Care must be exercised when addressing another race/ethnic group’s culture

Aug 06, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor

During the rise in black consciousness movement which gained renewed energy in the USA during the 1960s and particularly after the release of Stokely Carmichael’ s book “Black Power” in 1966, Africans in the Diaspora experienced a new pride in themselves.

This new pride birthed in them an urgent need to identify with our homeland – Africa. The immediacy to do so demanded visible expression and the adoption of African clothing and names, for many blacks, became the dominant means for quickly making visible this newly acquired pride in being black.

For many of us, this new knowledge also made us awareness that most things, including life itself, began in Africa. That, notwithstanding all efforts to keep this knowledge from us, we have come to know the truth and will no longer allow ourselves to feel inferior to others. In this light, the taking of African names and wearing of African clothing was a positive development among black people. In more recent times, there has been a slowing down in the rush to change our names to African ones. This has happened because as the euphoria tempered, many of us have come to realise there are at least two things to be considered before making a name change.

First, we note that for Africans living in traditional communities, naming of children is no casual event. For such communities, names have both religious and cultural dimensions. The character Kunta Kinte in the film “Roots” gave us an insight of how fiercely Africans would fight to protect their traditional names. Second, that Africans speak about African peoples not tribes. Thus Dr. MBITI in his seminal book “African Religion and philosophy,” tells us that there “are about three thousand African peoples” and that each observe different practices for naming children. He stresses that in traditional societies and even today in the villages, “names have meaning according to the occasion or other significance at the time of birth.”

For example, among the Wolof people, the child is named according to the day in the week that he/she was born. Among the Luo people, the child’s name is sought when the child is crying. Thus, there are African people who name their children to reflect famine if that is their specific reality at the time of birth or give children names that means rain if they are born at a time of heavy rain fall. There are also some African people who name children after recently departed members of the family or community who during their life on earth displayed virtues of tremendous value to that people (tribe).

Thus for those of us living in the Diaspora and who are armed with this knowledge, name change now demands some knowledge of which African people (tribe, according to the west) we originate and what are the practices they observe when naming children. Further, this understanding of how traditional societies in the homeland went about naming children helps us to appreciate the decision of the black revolutionary and intellectual who changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. Since by doing so, Malcolm was signaling that he did not know which African people his ancestors was from and therefore what his traditional name might have been.

In a letter appearing in your edition of 8th June 2022 under caption “Ridiculing ethnic names is offensive,” the writer seemed to be taking a ‘dig’ at those of us of African descent who have not adopted African names. He says (a) Blacks have accepted the names assigned to them by the slave owners of their ancestors” and (b) “some fittingly have gone back to their original names and faiths that their ancestors brought with them from Africa hundreds of years ago.” Then, as if contradicting himself he says, “One must not poke fun at peoples’ names.” Which seem to suggest respect for person’s name, regardless whether their names are ‘traditional’ or not.

Perhaps the writer means well, and that he might have articulated his thoughts poorly in this instance. Whatever his intent, he might be well advised to take heed to some of the considerations, which I mentioned above that have influenced this seeming slowing down in blacks making name change.

Yours sincerely

Claudius Prince

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