By David Maillu
Published July 9, 2017
Since life immemorial African culture has been receiving its new born human religiously. This is because we believe that new born being is a new breath and necessary wave of the cosmos; and, like each cell in the human body, that breath plays an important role in the existence of the force behind creation. How we receive that new breath speaks volumes about who we are in the interpretation of life. Although we may not comprehend why, there must be a reason behind why anything takes place. Only things, not “nothing”, is capable of creation.
My late friend Professor Osaga Odack narrated to me an illustrative story about how he was named after birth.
“My parents told me that after I was born and given a name,” he said. “Suddenly the baby in me started giving them nightmares. I cried day and night relentlessly. They thought I had fallen ill and needed treatment. But no treatment I was given succeeded in silencing me. So, having tried everything in vain they waited for the worse. It was at that stage someone suggested they consult a diviner, which they did because there was nothing else they could do to save me. The diviner said that I was crying like that because I was given the wrong name. An ancestor of mine, an uncle, he said, was demanding that I be named after him. My parents returned home and threw a new birthday party in which I was given the uncle’s name. After the exercise I stopped crying.”
That is one of the many stories relating to the philosophy of naming a child in traditional Africa. We belong to both the living and the dead-living worlds, commonly referred to as ancestral world. A name shouldn’t be picked up from nowhere just because it sounds nice or it belongs to an attractive person. Your name is the frequency code in which you communicate both with your world and with the waves of the cosmos. There are bad consequences if the child’s name is tuned to the wrong frequencies. Likewise, there are good consequences when the name is nicely tuned to the acceptable spiritual wavelength of the extended family.
