by Kembo-Sure*
Editorial: This is the first essay in the inaugural issue of The Nairobi Reader, a literary and cultural magazine. The Introduction to the special issue is available here.
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. …
—Gen 2:19-20 (NKJV)
What’s in a name? A hell of a lot. That God chose to make Adam a co-creator with him is encoded in the word ‘naming’. To name is to do, to act or to perform. In grammar, it is a special nexus between the doer and the sufferer or receiver of the action. In philosophy, it would generally be called a performative or a speech act. Speech acts are a special category of words in language which imply action or simply cause things to happen. It is the naming entity that is the focus of attention in any proposition. Performatives include words like promise, name, sentence (by a judge), order, christen. The doer of the action is sometimes referred to as the ‘Agent’ and the receiver of the action is the ‘Patient’. Agency is a critical term, especially in anthropology and linguistics where those particular verbs are elevated to ritual status. For example: 1. I name this ship ‘Nyangumi‘. 2. I declare you husband and wife.
In the first sentence, the one naming must be authorised to do so—for example, the president commissioning a ship; in second sentence, the agent must be a priest authorised to do the said, otherwise the declaration will be null and void. Once the utterance is made in an appropriate context, the action takes effect and enjoys acceptance by all concerned. That means a chief of a location cannot purport to give a government vessel a name; and a catechist cannot effectively marry a couple. In both latter instances, the action would be null and void.
In the community I come from, when a baby ‘demands’ to be named properly it will keep the parents awake all night by crying incessantly and refusing to feed. The baby would be taken to the village name giver or diviner for consultation. The expert would drive a short stick into the ground and try to balance a round-bottom miniature earthen pot on the stick as she chants and calls out the possible names in the family line until the right name is struck and the pot balances on the stick. The baby stops crying and the uttered name becomes the baby’s name for ever. Not any village joker would validly give a name to a baby since the naming process is a revered ritual with a great socio-cultural meaning.
I was born Paulo Okombo, named after my uncle who was a colonial government veterinary extension officer and a great friend of my father’s. The choice was uncontroversial and, therefore, a naming expert was not consulted. However, my father, who was a clerk in the colonial chief ’s office, was fascinated by the name of a Scottish colonial District Commissioner called Campbell. He nicknamed me Kembo, a corruption of the Scottish name. For my father, it was more than just a name. He wanted me to grow, go to school and someday be like the white man. He often referred to the awesome work the white administrators did in the district. This was demonstrated loudly when he visited me in 1979 when I was a secondary school teacher living in a modern three-bedroom house at Kijabe High School. He asked me, ‘These houses must have been occupied by white people?’ I was not sure what to say, but I answered in the affirmative. At that time, there was only Jim Holditch, a Canadian, on our staff, teaching mathematics. But here was a proud father whose dream must have been fulfilled! He walked around cockily on the compound savouring, as much as he could, the exploits of his boy.
But I was also taken to church as a child and was given a name—Edward— before I was admitted to a local Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) primary school where a Christian name was a mark of progress. At the primary school, it was shameful to have no Christian name, because that signified a backward unchristian background. So, I conformed although the name Edward was not used to refer to me at home. My mother insisted on calling me Okombo and all his aliases—Paulo, Wuod Onjula, Wuod Akech, Adhiambo, etc. She never used Kembo unless she was talking about me with someone else.
Paulo Okombo situated me in the familial mainstream of the Nyangoko clan. Paulo’s widow, Aunt Marita, always called me Chuora (my husband) and treated me with utmost fondness as long as she lived. For my mother, the unmarked reference term was Paulo or Okombo, but she often called me Yuora (my brother-in-law) or the other aliases when she wanted to express tenderness or humour. The emotions that accompanied the names left no doubt that names are not mere reference terms; they derive significance from and give meaning to social relationships. They also evoke feelings and shape attitudes which in turn direct our behaviour in very fundamental ways.
Things were different with my father. Kembo was the unmarked or usual name he would call me by, but he would shift to Kemblo (another variant of the Scottish name) or Wuod Oredho. The marked forms were used especially when he was expressing pride in and happiness with my performance at school or simply wanting to humour me before sending me out on an errand. He was not a man of humour with children and so these light moments were few and far between. But when they did occur, I joyfully gobbled them up; they were sweet.
The foreign name that started as a nickname had become a local name by being indigenised through the process of phonological adaptation that gave the British name a Dholuo-like look and sound, disguising all the foreign elements to make it sound like other local names, such as Gombe, Tembe, and Rombo. In linguistic terms, the foreign name was fully integrated into the sound system of the new language and acquired the respectability and acceptability of a native word. To that extent, Kembo has been adopted as the surname by my wife and our children.
