it as Lucas Bond. Barrow/Bond probably wasn't too bothered, since he later changed it to Creech. In other cases, mother's with young children may have used their former master's name in order to show parentage of her children. Using one's former owner's name was not the common route however (despite what is sometimes believed).

Others wanted to reflect their new status, like Andrew Jackson Free or John Freeman. Also common were names that reflected a skill: Barber, Cooper, Smith and Taylor. And the reasons that many, many others named themselves is lost.

Choosing a name was one of the first public acts of representation that was available to newly freed black men and women and appropriately they were the ones who determined it.

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Egerton, Douglas R. "The Wars of Reconstruction." (2014).