afam4eva:

@eldee
So, names like James, Jeremiah, Jesus are christian names? Pls explain, because the ignorance being displayed on this thread is legendary.

are you 4 real??

afam4eva:

@eldee
So, names like James, Jeremiah, Jesus are christian names? Pls explain, because the ignorance being displayed on this thread is legendary.

The fact that they're English translations of Jewish names is a side-issue. . . their origins are from Christianity, and the intention of most people that use them as names for their kids are Christian values.

Now Christianity and the act of being religious is a big part of modern Nigerian culture, there's nothing wrong with names like James and John in my opinion.

@erico
Yes, I'm for real. You nko?

@eric02k2

Go and learn some history. Africans have the longest history, even before the Europeans discovered themselves, They too can attest to that, hence, the research they have been conducting. Do not be brainwashed. It seems you are suffering from self hatred.

@eldee
I cant belive afam4eva was asking that question, did he not bother to check the bible b4 he came on here  lol thses names where in existence long B4 English,anyway some people dnt kno

Ifecotag:

@eric02k2

Go and learn some history. Africans have the longest history, even before the Europeans discovered themselves, They too can attest to that, hence, the research they have been conducting. Do not be brainwashed. It seems you are suffering from self hatred.

lol u r funny ,well,lets test you so called broad knowledge and un brainwashed brain,Tell me the history of the name JAMES.Im waiting no bashing, just lets see howmuch history you know.

@erico
Your ignorance is top-notch. I have to give it to you. How dare you call a 100% unadulterated judaic names, Christian names. When did christianity start?  People have been bearing those names thousands of years BC. So, what are you talking about. Infact, it's people who practice Judaism that should bear such names. Correct me if I'm wrong, I've never come across the word "christianity" in the Bible.

Thank God i have no problem with this, my three names are all Igbo names ending with Chukwu

afam4eva:

@erico
Your ignorance is top-notch. I have to give it to you. How dare you call a 100% unadulterated judaic names, Christian names. When did christianity start?  People have been bearing those names thousands of years BC. So, what are you talking about. Infact, it's people who practice Judaism that should bear such names. Correct me if I'm wrong, I've never come across the word "christianity" in the Bible.

well now you r insultive, but I just realised you r 25 but at that age I have already finished Uni and well groomed,so you think Im ignorant of the name JAMES you failed to tell me its history or where and how it was derived or its origin??

afam4eva:

@erico
Your ignorance is top-notch. I have to give it to you. How dare you call a 100% unadulterated judaic names, Christian names. When did christianity start?  People have been bearing those names thousands of years BC. So, what are you talking about. Infact, it's people who practice Judaism that should bear such names. Correct me if I'm wrong, I've never come across the word "christianity" in the Bible.

This is kinda dumb to be honest.

1. They are adulterated Hebrew names. . . hence the fact that they're spelt and pronounced differently according to the language.
2. They are names with biblical ties . . . are we seriously going to try to separate Christianity from the Bible?

I don't get this? why u dey get headache for name wey parents decide to give their pikin? How e take concern u?
Just like so many pointed out the next thing after names una go begin say our religion na imported; make them begin teach us chemistry & geography with yoruba,then degree say anybody wey wan post for nairaland must do am in any Nigerian language (only in hausa, igbo and yoruba oh!(as if na the only languages wey dey naija)[size=8pt][/size]).
Really how is this different from being a boko haramist?

@ eldee
the boy is 25 years Old hence his reasoning,we dont know his level of education yet hence teh decline in rational ways of thinking
@ afam4eva
I hate to insult people on here but for your stupidity I will break that rule your ignorance is a container load
JAMES is  HEBREW meaning or translated to mean SUPPLANTER
and HEBREW WAS THE LANGUAGE JESUS SPOKE
Now there aint nothing christian about that, i was making refrence to the bible cos of the age of the name if you could barely think out of the Box which you definately lack

@ Mr Erico

The poster emphasized 'English' and not 'Jewish or Hebrew' names. Westerners borrowed Jewish names, and anglicized it.

Binyamin to Benjamin, Yoshua to Joshua and so on. Even, there was a time when Europeans can tell who is Jewish by their names.

Mark zuckerberg--- Founder of facebook= Jewish
Paul Krugman= Nobel Laureate , Economics= Jewish and countless of them.

In fact , there was a time in Europe, Jewish people began to change their names to avoid discrimination. The core reason for the establishment of Jewish state--Israel, is for them to be able to espouse their Jewishness proudly without being a target of some sort.