In secondary school, things changed dramatically as I engaged in social and political talk with older and more experienced students from other parts of the province. This was in 1964, immediately after independence. Names like Jomo Kenyatta, Masinde Muliro, Kung’u Karumba, Oginga Odinga, Mbiu Koinange and Achieng’ Oneko featured in the conversations. I realised that we did not need Christian names to be people of significance, and started to consciously play down my Christian name as an identity mark. And although it remained in the school register and appeared in my school certificates, not many of my schoolmates remember that I had a Christian name. As names were beginning to have a new meaning for many of us in our teenage years, they were no longer mere reference terms to identify physical realities (human and non-human). We have seen that with my mother’s emotional and sentimental use of my names as opposed to my father’s application which tended to be more functional as the names are meant to reinforce good performance but also fulfil dreams.
I did my undergraduate studies during the turbulent period of the early 1970s, when university students all over the world were testing the foundations of state bureaucracies through frequent strikes and often violent demonstrations. In Africa, pockets of European colonialism still remained in Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe. So, those of us who were in the humanities and social sciences had colonial and post-colonial discourses uppermost in our training. For example, our reading list in the literature class included: Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, False Start in Africa by Rene Dumont, and African Religions by John Mbiti. In the mainstream literary list, we read works by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, V. Reid, George Lamming, V.S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, etc. All these works dealt with experiences of Black people and other dominated populations around the world.
This academic environment certainly promoted and nurtured the questioning of the cultural and political hegemony during the colonial and post-colonial eras. The critical exercise of interrogating legitimacy of Eurocentric thoughts and institutions included the debate whether we should at all use European and Judeo- Middle Eastern names in order to be true followers of Jesus Christ. Similarly, need Africans adopt Arabic names to be true Moslems? For example, Ngugi dropped James, his Christian name. Coupled with that, he has since remained a fierce critic of the use of European languages in critical spheres like education, government, administration and parliamentary debates. Some people argue that dropping Christian names and/or replacing European languages with African languages cannot and will not achieve much. However, the symbolic importance of such acts of self-assertion are supremely liberating and cannot be gainsaid.
The practice of Africans adopting European names falls in the grand colonial scheme of things and is demonstrated by the following extract reportedly from a speech by Lord Macaulay to the British Parliament on 2 February 1835:
I do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture. For if the Africans think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.
The same philosophy underpinned the treatment of slaves whereby slaves speaking one language were separated from each other, thereby forcing them to use nonlinguistic communication symbols until they had developed their pidgins based on the master’s language. They were also forced to drop their names; generally, they were given their masters’ surnames for identity. This would explain why Ngugi links appropriation of foreign names and the use of foreign languages. We can, therefore, see the connection of naming and language to the patterns of power relationships when two populations come into intimate and enduring contact with each other.
The name one is given does not merely identify him/her in space and time; it also reflects the social relationships, power distribution and attitudinal orientation of people in a discourse community. I remember in my MA Linguistics class at Leeds University in 1987, a British lecturer, Windsor Lewis, coming into the lecture room with a name list of about six of us. A Chinese lady was the first on the list. The lecturer asked her what her name meant in English and she answered ‘grace’. And that became her new name. Then came a lady from Hong Kong whose name in English meant ‘joy’, and so that became her new name, too. Three African men and an African woman had Christian names and so they had no issues. They would be addressed by their Christian names. But when it came to my turn, there was trouble. I refused to say what Kembo meant in English since I could not stand the thought of answering to a new name at my age. I told him as much. But he argued that foreign names were difficult to master and so he needed their English equivalents. Worse still, he argued that it was us who needed British education and should be ready to make sacrifices for it. Because he was not getting anywhere with me, he gave up and said after all my name was only two syllables; I could keep it. This is a clear example of one embarking on a naming exercise to define power relations among group members. Since he had the knowledge which we were seemingly in need of desperately, he had the power and right to name us, for his convenience or, perhaps, in his own image.
