Start a ‘com centre’ business on a not-so busy street in a quiet town. Paint it any colour the rainbow has never seen since Joseph’s much envied multicoloured coat. Get the most antiquated telephone handset and fax machine, and stuff the facility with needle-perforated broken chairs. Next, employ the dumbest customer service attendant around to tend the centre. Run the business like a charity organisation that imports obroni wawu from Amsterdam. Do well to record losses higher than Zimbabwe’s inflation rate. You would think this suffering business is no one’s envy. Well, somebody had been watching closely. The next month, two more com centres spring up on the same street by very familiar folks. They don’t care whether you are making losses; they just want to be in the same line of business. At worst, they would share in the losses. When we have a colossal loss, nobody’s loss is noticeable. In the end, who wins the day? Nobody!
Or, give your child a trendy name. It doesn’t matter whether it makes good meaning or not. Once it sounds nice and it is post-old testament, children on the next street would have similar sweet-sounding, trendy names. Sometimes, it works like an epidemic without a tipping point. Suddenly, Ghanaian parents are digging into the very roots of local tradition and folklore, to explore the virtues in some words and expressions in our ever increasing vocabulary. Visionary and charismatic church leader, Mensah Otabil, named his children Nhyira, Aseda and Sompa, and at once there is a revolution in the names we give to our children. Let’s call it an uprising in nomenclature. The Central University Chancellor may not have been the first to bless his kids with those names, but the fad is catching on quick among many parents in recent times. My next door neighbour’s newly out-doored son is called Nkunim. His siblings had been Nokware and Ayeyi. My childhood friend in England settled on Nhyiraba for his daughter and Fakye for his son, who incidentally, is my godson. There are others like Otema, Ahoto and maybe Anuonyam. So far, I haven’t heard anybody call their child Animguasee or Ahootan. Instead, we have Ahoofe and Dinpa. But please, do not name your son Suarez.
Then, as if we had been naming our children after our parents with pretentious motives for the past decade, we have decided to particularise Papa and Paapa, depending on your preference, or Egya for the Fantes, and Maame for the girls, even though these infants are yet to be mothers. When they become maames themselves, what do we call them? Maame maame? Or as we do in our homes, if you want to call the mother of a girl called Maame, do we say maame maame? ‘Akua maame’ is quite easy on the tongue. Some of us had problems with Bro Brother and sister Sister, when a girl was named Sister.
Does it matter what name we give to our children? You would be amazed to know the creativity that goes into naming a dog. The days are gone when every dog was called Peace or Hope. Ours had been named Lucy when we got her. She doesn’t remind me of my cousin in Ireland in anyway, but I keep wondering why the two should share the same name. It is a good thing she never visits us. It would be an insult to her, especially because she hates pets, the only kind she tolerates being a parrot. Well, she is also a fun of home-grown grasscutters, because they eventually provide a good source of protein.
A lawyer I know is amazed at how Ghanaians, especially ladies, are swearing affidavits to change their names. He has observed that often they cast away their old identity for Maame and Nana, and sometimes for ice-cream-inviting names such as Charlene, Belivia and Chantal. You would also find Chrystal, Benjamina and strange compounds like Jodie-Clare and Golda-Lynn. Gradually Old Testament names like Ruth, Naomi and Mercezedech are finding their way to the graves of these legends of faith. It may not hurt the future of the child if he is slapped with a name like Zaccheaous or Ananias, but what does he stand to gain from dealing with the thieving images associated with those names, when Nkunim and Aseda appear more promising.
So far, it is not clear why Ghanaians have chosen to go ‘traditional’ or natural, as some would put it. Still, there are a great number who are sticking to the names of Jesus’s disciples, the least popular being Bartholomew. And folks are adopting patterns and employing rhythms to create emphasis. Emmanuel Kontoh bought into this when he chose the letter V to start the names of all his three children: Valencia, Valerie and Vanessa. You would also find English names that had never been heard on our continent until the 20th Century. Recently I met a two year old called Al Agyemang, as in Al Gore. Barry, Gary and Sacha are also becoming popular. My colleague was contemplating giving Barack to his son, but he was wondering where the name originated from. Well, it is a biblical name, so we could use it just as much we have abused the others. Another healthy trend is emerging in names like Ace and Gem.