@erico
And how old are u exactly. With the ignorance you've displayed on this thread, I'd have guessed that you're probably in high school and forgive your mental poverty and continure to provide food for your thought. But since you said you're older than 25, I must say they you should be ashamed of yourself. Youstated that names like James etc are Jewish names with english adulteration. With the same mouth you said they are Christians names. So, I guess Jewish is the language for christians, so, we should make do with our native languages too. You speak from both sides of your mouth.

My name is Andrew. Sadly, the name is in all my certificates.

hi andrew can i talk to you for a minute?

you silly lil boy, Im way older than 25 more than 10 years, why dont you google the name JAMES and paste what you come up with on here, the name is HEBREW
and well you tell me one English NAME YOU KNOW

Ifecotag
I understood what he OP said, my argument is for sombody to tell me or mention one name that is ENGLISH that we name our kids in NIGERIA, wel let me start with you name one Plz i would give an example of what English name look like ie WOOD.thats a typical ENGLISH NAME

blame gej

Tis neither here nor there. Having an african name doesn't increase one jot of africaness in you- Ask all the afroamericans with silly africanized names like moesha, ayeesha and kaeesha. Likewise an english or bible name doesn't erode where you're from in any way.

The main reason why we bear Western Names is that when the first Europeans arrived at our settlements, they asked: "What is your name?"
and we answered: "My name is Obinna (Not my name) Nwa Anicho".
The European then proceeded in saying "Your name is not valid, you must select a valid 'Judeo-Christian' name" and thus we initially began answering names like: Jacob, John, Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Andrew, Jonathan, Jeremiah and etc.

How about,Muhammed,and Zainab, many of Nigerians ditch their native names for "arabic" names, not only western names.

kabukabu50:

How about,Muhammed,and Zainab, many of Nigerians ditch their native names for "arabic" names, not only western names.

these are Muslim names.

Bottom line, most people who name their children Christian names have inferiority complex and want to belong. Nothing worse than meeting a girl who is from Nigeria tell you her name is "Shemika Nwokoro" or Jessica Ogunbiyi. Be proud of your culture. Don't let the white man rub you of your identity.

And to all the mugus who say a name is not important and that people should name their children whatever name they like, check your history. A name signifies pride and cultural identity. When slaves were brought to America, the first thing the white man did was to change their African names.

But muslims belief you got to have an arabic name for you to be truely becomes a muslim,how true is this?

I don't know why we are arguing about this matter.
The OP and the people who support his point of view are imbecilic dolts! End of story.

Using their logic, D'Banj (doesn't use a Christian/English name) is more 'african' and 'patriotic' than Herbert Macaulay ever was.
Sani Abacha should be more revered than Nelson Mandela.

Perhaps[b] Patrice[/b] Lumumba must have suffered from 'inferiority complex'. Ditto for Robert Mugabe.


This topic is almost as stoopid as the one last year where someone claimed all our problems in Nigeria came from the fact that the country was named by a white woman.

Princek12:

Bottom line, most people who name their children Christian names have inferiority complex and want to belong. Nothing worse than meeting a girl who is from Nigeria tell you her name is "Shemika Nwokoro" or Jessica Ogunbiyi. Be proud of your culture. Don't let the white man rub you of your identity.

And to all the mugus who say a name is not important and that people should name their children whatever name they like, check your history. A name signifies pride and cultural identity. When slaves were brought to America, the first thing the white man did was to change their African names.

Even Malcolm X retained his first name without any qualms, and he was 1000x the man you'll ever be. Which African tribe did the name 'Malcolm' originate from? Can you convince anyone that he was suffering from 'inferiority complex'?
The only positive thing about this topic is that it brings out many of the intellectual midgets on Nairaland that we may know them. I will not take you seriously on Nairaland ever again.

Nobody's saying that bearing a native name makes you more African than someone else. The point is that many Nigerians look down on their native names. So, to then they think they're more superirior or enlightened if they go by an oyibo name. Having an indegenoug name is just a way of showing how proud you're of your culture and also helps in propagating it. We want our languages to be able to compete with other popular languages such as English, Spanish etc.

afam4eva:

Nobody's saying that bearing a native name makes you more African than someone else. The point is that many Nigerians look down on their native names. So, to then they think they're more superirior or enlightened if they go by an oyibo name.

You and your cohorts have made a blanket statement, condemning use of non-native names as if ALL Nigerians who use them do so because of some 'inferiority complex'. It's a brainless thing to generalize, sorry.

afam4eva:

Having an indegenoug name is just a way of showing how proud you're of your culture and also helps in propagating it.

We heard the same argument for the use of tribal marks before. Tell me, how many of your kids will you give tribal marks? Or if you have kids, how many have you already marked?
I suspect the answer to that is ZERO. How does hypocrisy taste?

