You can’t steal my name!”

I must have yelled this at my brother half a dozen times when we were kids, my hair fixed in one centered Afro puff, pointing a finger across the dining table with my back straight and taut as a clothesline, ready to snap if he teased me again. My siblings and I often sat around on quiet Saturday afternoons, passing the time by coming up with names for our future children. The only condition was that you couldn’t steal someone else’s name if you happened to grow up and have a child first. Sometimes one of us—like my brother—would pretend to like a name someone else had mentioned just to cause a fight.

The roll call of names would spill onto the table like marbles from a jar. James, Julian, Penelope, Rose, Chloe, Claire, Tessa, Henry—a litany of names that sounded nothing like our own Nigerian names and very much like the ones in the Enid Blyton books we devoured. It made sense to pick names based on what seemed popular, or whether or not we liked how the names sounded out loud. Who in their right minds, besides our parents and family members, would pick names that nobody at our American and later British schools could pronounce or spell? By first grade, we already knew how our foreign names sounded bouncing about in those classrooms, the accents ricocheting off the wrong syllables and dropping like ludicrous beach balls at our small feet. At times our names felt too big for us to manage in addition to all the small ways we were trying, as children of immigrants, to shrink our foreign selves into the cultural molds laid out for us.

What we didn’t know was that we came from a culture in which the act of naming was a powerful ritual, one meant to overwhelm—to claim for a child an identity large enough for them to grow into. We didn’t know that where we came from, we named like praying.

I was born in a place where my name did not make sense. When I slid out of my mother’s womb on a cold February night at a hospital in Manhattan, the nurse on duty misspelled my middle name. Perhaps there was no category of “correct spelling” in her mind for a word she could not imagine. So I have spelled my own name wrong on purpose for most of my life, adding the extra vowel “a” on all official documents to match the misspelling on my birth certificate.

My correctly spelled middle name, Chinedu, comes out sharp and strong, not delicate or melodic like some people think a girl’s name should be. But my people, the Igbos of southeastern Nigeria, do not pick names for their sweet sounds, their novelty or their popularity. Maybe it’s the belief that a whisper of breath as slight as a name can hold a child’s destiny in its exhale. In Igbo culture, the act of naming a child is part of bestowing full humanity, part of solidifying the baby’s journey in the kingdom of the living, and a means of offering her a blessing to stand on. It sounds dramatic because it is.

Typically, eight days after a baby is born, the child’s Umunna gather for a naming ceremony. The official Umunna is made up of the child’s immediate and extended family, all the descendants of the family name. But neighbors, friends, and elders also come together to witness and affirm the ritual of naming the child. It is a way of welcoming her into the world and into the community that now claims her.

Read full article here

http://hype9ja.com/enuma-okoro-your-name-is-a-blessing-to-stand-on/

Beautiful......

Ngo40:
Beautiful......

.... Hello sis, hope you are doing good and fine? Here is Michael, the barbecue guy! My phone crashed!!

modelmike7:
.... Hello sis, hope you are doing good and fine? Here is Michael, the barbecue guy! My phone crashed!!

Hi brother,
Lol....the barbecue guy.
I'm doing well...blessed and highly favored.
Sorry about your phone...so it's in pieces

Ngo40:


Hi brother,
Lol....the barbecue guy.
I'm doing well...blessed and highly favored.
Sorry about your phone...so it's in pieces

..... Good to hear you doing great. Yes, the phone is gone, hence, my not replying your last mail. Getting another one next week.... Guessed i missed your birthday?! So sad!

modelmike7:
..... Good to hear you doing great. Yes, the phone is gone, hence, my not replying your last mail. Getting another one next week.... Guessed i missed your birthday?! So sad!

Lol....it's fine. I'm happy you are getting a new phone. It's almost impossible to be without one now-a-days.
I can't even imagine what it was like before cell phones...
Lol...oh nothing to be sad about.. I was blessed tremendously....looking forward to this new year

Ngo40:


Lol....it's fine. I'm happy you are getting a new phone. It's almost impossible to be without one now-a-days.
I can't even imagine what it was like before cell phones...
Lol...oh nothing to be sad about.. I was blessed tremendously....looking forward to this new year

..... Good to know you enjoyed your day. Happy Birthday to you in arrears Ngo, many happy returns. Life is just beginning right now you know? Lol. Will be there to celebrate your next birthday with you! God's willing.

modelmike7:
..... Good to know you enjoyed your day. Happy Birthday to you in arrears Ngo, many happy returns. Life is just beginning right now you know? Lol. Will be there to celebrate your next birthday with you! God's willing.

Thank you my brother...and oh yeah I definitely know....life's been very good to me and will only get better! And I mean that...i can't take the negative mindset with me into a new year....sometimes you gotta drop the heavy baggage that weighs one down.
You'll love it when you get here.....

Ngo40:


Thank you my brother...it was on the...and oh yeah I definitely know....life's been very good to me and will only get better! And I mean that...i can't take the negative mindset with me into a new year....sometimes you gotta drop the heavy baggage that weighs one down.
You'll love it when you get here.....

... Yea, we only live once, so we got to live Christ-like and enjoy ourselves in Christ way, there is so much fun in him you know? And we have to be very positive in all we do.....Yea, wifey told me the same, will be with you guys son, God's willing.

modelmike7:
... Yea, we only live once, so we got to live Christ-like and enjoy ourselves in Christ way, there is so much fun in him you know? And we have to be very positive in all we do.....Yea, wifey told me the same, will be with you guys son, God's willing.

When you get a chance to check that email, please reply it. I would love to hear your response.

Ngo40:


When you get a chance to check that email, please reply it. I would love to hear your response.

.... Okay sis i will by tomorrow. Thanks.

Ngo40:


Lol....it's fine. I'm happy you are getting a new phone. It's almost impossible to be without one now-a-days.
I can't even imagine what it was like before cell phones...
Lol...oh nothing to be sad about.. I was blessed tremendously....looking forward to this new year

When was your birthday