Johan Galtung, in his book The True World: A Transitional Perspective (1980), categorises imperialism into economic, political, cultural and social spheres, all of which work together in colonial and neo-colonial settings to perfect the domination of the peripheral states (colonies and former colonies) by the centre (London, Paris or Washington). Since all the four aspects are intertwined, efforts to liberate the dominated societies must aim to dismantle all the strongholds lest the fight be lost altogether. For example, while the last British Governor in Kenya was being evacuated from the house on the hill, King George IV Hospital was being renamed Kenyatta National Hospital, Queen’s Way re-christened Mama Ngina Street and Ngugi was dropping his James name. Renaming was an attempt to regain, restore and revitalise the soul of the nation that colonialism aimed to destroy. Here we witness the political and the cultural working in tandem. But this did not go far enough. The Ominde Commission of 1964 retained English as the dominant language in education and political administration, negating all that was hoped for by the nationalists.
Naming is a hugely critical aspect of cultural revolution in a society emerging from imperial domination. Without a supporting language policy on the use of language in public spaces, the war cannot be won. South Africa is going through the renaming phase now where streets, institutions, road signs, etc. are being given indigenous African names. Jan Smarts Airport is now Oliver Tambo Airport, University of Natal is now the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and instead of Afrikaans being the only official language, South Africa now has eleven official languages, nine of which are African languages. Naming is a very important aspect of indigenisation as a process of psychological decolonisation which must be carried out systematically and purposefully.
However, renaming is never a silver bullet; it is but among the many efforts that must be made to slay the dragon of external domination. Julius Nyerere and Robert Mugabe did not drop their Christian names but remained the fiercest critics of continued domination of Africa by external forces. Nyerere, in addition, remained a practising Catholic. In contrast, Mobutu Sese Seko dropped his name Joseph and renamed his country Zaire but secretly still remained a neurotic admirer of European tastes and practices. He imported his food and wines from France and kept luxurious chateaux in Paris and Geneva. Besides, the revolt against foreign names is not necessarily a rejection of Christianity; nothing is more strongly against injustice and domination of one group by another than Christianity:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prisons to those who are bound.
—Isaiah 61:1
The word of the Bible is clear on just and fair treatment of all (the weak and the strong) and any teaching that negates this is of the fallen angel of darkness and death. For example, naming has been instrumentalised by African leaders to create the Big Brother syndrome as witnessed in the ubiquitous Moi in Moi University (Eldoret) Moi International Airport (Mombasa) Moi High School, Kabarak, Moi Girls’ High School, Kehancha, Moi Girls Vokoli (Kakamega), and many others. This is a systematic use of the name of the leader and his significant relatives to influence the perception of the citizens. This phenomenon occurs in many authoritarian states all over the world.
As I was writing this essay, I had a chat with two nephews of mine in the village and, by accident, the subject of naming popped up in our conversation. One of them who we popularly call ‘Japuonj’ (teacher) because he is named after his uncle, Ragero Opere, told me his certificates bear the name Reagan Morris. When I asked him why he had such ridiculous names that had no reference to his family orientation, he told me that it was to hide his ethnic origin so that he does not lose out when looking for a job. He is yet to join Machakos University to study Education. This is a clear example of how weaponising of names has created fear, despondency, uncertainty and self-hate in our children. Kenyan youth are driven to abandon the dignified identification function of naming to adopt meaningless foreign names. They have learnt from the media and the adults around them that jobs and other opportunities are doled out on the basis of ethnic origin, so that if you are not from the politically-correct background you do not stand a chance. The logical thing to do, then, is to align your name with the will of the ruling clique or the tribe controlling the politics of the day.
Something else I learned from talking to these two young men is that they did not know what the terms ‘first name’, ‘middle name’ and ‘surname’ actually mean. I went to great lengths explaining what each of them means and why it is important to distinguish one from the other, so that to call oneself Reagan Morris was odd and unacceptable in European tradition as it is ridiculous as an African name. In the European tradition, it is like using two first names, since my nephew’s first name is Reagan while Morris is his father’s first name. This indiscriminate use of names reveals deep-rooted self-doubt and serious cultural ignorance that is witnessed only among dominated populations.
Finally, scientific research has established that words have ‘frequency’ and ‘energy’ and these send impulses to the brain and cause corresponding chemicals that actually determine the ‘alchemy’ of the human body. Names, being words, have similar biochemical effects and hence cause us to feel happy, great, or inferior and taken for granted. Naming, therefore, can be liberating as it can be subjugating and must, therefore, not be done without thought and guidance from those who know the established naming rite and its spiritual and cultural consequences.
*Kembo-Sure is a Professor of Linguistics at Moi University (kembosure47@gmail.com).
Tomorrow, read an academic’s takedown of the tyranny of nativism. To download the inaugural special issue of The Nairobi Reader, click here.
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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