To add my 2 kobo, I have always been suspicious of Africans that give their children names like Shirley, ashley, William,Alex,  Brian, Kelvin and such names, and that is where the problem lies in that these names have no cultural, personal or religious meaning.
Another thing we need to understand is that judo-xtain names are different to English names , take for instance this scenario as it is meant to happen, " a child is born, traditionally family members give him/her traditional names or a name to honour a close relation or friend( even if English as listed above). If the family is xtain on the christening the religious leader should ask the family to choose a religious name of any language as appropriate e.g joh, peter, Sarah, James , oluwaseyi, chuckwu emeka . If Muslim an Islamic name is given as appropriate e.g aishat, Mohammed, Ahmed, suliat.

As concerns African-Americans who choose African names they mostly choose swahili and ashanti names that had a meaning and even yoruba names, this came along with a general African awakening they didn't just choose the name they choose and leant of the culture.

People that say a name means little should go to places like Ireland , wales and Scotland where Celtic tribes reside and note how schiobhain, Aodhan(Aiden), màire(Mary), Eibhilin( Eileen) are tribal cultural names with their English versions alongside. You can really anger a Celtic person by pronouncing or spelling their names in an English way trust me I grew up in Ireland and I've seen people take it very personal. Intact more kids are receiving very gaelic names to honour the culture.
How a nigerian can come to be named Brian surprises me except where the individual is named to honour a friend by that name or given a gaelic version to honour a relevant culture.

Please don't get me started on moesha,  shanequa, kendra, etc because those are just silly names contrived to by silly people they have no meaning .

The name you are given carries a meaning be it in any language, and that carries power. I had an Irish lecturer who pronounced my name kehinde fluently never had to correct him, do I need to say he was a favourite.

Interesting, very interesting indeed.
Yes, having an English or Biblical (Hebrew/Jewish) name doesn't necessarily decrease  African someone is.
But I think we have to maintain our tradition of naming people our cultural names though I'm ok with names like James, Peter, Esther cos they are biblical. But names like Richard, Jessica, Jennifer, Ernest, Clement, Henry, Collins, Anita,Tracy, Herbert etc have their origin to be Welsh, English or French, these are native name of people from somewhere else.

Why most you give your children a name from another man's country? Some children who also have  both local and foreign even prefer to use the foreign one, some even modernize local name to sound English eg Chukwuka/Chukwuma - chucks, Dolapo - Dolly, Aanuoluwapo - Any, Chinagoromu - Chi-chi and so on. Maybe inferiority complex maybe not.
These days, people look down upon local names and see having one to be primitive, which is very bad.
Some of the people called Shelly, Tracy, Portia, Cassandra, Pierre don't  even know the meaning of their name SMH

Learn fro the Chinese, Koreans and Eastern Europeans, they have very difficult to pronounce names yet they keep them.
Sade Adu
Chinua Achebe
Kofi Annan
Kunta Kinte
Wole Soyinka
Kwame Nkrumah
Buchi Emecheta
Seikue Toure
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Prominent British actor) to mention but a few
all made it with their African names, google them if you've heard any of the names.

sweet_gala:

People that say a name means little should go to places like Ireland , wales and Scotland where Celtic tribes reside and note how schiobhain, Aodhan(Aiden), màire(Mary), Eibhilin( Eileen) are tribal cultural names with their English versions alongside. You can really anger a Celtic person by pronouncing or spelling their names in an English way trust me I grew up in Ireland and I've seen people take it very personal. Intact more kids are receiving very gaelic names to honour the culture.

Everyone knows a lot of the Irish harbor an ancient hatred for the English after centuries of oppression. Why give this flawed sample as an example?

folahann:

Interesting, very interesting indeed.
Yes, having an English or Biblical (Hebrew/Jewish) name doesn't necessarily decrease  African someone is.
But I think we have to maintain our tradition of naming people our cultural names though I'm ok with names like James, Peter, Esther cos they are biblical. But names like Richard, Jessica, Jennifer, Ernest, Clement, Henry, Collins, Anita,Tracy, Herbert etc have their origin to be Welsh, English or French, these are native name of people from somewhere else.

This doesn't make any sense. Why is it ok to give children Hebrew names but suddenly becomes Haram to give children names with German, English or french origin? What makes them different because they are in the Bible?

sweet_gala:

To add my 2 kobo, I have always been suspicious of Africans that give their children names like Shirley, ashley, William,Alex,  Brian, Kelvin and such names, and that is where the problem lies in that these names have no cultural, personal or religious meaning.

1. Quick question: Are you also suspicious of Africans with no Facial tribal marks?
2. Are you also suspicious of Africans who wear 'foreign' clothes like Jeans?

Finally, if you believe these names you quoted have no 'personal' meaning, you're beyond hope.