by Oyoo Mboya*
Editorial: This is the third essay in Part II of the inaugural issue of The Nairobi Reader, a literary and cultural magazine. The Introduction to the special issue is available here.
Without a name, you don’t know what you are suffering from. Until we give it a name, a disease is just part of our lives.
—Mike Wudz, in Let the Children Name Themselves.
Everything! That is the succinct response to the expression, “What’s in a name?” Names are words in function, sent forth with a (definite) purpose. They go beyond the congruent affair of images and objects, as seen through the mirror of arbitrary reflections. They are concrete objects put in the combustion chambers of speech, subliming into words that escape through the chimneys of breath. Names are defined differently by different people but, according to an African of tradition, they are artefacts banked in grain stores of memories, where the past—people, places and happenstances—are captured and capsuled within the immortal silences that make words out of syllables. The name by which one answers is, thus, the most visible branding of mental emancipation and/or enslavement.
Naming is an integral part of culture not only for the African of tradition but also for man as God’s co-creator. We humans, among other species of animals and plants, are for ever cursed to carry the name—and shame—of Adam. We are identified by the flaws (What flaws? Adam’s flaws?) and trapped in the labyrinth of mortality, embodied in the name of the first man:
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
—Gen 3:17 (NIV Bible).
Such is the weight an entire species bears for the stain on a single name.
As an act of cultural fulfilment, the art of naming, like other elements of culture, has been greatly affected by the dynamic growth resulting from human interactions. This effect greatly manifested during the colonial era, also called the Age of Europe. This phase in history saw Europeans of all walks traverse foreign lands (colonies) and change names of people, places, things and events. To the African of tradition, cultural mix or the adoption of ‘new ways of doing things’ was not the only thing pushed down his throat by the colonial masters. Foreign tags of identity were also tattooed on him. That African of tradition was forcefully uprooted from his pot of beliefs, made to denounce his identity and transplanted into the cosmetic vase of Christianity, the mind-, soul- and heart-wrenching wing of colonisation. Sprinkled with the baptismal waters of imperialism, the African of tradition left, brainwashed. He carried within him a false sense of salvation from his former ‘savage’ self. Accepting to call himself by ‘Christian’ names, he opened himself to Christian curses. He identified with the wretched flock of the western Adam, attracting the curse in the name—death. A death that wasn’t originally his. A death embedded in the DNA of the descendants of Adam, among whom the African of tradition isn’t a part.
The cocktail party effect in cognitive psychology argues that name calling catches the attention of humans more than all other stimuli. That when our names are shouted/called out in a noisy crowd, we involuntarily respond, verbally or by other gestures. If we should gather at the court of the Christian God on the day of judgement and the prefect Angel of Jewish lineage and Hebrew accent were to shout our names from the roll call of the righteous, then most—if not all— Africans of tradition may not see the mythical pearly gates. The Angel is bound to mispronounce the African names, in turn distorting the whole identity of the person and missing a response from the eager congregation. Or it is going to be easier for an Adino (ornament) of Jewish ancestry to be granted passage than a Luo Adino (blockage). This affirms the argument that pronunciations and interpretations of our names are the key to our salvation, or damnation. One’s name is, therefore, their most important word. A good name, as with the meaning it carries among a particular people, is to be chosen rather than great riches.
As Rick Riordan wrote in The Lightning Thief, “names have power”. Words are spirits and names are words. The African of tradition thus saw a spring of spiritual attachment in names. Names were for continuity. And for that, a good name lasted longer, transcending posterities. When these good names were taken away and replaced by ‘strange’ labels, the African of tradition gradually became a child of two worlds. With the African belief in the spirituality of names and the religious desire to share in the resurrection cake, the African of tradition walked two paths. It is in this walk, left-foot white and right-foot black, that in 1961 the African of tradition attempted to create their own gray religion—the Legio Maria sect—an Africanised (not ‘corrupted’) version of the Roman Catholic’s ‘Legions of Mary’ and a pacifying political outfit that would argue the inferior, Black man’s case before the supreme court of white superiority.
Led by Lodvicus Simeo Ondetto and armed with African names (read spirits), the breakaway ‘church’ attracted a large following among the Africans of tradition since it resonated with their cultural practices and recognised their native names—and spirits. Ordinary humans of breath and death, like Ondetto, Aoko, Adika, Atila and Ong’ombe, quickly became mythical figures, equal in rank and power to the biblical Jesus, Mary, Raphael, Timothy and the Romans. Melkio Ondetto, later christened the ‘Black Messiah’, like his white twin Jesus Christ, promised his followers a second coming. Both are still dead as a dodo. The supremacy of each is therefore in the influence of their names, not documented deeds with little supportive evidence nor the delayed promises of second comings. The two spirit names, Ondetto and Jesus, have assumed the role of intercessors, living in the abstract space of spiritualism and linking the mortals with the muse. Each, like a postman, carries the letters of our prayers to God. As it is on Earth—with the racism, tribalism and nepotism—so it is in heaven. Each only gives preference to names he can relate to. Like two relay runners of equal speed, each carrying their team’s baton of spirit names, it is our moral choice to pick the one we can trust to carry the petition of our names to the finish line. Pick Ondetto or Jesus, whomever can serve you.
I am Oyoo Mboya and I unapologetically choose in the spirit-name of Ondetto. Amen!
* Oyoo Mboya is a poet, publisher and practising teacher. He is the author of Maiden Melodies and Other Poems (bmboya86@gmail.com).
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Find the earlier essays in the collection here. You may download the inaugural special issue of The Nairobi Reader. Tomorrow, find out why embracing European names reeks of colonial hangover.
To join the discourse on the cultural significance of names and the politics of naming, share your comments below or write to editor@nairobibookshelf.com.
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