| What's In A Name? |
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| Written by Bangoshe Loko Shoko | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 30 May 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The other day, I was chatting to someone about the goings on in Nigeria, and I happened to mention the name of the embattled ex-Vice President, but my acquaintance had no idea who I was talking about. "What do you mean, you don't know who he is?" I said. "He was the Vice President!" "No, he wasn't", my friend replied. "I don't recall that name." "What?" I exclaimed. " You mean Abubakar - Atiku Abubakar was not the vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007?" "Ohhhhh" my friend said as realisation dawned. "You mean Atiku. Why didn't you just call him that? Sometimes, this your I-too-know attitude is too much!" The whole episode got me thinking about the way we use names. I know that at its most basic level, a name is supposed to be something that identifies someone. So really, the primary requirement is that it should be unique - but of course, that by itself isn't enough, otherwise we would go round with names like 'Person0138999906375'. It's also helpful if a name is descriptive - then it can be used to confirm that person's identity. This means that a skinny, scrawny midget cannot easily pass himself of as Mr. Giant Barrel-Chest Mountain and fraudulently collect any possession owned by the aforementioned Mr. Mountain. But for Nigerians, names go just beyond identification and description. They may be incidental - relating to events surrounding the occasion of the person's birth. They may be commemorative - relating to a relative or ancestor. But most usually, they are aspirational, in that they reflect the parents' hopes and desires for the child. And so it is common to hear of children who are named in the hope that they will receive wisdom, blessings, joy, happiness and victory. A subtle form of aspirational naming happens when people are named after someone who is perceived to have a lot of power or influence, or who belongs to a group with such power/influence. I think that this is primarily responsible for the adoption of Christian/Western and Arabic/Islamic names. There are modern day variants of this kind of naming - like the parents who are reported to have named their children after Osama because they were impressed by his 'heroic qualities'. And then there is the more modern idea of naming children based simply on whether the parents like the sound of the name. This can lead to a very wide variety of names, as there's no telling what exactly it is that makes a parent like a name. It may that the parent is unconsciously naming the child aspirationally - perhaps the mother is a fan of Nollywood films in general, and Ramsey Noah in particular. So she unconsciously associates 'manliness' with 'Ramsey', and threatens fire and brimstone if she is not allowed to name her firstborn child 'Ramsey'. But these are the names that parents give their children when they are born. Personally, I have always believed that while this is a pragmatic measure to give your child a name at birth, it is also inherently undemocratic. If I asked you to let me choose your car, your house, your spouse for you and I refused to give you any say whatsoever in the choice, you would justifiably rebel against this. Yet, you willingly surrender to someone else all the right to give yourself the most important possession that you will ever own - your name. Surely, what would be much more preferable would be for your parents to give you some names which would serve as a working names for the next eighteen years or so. Then when you reached majority, you would be entitled to pick extra names for yourself. I believe that this name will be much more appropriate, because by then you would know enough of your character to choose a suitably descriptive name. So you might hear of a change-of-name advertisement like this: "I, formerly known and addressed as Idorenyin Akpehi Osunbor now wish to be known as Akpeteshi-Master Shack-Till-Dawn Last-Man-Standing Idorenyin Akpehi Osunbor. All documents remain valid. Mama Bomboy's Liquor Store please take note." Of course, there would need to be reasonable restrictions on the kinds of names chosen - knowing the title mania of most Nigerians, you would probably hear of change-of-name advertisements like this: "I, formerly known and addressed as Haruna Chukwuemeka Owolabi now wish to be known as Air-Marshal Apostle-General Supreme-Engineer Haruna Chukwuemeka Owolabi. All documents remain valid. Ministry of Owambe and Contracts please take note." The interesting thing is that even though my 'mad idea' isn't formally practised anywhere as far as I know, you can certainly see evidence of it happening informally. I am, of course, referring to the phenomenon of the nickname. Indeed, some nicknames are so strongly identified with their owners that most people don't even know the person's real name. I'm reminded of an incident when in my youth, someone rang my brother who was then known by his nickname of... all right, let's just say he was called 'Na You Biko'. Unfortunately for the caller, my father picked the phone up - and if you know anything about the parent-child dynamics of my generation, then you will know that fathers know next to nothing about the social lives of their children, including the nicknames they are called by. So the conversation went: Caller: Hello? Father: Hello. Caller: Please, I would like to speak to... (Sudden shocked silence, as caller realises that (1) he is likely speaking to my brother's father, (2) he doesn't know my brother's first name, and (3) he is certain that my father doesn't know my brother's nickname.) Caller: Er... erm... I would like to speak to... Father (impatiently): Yes? Who do you want to speak to? (Caller decides that he really has nothing to gain from asking for a 'Na You Biko' except scaling new heights of embarrassment, and so he decides to end the call and call back when hopefully a younger sounding voice might answer.) Embarrassing incidents aside, I think that nicknames are much more 'real' than given names - usually, they are descriptive of physique or character, or they relate to an incident in the owner's life. Of course, the big issue is whether the owner chooses his nickname himself or not. It's not usual for this to happen - in fact, it can be seen as vanity - so if the owner really wants a nickname, either he is big enough to beat anyone else who calls him something else, or he slyly introduces it as something that other people have been calling him for ages. And there's good reason to want to choose your nickname. You might be lucky if people choose a name that you like - but more likely, if you are tall, then you'll get called' Dogonyaro' or 'Daddy Long Legs' or some other unflattering name, especially because the usual period for nicknaming is when you're growing up and your colleagues are less likely to be sensitive to your wishes and desires. It's still quite a popular move to acquire a nickname in adult life, though. So President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States was known as FDR, and President John F. Kennedy was known as JFK. Of course, in Nigeria, we like to do things the American way. So we've had IBB which stands for Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, we've had MKO which stands for Moshood Kasimawo Olawale (Abiola), and we have OBJ which stands for... er... em... Olusegun Baba... er... all right, I'll leave this one to those who are always insulting the man - maybe they can provide some further insights. But for me, one of the more intriguing aspects of Nigerian nomenclature is the way Nigerians treat the surname. Sometimes when writing out their full name, a Nigerian will put the surname before the first name without adding the comma that denotes it as the surname (e.g. Soyinka Wole, not Wole Soyinka or Soyinka, Wole). Now I suspect that many surnames today were actually the proper names of someone at one point in time - so they were probably known as just Fasola or Okoye. Then when the colonial administration took over, it insisted that everyone should have this alien thing called a 'surname'. This was usually formed by using the father's name, so that Oladele, the son of Fasola would have been called Oladele Fasola. (In the north however, many surnames are adopted based on the settlement that the person hails from.) So perhaps this surname-first name placement occurs because of the reverence people have for their ancestors. Perhaps this reverence moves them to unconsciously put the surname first. This often leads to a lot of confusion - I've lost count of the number of times I have had to ask people for clarification on whether a name really is their first name or surname. Perhaps this is what leads people to confuse the first name and surname of the ex-Vice President. Or perhaps 'Atiku' is such a distinctive name that it is used in preference to the much more common 'Abubakar', just like people used 'Murtala' rather than 'Muhammed'. But perhaps the best kind of name is the one you give yourself when you know you're anonymous, like when you're participating on a messageboard. This name combines elements of the descriptive (who you are) with the aspirational (who you would like to be), and you come up with the name based on a proper understanding of your character. So perhaps I should consider changing my real name to Bangoshe Loko Shoko... as soon as I figure out what exactly that name means.
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Posted by Robot| 30.05.2007 20:51