by JM Kwanya
How do you name your children, livestock, pets, or material possessions? What informs the names? Are there memories you attach to a name? The famous Shakespearean phrase “a rose by any other name would still be as sweet” implies that something or a person exists outside the name they bear. Not quite. I think there is more to names and naming. Where I come from, we name people or things we love to preserve our best memories of other people, things or moments we cherish. For instance, you could find a dog named after a person out of love for the person. Such love is presumably transferred to or shared with the dog. People name livestock or pets after their favourite politicians or pastors.
When Charity Ngilu became the first woman to run for president in Kenya, the 1997 historical moment was marked by some parents naming their children and animals after her. It was a sign of love and admiration for a politician who had just earned her place in the country’s history. What this means is that we consider memories that a name carries before we use the name. People with reprehensible characters such as night runners and thieves die without anyone inheriting their names for fear that such names may be a source of bad luck to the bearer. The understanding that names and naming preserve memories and historical moments is not unique to any culture. Around the world, people are motivated in one way or another to pick particular names for their family or possessions. In most African cultures, for instance, the value attached to names is signified in the elaborate cultural ceremonies that accompany the naming functions. The ceremonies are meant to celebrate the importance of the memories inherent in the names. Such names, especially of people or important cultural monuments, should not be traded for anything. The names also function as carriers of important information on the histories of a people.
One of the ways Europeans established their identity and politics wherever they went around the world was to name and brand the place and its people to reflect their cultures back home. This was also their way of silencing and even completely erasing native stories, histories and memories that had existed before their arrival. For the Europeans, wherever they stepped foot was wilderness and its people savages. Saliou Dione tells us that the British also used naming, renaming and misnaming as tools for violence against Africans who were resisting their rule and intrusion. The MauMau fighters in Kenya were, for instance, considered terrorists and mentally sick agitators who posed danger to everyone including their close family members. Renaming and misnaming them was, therefore, a divide-and-rule tactic aimed at condemning the freedom fighters as outlaws in their own land and justifying their persecution and execution. The colonists also assigned new names to conquered lands, as a way of engraving their takeover.
The British, however, considered (and probably still do) their actions as benevolent and not intended to dispossess the natives or establish an imperial authority. This sad notion is succinctly captured by Winston Churchill in his Forward to James Ingram’s Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (1960), in which the wartime British prime minister claims that “not since the days of the Roman Empire has a single nation carried so great a responsibility for the lives of men and women born outside her shores as Great Britain does today. Within her forty or so dependent territories dwell eighty million people for whose welfare and enlightenment Britain is, to a greater or lesser degree, answerable.” This implies that naming, renaming or misnaming Africa and its people was central in eradicating the ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’ customs that our names and indeed our cultures and memories allegedly carry. These, however, were only excuses and assumptions to legitimise colonial dispossession. The colonists would even replace African names they could not pronounce with words they were familiar with.
Why then do we continue to see such colonial renaming and misnaming of our natural and cultural heritages as rich history? Nearly sixty years after independence, we still seem to find it relevant to teach our children who the first European to do or discover one thing or another in Kenya was. There is certainly rich history in John Hanning Speke ‘discovering’ Lake Victoria, for instance, but that kind of history is more relevant to the British, not Kenyans. When telling the histories of our natural and cultural heritages, we tend to find links they may have with Europe and Europeans more appealing at the expense of our memories and stories. In so doing, we abet the erasure of our cultural memories that was started by the colonists. Some recent examples of this complicity may help us in appreciating the need to rethink these colonial names.
On 15 May 2020, the Kenya Wildlife Service took to Twitter to explain the ‘wonders’ in the names and naming of lakes around the Mount Kenya National Park. However, in spite of their promise of taking its followers through the actual wonder of how the lakes lost their original names, KWS resorted to propagating and celebrating the Eurocentric histories of the present names. This goes to show how much colonial hangover still controls our histories. KWS explains that Lake Rutundu resembles packed tobacco. But that is not why I refer to it, for it is the only name around Mount Kenya that bears a local name. The wildlife agency proceeds to add an unnecessary detail through a question: “Did you know that it was here that UK’s Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton back in 2010?” One wonders why the royal family’s private affair is the only significant memory worth associating with Lake Rutundu. The question is not far from a suggestion that ‘you know we could rename this lake to Prince William.’ Then there is Lake Alice, apparently named after the Duchess of Gloucester after “trying to climb the mountain” when she visited Kenya. Kenya rewarded her mountain climbing attempts by naming the largest lake around the mountain in her honour. There is also Lake Michaelson, “named after a friend of Halford Mackinder, a geographer and the first European explorer to summit Mount Kenya in 1899.” Around this time, exploration by the British meant seeking new territories to exploit, fertile lands to cultivate, and Africans to enslave. For being a friend to such an explorer, a Mr Michaelson gets immortalised in a lake near Mount Kenya—just like that. Lake Ellis, KWS says, was named after one Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis for being the first European to reach the lake in 1927. Whatever original, local names these lakes and other natural monuments carried before colonial intrusion is no concern to KWS. You wonder what heritage they champion.
