This is a general question about African-Americans with historically white names*. I'm a white American from the north-east. My last name is Phelps. It's not too common, but there's a prominent olympian and a mostly forgotten mission impossible character who share it. As I understand it, it's of Welsh origin.
When I got to college, I found that I was x.phelps@mycollege.com, and saw that there was a x.phelps1@mycollege.com as well (x is not actually our first initial). I was surprised when I met the person and discovered they were black, and wondered about this. I've recently run into another black Phelps, and figured I'd come here to get it sorted.
If this is the wrong subreddit for this question, I apologize -- I love reading the thorough answers from the amazing people who hang out here, and figured it might be an interesting question.
I'd like to qualify that this is a general question, and obviously not about these specific individuals, but also not about my name specifically. I can imagine that some African-American freed slaves picked their own names or picked common names, which others inherited their former slave masters' names. I'm just broadly curious about the prevalence and origin of historically white* names shared by African Americans. If someone does know about Phelps specifically, cool.
* or possibly other origins/ethnicities obviously
Your basic premise may be off in one respect. The surname Phelps is the #598 name in commonality in the U.S. as of the 2000 census, out of 150,000 surnames. According to Forebears.io, there are at least ~60,000 people in the U.S. who have that surname, and it's quite common in England, too.
This may or may not be relevant to the meat of your question, which seems to be: "To what extent is it likely that black surnames in America are derived from a given family's having been owned by whites with the same name?" but it's worth pointing out.
Follow up question. When slaves were freed, were they given a choice as to taking the last name of their former master, or were they just assigned that name no matter what they actually wanted?