“...You must call me S.P.J.C...Well that’s what you get when the Catholic Church names you. Simon Peter came with baptism, Jude with confirmation. My parents threw in Chika to appease the ancestors. For years I didn’t know how to hold the names together. You don’t walk up to people and introduce yourself as Simon Peter Jude Chika Mandi. Somebody might fall asleep while you are at it” says Dr. S.P.J.C Mandi in Nigeria’s Okey Ndebe’s first novel Arrows of Rain (2000.)
In her New Year gift to Africa, a correspondent for the New African magazine Serwa wrote an article titled, “Prime Minister Kofi Blay I guess?” In her piece, she explained certain reasons why a white man can never be called Kofi but a black man can be called John, Gabriel, Patience and Evans among others.
In the 2010 edition of the Millennium Excellence Award magazine, Prof. Kofi Anyidoho shared an experience that gave birth to his revolutionary poetry and research papers. “Once in a restaurant with Padmore (in London), a little white girl watched us with great interest. There was wonder and amazement in her innocent and young face. When I started a conversation with Padmore, the child exclaimed: “Mummy, it talks!” I laughed but it opened to me a great and deep meaning to life especially, the life of a Black man in a white dominated world.” This is a summary of people’s view about us.
What at all is in a name? Our names are our lives, our total being of existence and our way. Names form that unique identity that makes us a people of a distinct ancestry, a people of a great root, a people of our own way. The astronomers can continue discovering other planets, but we remain a precious people of wonder on Mother Earth. Western education made us understand that, African names are ‘satanic’, ‘heretic’ and ‘primitive’. We are therefore forced, under the darkness of claimed enlightenment to abandon our names and cling to names whose meanings we don’t really understand. African names have specific reasons and hold a specific meaning in our social archives. They have a special affirmation in our nations and recognize us as a people of our own way. What a cruel manifestation of betrayal do we display in the “masturbation” of heroic, excellent, soul-inspiring African names into a stranger’s language to fit his status quo of who he describes as a human being? Is it he, whose names include; Sheila (blind), Cynthia (Goddess), Belinda (little snake) or he whose names include Enam (God gave), Nyamekye (God’s gift) Mawulolo (God is great) among many others that must define a human?
The Western-educated African desires meaningless catalogue of chained alien names whose initials end up being J.C.R.A.C, .S.P.J.C.M, G.I.E.K and other long chains that can be used to tie a goat to a tree were it a rope. We are lost. We are conquered. We are far away from our identity. If we lose our identity, we have no value. The African spirit takes its living breath from the ever fortified pool of ancient, revered names at whose sound warriors rise in defense of nations; names of whose sound cripples stand on rods to walk and uproot baobab trees; names that inspired the revolution against destroyers , betrayers and ostentatious cripples of our past life as a united people.
In our names, are values: values of determination (Dzidefo), wisdom (Anunyam), love (Odo), bravery (Dzata, Agbodemegbe, Anyidoho) chants (Agbozo, Awoonor, Lade), philosophy (Angsontinge- who owns the land; Anyigba, - no one jumps over the land), consciousness of the end of life (Kumashie, Bobrapa, Kumafle) and the encyclopedia continues. That is Africa: my land, my identity, my life; our philosophy.
But I know these: one day all of us shall rise tall anywhere on God’s earth and say to the world crystal clearly that we are black and proud, we shall resolve to rededicate ourselves to our cause of re-defining who we are by upholding our identity for as Anyidoho said, “we cannot and must not surrender our future to a life with no meaning we claim to be our own. We must pay heed to Ifa’s warning: the path to our fathers cannot be erased.”
Nkosi sikelela’i Afrika. God bless Africa!
Edzordzi G. Agbozo,
Ghana Association of Writers.
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