Names and naming: Names as repositories of the past, traditions and people’s beliefs
NAMES are repositories of a people’s histories, their culture, traditions and worldview. At the same time a name bears an identity of a particular individual. At the same time, among the Africans in particular, names document events surrounding an individual’s time of birth. That is another way of saying names are repositories of a people’s history which may have occurred before the birth of generations that came later.
What has been said above is true in particular before Africans were colonised. Their names, as expected, carry colonial history and, indeed, contact with the outside world. In normal circumstances names are in the language of the people who do the naming. The meaning of a name resides in the community’s understanding of their culture and traditions and, indeed, its histories. That this is no longer the case in Africa is borne out by the fact that Africans now give exotic names to their children.
The names are not rendered in the numerous mother tongues and Africans take great pride in these foreign names. The languages spoken by the people to whom the names are indigenous are happily adopted and serve as markers of status. Those who are not conversant with the English language are despised and looked down upon. A false impression is created that ability to communicate fluently in the English language is synonymous with being clever, wise and intelligent — an accurate measure of the degree of colonisation and the amount of work yet to be done to attain success in the daunting task of decoloniality.
Portuguese, Spanish and French names are made use of with little appreciation of the underlying meaning of the adopted names. However, there are names which may be foreign in origin but have acquired new meaning and currency in a different context. The name Nikita is Russian and yet if a street in Bulawayo were to be so named, there would be nothing amiss. The Zimbabwe African People’s Union(Zapu) was, during the liberation struggle, getting material and ideological support from the Soviets whose leader at one time was Nikita Khrushchev. While the original meaning of the name Nikita may not have been known to Zapu cadres, now it has assumed a new meaning and it encapsulates and documents historical links between Zapu and the Soviet Union during the armed liberation struggle.
The colonial project was championed and driven by people with names. After conquest, there was both reluctant and willing acceptance and adoption of names of leaders of the colonial projects. Interestingly, in our family of 15 siblings only one of us was given a Ndebele name — yours truly, you guessed right. The rest bore, in the main, English names with some smattering of Afrikaans and probably Hindi. More interestingly we were the only couple that gave Ndebele names to our children. I have said, even if we were blessed with two score children none of them was going to get an English name. Our son has two sons both with Ndebele and or Sebirwa names. There is pride in names. There is connectivity and linkages in names. There are prayers behind names.
Cecil John Rhodes was a prominent leader of the colonisers. All his names have been adopted by Ndebele parents. John is a very common name picked from some basket of names and thrust onto newly-born babies. Cecil does not seem to have enjoyed similar ready adoption. Rhodes, on the other hand, was Ndebelised and then went on to enjoy currency. Rhodes became uRozi and, in some instances, uLozi. This was a common name. For example, my grandfather’s eldest daughter’s son was named uRozi. His father too was a Nyathi.
It is common among the Babirwa who adopted Sotho marital arrangements where cross cousin marriages were preferred. Perhaps to those unfamiliar with Birwa traditions, it means my son married my sister’s daughter. I thus became father-inlaw to my niece while my sister became mother-in-law to my son. There were reasons for these seemingly strange and weird marital arrangements. There were economic considerations at play.
We always make mention of the first shots that were fired at Zidube Ranch at Mambale during the armed liberation struggle. There were six Zapu cadres who were involved, under the command of Moffat Hadebe from Mawaza. The other members were Elliot Ngwabi, Keyi Nkala, Israel Maduma, Roger Matshimini Ncube and the last was Rhodes Malaba.
Cecil John’s ally was Dr Leander Starr Jameson. It was he who engineered attack on Matabeleland following the Victoria Incidents of July 1893 when a party sent to Fort Victoria by King Lobengula was attacked. The party was led by Mgandane Dlodlo, chief of Inxazonke, who rightly got his name given both in Bulawayo and Harare. Stories are told that he was beheaded by the white attackers who beheaded him and stuff ed his testes into his mouth. What we are not certain about is whether his skull was taken to England as was the case with Chief Chingaira Makoni of Rusape for his involvement in Imfazo II (Chimurenga I) of 1896.
When the opportunity to attack the Ndebele State came, volunteers were assembled. For their efforts they were promised land and gold. Here was another case when the process of Ndebelisation took place. Volunteers became amavolontiya and that became a common name, Mavolontiya, among the Ndebele. It so happened that the conquerors also gave themselves some Ndebele names, not names associated with inferiority though.
The one good example was MMG Jackson when he named himself uMatshayisikhova, the conqueror of isikhova. In the Esigodini area there is a place known as Isikhova (eSikhoveni). Actually, it is the name of a mountain close by. During the heyday of the Ndebele State there was a settlement near the mountain that shared the same name. MMG Jackson stormed the settlement and emerged victorious.
Many other whites, in particular the native commissioners who became bosses of the Ndebele villagers gave themselves names in a similar vein. One named himself Mbizo. The name was that of King Lobengula’s crack regiment. It was a regiment that was associated with victory and that was attractive to the whites. Another name was that of uNkomiyahlaba (Kgomearaga) a cow that goads whose English name was Noel Robertson. He was well-known for his ruthless treatment of Africans. He retained his name whenever he moved to new districts as native commissioner. He was instrumental in the cruel evictions of the Ndebele people from ancestral land.
The names of native commissioners were adopted after some bit of Ndebelisation. Native commissioner Baker of Gwanda District had his name adopted by many. The name also became a marker of events in temporal terms. Many babies were named Bheka as a result. By and large, bearing that name indicated the time of birth associated with evictions from certain parts of Matabeleland.
Another source of exotic names was the names of Christian missionaries. As the various Christian denominations were associated with specific areas, such names became associated with names of that denomination which colonised the given area. Posenti was a name associated with the Catholic Church. Claydon was associated with the Salvation Army which had missionaries at Mbembeswana who had come from Canada.
Hebrew names were adopted from the Bible at the time when the Christian faith was planted in Southern Rhodesia: David, Isaac, Jacob, Nathaniel, James and many others.