to Escolástica Magalhães, a freed African. They may not have been sisters by blood, but they were certainly in captivity together when they were owned by Luiz Magalhães. Gracia Maria respected Catholic symbolism. Long before her death, she had already had her habit of Saint Anthony made, that being one of the most popular practices of devotion in the Recôncavo of Rio de Janeiro.  
Judging by the methodology developed by Law and Lovejoy (2007), the name Maria did not allude to Africa, but to an advanced process of ladinization (Reis, 2015). Usually, when an African was baptized, he/she would receive a Christian name. His/her origin completed the identification. It did not mean conversion to Catholicism, but the imposition of Catholic rituals on enslaved Africans, with a view to justifying the institution of forced labour. Then, during captivity, our African protagonist was possibly known as Gracia da Guinéou, or simply Gracia Guiné. In case of Gracia Guiné, it seems that the process of ladinization resulted in her conversion to Catholicism, as she dictated in her testament. It is not difficult to understand why she adopted Maria as her second name. The Maria devotions were many. Besides, such devotions were allocated among confraternities, which served to represent social hierarchy during the colonial period. The Rosary confraternity was more appropriate for Africans. Conception was mainly attended by men and women who were identified as 'mulattoes'. Gracia Maria, a freed African, did not object to such social hierarchy and joined the Africans' confraternity. However, when she had the chance to choose another Catholic representation as a name, she chose Conceição, and when she manumitted her slave, he started to call himself José Gomes da Conceição.