What is in a name?

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem surveys the state and status of names in Africa, in particular the legacy of Western colonialism, and identity politics around 'Arab' names. He argues that although names are very important both culturally and symbolically, they do not in themselves confer Africanness or commitment to Africa, which is measured by 'what we do, what our values are, and our concrete actions'.

'What's in a name?' Shakespeare once asked through one of his fictional characters. The Bard also provided the answer by observing that Rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. It may be true for flowers, but for Africans, in general, names mean a lot. They define our identity; our place in the social order within the clan; the community and even the circumstances of our birth. In many cases, our ethnic and cultural identities are either obvious from the names or can be guessed. For instance, if you hear someone called Tanko among the Hausa, it means a male child amongst several female children; while Delu is for a female child that follows several male ones.

Among the Yoruba, Idowu means the child following twin siblings. The Baganda will not call someone Nalongo or Salongo without a reason. These are not names that anybody can bear because they are specific to being twins, mothering or fathering them. However, more than just the circumstances of birth, names may also reflect our material situation or parental expectations; define our access to land, traditional authority and powers of appropriation in societies that are still very much agrarian even as we develop mega-cities.

Why am I talking clans this week? I have not taken up Ethnic studies or become a latter day tribal anthropologist! One of the hazards of being a self-opinionated columnist is that you get all kinds of unsolicited responses, requests, invitations and suggestions. Not all of them will be complimentary or flattering. Some may expect you to have answers for all kinds of issues and scenarios that you may not have even thought about or that are unlikely to be your cup of tea. In this day and age of instant gratification by SMS texts and emails, the responses are bigger in volume. They mostly go unanswered, even from the most conscientious columnist. You may spend the whole week responding without finishing them and having no time to think of your next column!

However in some cases there are responses or queries that you simply cannot ignore. Such were two emails I received recently. One asked: 'why are you, a strong pan-Africanist, that we look up to, bearing a foreign, non-African name, don't you have an African name?' The other was more direct. The subject of the email ordered: 'change your name'. The text itself pulled no punches: 'Please sir, after a heated discussion on acculturation and loss of identity, I find it imperative to bring to your attention that your name does not fit someone of your academic status. You should know better and be proud of your roots. At first we thought you were an Arab. Why do you have to despise your cultural identity today? And take 100 per cent Arabic names? Be proud of your roots and have some African names, even if not 100 per cent. At a class discussion, students were asking why this man who looks like an African calls himself Arabic names. Concerned African students are tired of being asked by Americans 'don't you have African names?'

It is not first time that I have been asked this question. The answer is a simple truth. I do have 'African' names: ABAYOMI, AMAO. However they have not stuck like the TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM with which everyone is familiar. I did not shed them consciously. They are middle names by which no one but my late grandmother and very few older people of my mum's generation will ever call me.

Thus the names have become like those irritable letters in some English words that can never be pronounced because they are supposed to be silent but are part of the spelling!

The Arabisation or Westernisation of Africans is part of the legacy of both our cultural and material conquest and domination by extra-African forces. That is why during the anti-colonial struggles there was resistance against foreign names and the reassertion of African cultural identities. There was a movement called 'Boycott the boycottables' which inspired nationalists to drop their Christian/Western names in favour of African ones. It also encouraged Africans to avoid anything colonial/Western they can do without such as clothes, food, music, even using forks and knives.

In the context of colonialism, where everything African, including our culture, traditions, language, ways of life, our names, our gods and beliefs were treated as 'heathen and backward', it was important for our self-esteem that we were proud of who we were. The earlier generation of non-Christian pupils and students who went to mission schools were forced to change their Muslim or cultural names. As late as the early 1980s, when I arrived in Oxford, a kindly English rose of a college secretary asked me for my 'Christian' names. My longish Arabic names were not sufficient for her! And they did not give her any indication that I was not a Christian!

It is sadly true that several decades after the formal end of colonialism, colonial mentality is still rampant in the attitude of many Africans about themselves, our societies and our relationship with the rest of the world. Many are still steeped in inferiority complexes that make them despise anything African and ape the West in the most bizarre ways. The worst expressions of this are those mobile human laboratories we call 'Fanta face coca cola legs' in Kampala (men and women bleaching themselves in order to become 'basungu' or at least 'brown').

Thus it is still very important to proclaim 'I am and am proud to be African'. In the famous lines of James Brown: 'say it loud I am black and proud'. We need to get rid of the self-hatred induced by slavery and perfected under colonialism that makes us to seek validation for our humanity.