As in many things, context is important when employing the use of items that appear foreign to our indigenous culture. An interviewee called Charles Castro Frimpong may have gotten away with a cheeky response when asked by the interviewing panel whether he was ex Cuban President Fidel Castro’s relation. He quizzed: “There are lots of people called John and Peter. Are they disciples of Jesus Christ? That cheek cost him the job. But frankly, what do we make of interesting combinations such as Al Danso Abeam and Gary Nyamekye? Pupils in GIS or Morning Star would not confuse Gary for Gari, but my village folks somewhere in the belly of one of our poorest districts may wonder whether ‘Nyame akye me gari’ would not be a more plausible interpretation of Gary Nyamekye. I suspect this because I was often teased that I didn’t really have a surname, because Tawiah suggests that I was born after twins, and in my case I wasn’t. In fact, there are no twins in my family. I considered using my other name Ntsiful, to please my classmates but that also lent itself to a mischievous interpretation. Ntefo, as it was often mispronounced means unyielding to advice or unrepentant. Those were good times.
It is not clear what the Nkunims and Asedas hope to achieve, and whether the name a person bears says anything about how far he/she could go. Of course, you do not hope that a boy named Kofi Yesu by a wife-beating father would grow up to be Yesu, but you would appreciate that a good nurturing process could well make a Yesu out of the boy. Nurture, not nature, is responsible for most of our behavioural patterns, Madiba Mandela would tell you. Still, identity counts very much towards the nurturing process. You wouldn’t come out as a great footballer because you decided to call yourself Pele or Maradona, but adopting a name like that could spur you on to work harder to achieve something in a noted discipline. If Nkunim means victory, then you expect Mr Nkunim to excel in a few things. There are no guarantees at all; he could as well fail in everything. Similarly, Aseda may well turn out a chronic ingrate, because not every Dzibordi is patient. At any rate, the person behind the name would count towards the realisation of the virtues inherent in the name than the name per se affording him any blessing.
Perhaps, it is no accident that nomenclature is not a particularly popular area of study. What difference would it make if since creation the word mammal denoted a two-legged animal that had wings and could fly? We would have stuck with it and derived associated meanings from it. So, the name Nkunim may not mean much for the bearer. But there may be a trend in names or a great deal of meaning behind meanings of names that make the act of naming itself very worthwhile. A typical naming ceremony is often beautiful. The name given to the child is often repeated some three times. The symbolic use of water is employed: “Nsa a nsa, nsuo a nsuo.” We make merry afterwards. It is a spiritual exercise that must mean something. It may be accidental, but it is interesting how Sonnet, my daughter, recites poetry and works the piano. I had named her after the Shakespearean sonnets. I was hoping that by naming my little son Will, after William Wordsworth, he would show signs of scholarship at an early age, but so far the lad has been very dull. Nothing excites him apart from the sound of popping champagne. I hope he doesn’t befriend the bottle too early. That would only make him a Happy-Biff son of a Loman.
By their nature, revolutions do not just happen; they are tipped to happen. When Kwesi Atta Bosomafi found reason to swap identities for Quincy Arthur Bosomfield, the motive was to kick ‘Heritage Africa’ in the face, after “Holy water had slapped our cringing brows.” The awakening from that civilising slumber has bought us a new determined African identity that would not throw away tradition for the sake of civilisation. The lesson was that ours is good; let’s make use of it, even in its raw unpolished state. That is part of the wisdom behind sankofa. If this ideal is what is showing in the adoption of names such as Aseda and Dinpa in recent times, then tradition appears to be making great gains, even as the effects of science ad technology remain overpowering. And folks are going the extra mile, by making tradition appear very traditional. Ace journalist Kwaku Sakyi Addo sometimes renders his popular name as Kwaku Addo Sakyi-Addo. Then, as if this is a journalism affair, my ‘estranged’ friend Kofi Opare Addo, makes Addo double sure by calling himself Kofi Addo Opare Addo. Well, I should have seen this coming when Ante Yaa Brimpomaa Osei-Brimpong named his fine son Kwadwo Barwuah Adjei Barwuah. She may not have followed the same pattern but Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema hits home as a successful traditional story. So, when she adds that she is a Denkyira beauty who writes “what experts have called ‘satirical hyperbolic poetry,” you would expect that she would write in a free verse. And she does it very well.
This traditional revolution is bold and interesting. If it succeeds very well, other things may follow. Even if you feel compelled to lift up your head and look at the mention of these names, you are confident they don’t sound like ice cream or any kind of lollipop. Just that I almost didn’t get the spelling of Nhyira right. Do you remember that the other day, we questioned why we write nouns like Techiman, Kojo and Dzibordi with letters borrowed from the English alphabet? C, J and Z are not in our 21 lettered Twi alphabet. Now, that presents a test for Aseda and Sompa. They need Nhyira to see Nkunim.
Benjamin Tawiah, Ottawa, Canada
quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk.
