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Well, since no one has answered the Douglas question, I started rereading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. He was born with the name "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" and went by the name Frederick Bailey (his mom and grandmother's name). When he married his wife he took the name Johnson. However, when they left New York and ended up in New Bedford there were so many people named Johnson living there that it was difficult to distinguish between them, so he had an abolitionist (ironically named Johnson) that he was staying with in New Bedford give him a new name. The abolitionist chose Douglas from the poem Lady of the Lake where Ellen Douglas is the heroine of the poem.
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