However, as we struggle to regain our collective self-esteem and exercise our equality with other peoples, it is important that we do so in non-chauvinistic ways, and do not become Black fascists seeking the 'pure African race'. Our dignity should not be built on notions of superiority over other races or peoples. We should also avoid turning being African into a kind of identity prison or cultural desert, or an island that is not in contact or conversation with other cultures and peoples.

We touch other peoples just as they touch us, and do so in very fundamental ways, many of them painful, but also in positive ways. However, we inhabit and have to live in the same world, victims and villains.

My second young reader who demanded I change my name did not even consider his own first name which is Michael! Somehow we have been brainwashed into thinking that biblical names are acceptable, but that somehow, Muslim/Arabic names are suspect. There is a not-so-subliminal Arabo Islamophobia at stake here, which we imbibe most uncritically. Being a Muslim or a Christian should not make us cultural stooges of others, or carry on others' battles and prejudices.

On the other hand, there are many Muslims who think that being Muslim meant taking on Arabic names - often misleadingly confused as Islamic names. It is not all Arabic names that are Islamic names. Also, being a Muslim does not mean that one has become an Arab. Allah understands all languages and that's why the Quran is translated into other languages. There was a time too when the Bible was only in Latin, and priests mesmerised 'converts' in the same way that Islamic scholars who may not even understand the Arabic language mesmerise their flock in the language!

It is like the way early educated Africans and their descendants today think that the more bombastic their European grammar, the better educated they have become. A few years in England or France, many of them returned home claiming they could not speak their mother tongues anymore, and spoke to their relatives through even less educated and more pretentious interpreters! Kamuzu Banda was probably one of the worst examples of a cultural 'coconut'. Fighting this kind of colonial mentality demands more than posturing about names.

A majority of Africans today may define themselves in religious terms as either Muslims or Christians. There will be significant minorities amongst us that could be of 'traditional faith' or other faiths. We are no less African by sharing with others. There are many Africans today who are not of Negroid origin. More than half of Arabs in the whole world are in North Africa. We have Asians in southern and eastern Africa; and other African citizens whose ancestors were settlers of European origin; just as we have the Lebanese in West Africa with all kinds of names and faiths and cultural permutations with indigenous Africans. In the words of Lucky Dube: 'different colors one people'.

Go to Zanzibar, Mombasa, Cape Town, Lagos, Accra, Abidjan, Kano and most of our big cities, coastal areas and see the cultural intercourse and encounters that will make you wonder: whether where we are coming from is as important as where we are heading?

The contact with the rest of the world has had and will continue to have both positive and negative impacts for Africa. But Africa also continues to have an enduring impact on the rest of the world in all kinds of fields of human endeavour. There were many things, including names, that were of foreign origin which we have and continue to Africanise, including even colonial languages.

At the end of the day, although names are very important both culturally and symbolically, in themselves they do not confer Africanness or commitment to Africa. It is what we do, what our values are, and our concrete actions that will prove our commitments or lack of them to the genuine causes of Africa and Pan-Africanism. Similarly, bearing a Muslim or Christian name does not make you a devout Muslim or practising Christian. They do not make you an Arab or a European either.

There was once a self-promoted field marshall, who changed his name from Joseph Desire Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko kuku Ngendu Waza Banga who used to wear leopard skin suits (ironically imported from France and Belgium), who advocated 'African authenticity', yet who misruled, pillaged and looted the resources of his country and kept his ill-gotten wealth in foreign banks. After his death neither his family nor the government of the DRC have been able to lay hands on most of the money. How very authentic is that? You may change your name, but what about your attitudes?

There was another cultural nationalist in South Africa (not dead but now politically neutered). A book about him dubbed him 'the chief with a double agenda'. Mongosuthu Buthelezi, a Zulu chief turned warlord was on the side of apartheid in opposition to courageous Africans bearing names like Nelson and Winnie (Mandela), Oliver (Tambo), Steve (Biko), Victor (Sabelo-Phama), Chris (Hani) and others who were unrelenting in fighting and defeating Gatcha and his apartheid allies.

Being Muslim or Christian or of any other faith, and bearing any name, should be a question of your circumstance and choice. You could be Johnson or Davis, Aderemi or Oyugi, Wanjiku or Wanyiri, Bilal or Mohammed, Firoze or Friday, Ruth or Joe, Emeka or Ama, whatever you are named or you decide to call or rename yourself. It should not really matter as long as we are proudly African. You can bear any name and still be a full member of the pan-African movement, and contribute your quota to the uplifting of our peoples. An obviously African name does translate into being a better African.

I am very happy to remain TAJUDEEN, son of Africa, doing my best for the mother continent!

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in a personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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