There are a few questions that we must ponder around these names and the general practice of naming our natural and cultural heritages. Were these lakes nameless before they were named by or after Europeans? Was their naming or renaming a token of appreciation to white people for leaving Europe and coming to Africa? What do the local communities around these lakes and other monuments think about such names? Why do we still find it impossible to rename them now that Kenya is supposedly independent? The fact that a quick online search on the backgrounds of these lakes only yields their European connections shows the extent of silencing and historical revision that has been done to the local stories and histories. To keep these European names for whatever historical value is to demonstrate that we are still far from being an independent state. It is baffling that we can still latch onto flimsy reasons to please the West. If these names carry rich histories and memories, then the names they replaced carry richer and more relevant memories. Restoring the original names of our cultural and natural heritages would also be a significant step in extricating our stories and memories from the yoke of the Eurocentric history taught in our schools. We must stop elevating the notion that anything related to ‘God save the Queen’ automatically qualifies as rich history.
The urgency for local names does not stop at geographical features named for Europeans. There are more fraudulently-named monuments and infrastructure in our country. Post-independence Kenyan leaders have continued the imperial culture of using the naming responsibility to exercise authority and gain immediate and long-term political gratification. This is how we ended up with—listen to the list—several streets in major towns, the country’s largest airport, the country’s international conference centre, the main library at the country’s premier university, and the second largest university all bearing the name Kenyatta. These are only a few instances; and we haven’t said anything about those named after Kenyatta’s fourth wife. The fact that Mzee Jomo’s surname has striking resemblance to the name of the country should not be dismissed as a dry joke or mere coincidence. More studies need to be conducted to help us understand the circumstances that informed this decision and the role, if any, played by the British in his renaming. The propping of the man might have started earlier than publicly acknowledged. The second president is no different. Why are there so many schools called Moithis or Moi that all over the country? When President Moi died early this year, some eulogised him as a leader who loved and valued education, which is supposed to explain why so many schools were named in his honour. But even if such assertions were true, we must also be conscious of the fact that the Moi era was littered with some of Kenya’s darkest moments in the education sector. What with the policing of thought and thinkers only comparable to what we witness in George Orwell’s 1984? With the power to name (and maim), Moi must have influenced the naming of these schools and other social and cultural amenities after himself.
We may have to wait a little longer if we look to politicians to rename cultural monuments and social spaces on our behalf. They will use it for their benefit, because our political DNA has unscrupulous naming as one of its strands. If we are to name cultural monuments to properly reflect our rich history, why would we find it difficult to rename the Mama Ngina Waterfront at the Coast to ‘Mekatilili wa Menza Waterfront’ or restore its original name, Mzimule? It is not too much to ask for the memory of the fiery Giriama wonder woman and one of Kenya’s earliest and steadfast freedom fighters to be immortalised at the Mombasa waterfront. This hope may not be soon in coming if we are to take comments by the Cabinet Secretary for Tourism, Najib Balala, seriously. According to the Star Balala dismissed calls to rename the park as a waste of energy, saying he “read a lot of malice in the campaigns” to rename the park. The minister chided activists calling for the proper naming of the park and reminded all that the public does not even know who Mzimule was beyond what they learnt in history classes. It is befuddling how those in prime positions capable of championing the deserved renaming like Balala only see such campaigns as a worthless effort.
Other arguments against renaming our natural and cultural monuments echo Juliet’s fantasies that a name is insignificant and that her Romeo would still be as sweet and lovable if he were not a Montague. If that was the case, the British and politicians in independent Kenya would not have found it necessary to assign new names to things and places that already had names. Still, there is the belief that such fraudulently-named monuments mark significant historical moments in our country that we must preserve. Our glorification of European names for our natural and cultural monuments reeks of colonial hangover. I am not sure about your take, but I think Kenyans would have coped very well without acts of bravery such as the Duchess of Gloucester’s attempts at climbing Mount Kenya. We should recognise the injustice in the naming and misnaming of our natural and cultural heritages and work towards correcting the same immediately and unapologetically.
Kwanya is a Literature student at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
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