₦airaland Forum

This terrible act of children bearing their biological father's name as surname in Nigeria started with Millennials, and it is a very shameful thing culturally. Most of us do not understand the importance or significance of surnames. Surnames are not just names for the sake of it.

A surname is a way or medium of honouring your ancestor. Africans, over the years have been brainwashed by the western culture that our ancestors evil spirits. Due to this, many Africans attach evil to the name 'ancestor'.

Culturally in Africa, surnames are adopted in turns. You adopt your grandfather's name as your surname, and when you give birth, your child adopts your father's name as surname. When your own child gives birth, the child adopts your own name as surname. That is how it goes and that is how lineage are honoured and preserved.

Millennials and Gen Z Nigerians now give their children their names as surnames without any atom of respect for their fathers, thereby cutting off their fathers from the lineage. If you so much cherish your name, you can give it to one of your child and has Jnr attached to it. People do it. But not cutting off your own father from the lineage by making your kids adopt your own name as their surname. It is bad and alien to the African culture.

Do not be fooled by the white culture which wants you to believe that African ancestors connote evil. To be ancestor na turn by turn. One day, you too go be ancestor.

I don't think so .... anyone wey you choose, na you born them. But If your lineage na dangote or Otedola or any name wey carry weight or dey open doors, u no go wan change am... na poverty and sometimes lineage/family curse dey make most people wan breakout

The crap I read online this days ehn, it's amazing I can still form a lucid thought.

Adopting your ancestral name as a surname didn't start with millennials or GenZ. It started with the Europeanisation of our society

Seconded… it’s now d norm in our society

grandfather's name: Z
Father's Name: Y
Child's name: X

Child's full name: X Y Z

Another variant;
Ancentral Name or Strong Extended family Name like Awolowo, Dangote, Akpabio

In that case, Child's name: X Y Awolowo

Abi, how una dey do am that pikin bear your name as surname?

Much ado about someone else's life.

Ishilove:
The crap I read online this days ehn, it's amazing I can still form a lucid thought

It's really amazing. Absolute, total balderdash.

I think you have much time on your hands.

You talk too much, must you create topics from every thought that stream through your mind.

I don't even know the meaning of my surname and still wrote it for my children in their birth certificate.
My surname is a generational name, even my grandfather inherited the name.

Cut off ur surname and cut yourself off the history of your people. However, some people do not find the history that comes with their surname befitting, don't blame them if they dissociate from such a name that will remind them of their ancestor antisocial action.

You're not far from the truth. It gives better genealogical map and tree tracing. It helps in tracing where one is from.

Rapmoney, God bless you. It is very shameful!

It's not by name but by genetics.
Name is an appellation

If you like change your name and your father's name, genetics do not understand names

Ishilove:
The crap I read online this days ehn, it's amazing I can still form a lucid thought

gen z spotted. It's not wrong though.

Much ado about someone else's life.
Why don't you mind your own business and name your child whatever you want to name him/her?

Ereolamide:
I think you have much time on your hands.

You talk too much, must you create topics from every thought that stream through your mind.

What's annoying is the constant push of irrelevant thoughts to FP.

This shows you don’t even know the history you claim.

In the past, children were called by their father’s name and not grandfather or family name.

They say this person the child of that person from this family.

Surname is the introduction of the whites.

Try to read and understand your history before saying stuff that isn’t right.

What do you mean by it started with millennials, my father in law gave all his children his own name as surname, if he isn't dead, he would be close to 95 now, and besides change is constant.
Culture won't be the same forever.
Time would eventually catch up with everything.
I don't know how it's so hard for people to understand that it isn't people that's changing, it's how the world is programmed to be.

VaginaAcademic:
gen z spotted. It's not wrong though.

You're the gen z if you don't know ishilove on Nairaland.

I came from an oil producing community in the Niger/Delta but I was born in the city, I didn't have the opportunity to visit my hometown until I was around 23 when I needed an important document from my local government of origin. That was the day I knew how powerful a surname could be. Immediately I showed the official my identity and he saw my surname, he asked other applicants to wait while he personally process my documents. He told me later that my family name is very popular and well respected in the town. This is the same surname I've once attempted to change because it has a link with an idol (god of thunder). Thank God I didn't make such mistake. Years later, I started playing politics. I couldn't speak the dialect of my people, I was like a stranger among them but they did not treat me like stranger. Once they heard my family name, they all embraced me and my children. Many opportunities have come our way today because of the family name.

My father did not use his grandfather's name as surname. He used his father's name as surname. But my siblings and I bear our paternal grandfather's name as our surname. My elder brother's children bear the same surname with us (that is their great grandfather's name). We never had the need to argue about the surname we bear.

But there is something you failed to consider in your analysis. In this modern world, asset declaration is done legally in most cases and the name that next of kins beer go a long way to facilitate asset inheritance. This is why bearing your father's name can make it easy for you to possess your father's assets. In the olden days when everyone was using grandfather's name as surname, assets declaration and inheritance solely depended on the tradition of the land.

For the use of grandfather's name as surname to continue to work without creating a problem, every father has to write a will and the will must be signed by a lawyer. So, as you encourage people to use their grandfather's name as surname, encourage them to write wills before dying.

Ishilove:
The crap I read online this days ehn, it's amazing I can still form a lucid thought.

Adopting your ancestral name as a surname didn't start with millennials or GenZ. It started with the Europeanisation of our society

No, you don’t even know what you are saying.
Africans never had “surnames.” They had clans.

Go and educate yourself. Crying about Europe always will not help you. Europe helped you better than your African culture did.

Anyone can bear any name

They can even erase your linage totally by choosing a new name

Sheuns:
This shows you don’t even know the history you claim.

In the past, children were called by their father’s name and not grandfather or family name.

They say this person the child of that person from this family.

Surname is the introduction of the whites.

Try to read and understand your history before saying stuff that isn’t right.

Before the whites, you never had people referring to children by their father’s name.

A family name is not a father’s name according to the African culture. It is the clans name. Or more locally, it is the “compounds name.”

Most are trying to copy the western world leaving their heritage behind.

In my family we uses the surname of our great-great- grandfather, that's how it is, the name most be kept to honor the family tree. No one dares to deviate, if you do unfortunately you wouldn't be able to bend when the wind blows.

PlasmaTV:
Much ado about someone else's life.
Why don't you mind your own business and name your child whatever you want to name him/her?

The least you can do to yourself is to open yourself to LEARN.

Teaching yourself may be too hard a thing to do. Others have volunteered to help with that. So, why won’t you just humble yourself and learn?

Let everyone do what gives them peace of mind.

The "Surnames" started with someone, so why can't my own name also be the beginning of another surname?

If I decide to name them after a 3rd/4th generation patriarch good and if I decide to give them my own name, that's fine too.

MrHighSea:
grandfather's name: Z
Father's Name: Y
Child's name: X

Child's full name: X Y Z

Another variant;
Ancentral Name or Strong Extended family Name like Awolowo, Dangote, Akpabio

In that case, Child's name: X Y Awolowo

Abi, how una dey do am that pikin bear your name as surname?

Absolutely!

You got that right.

Rapmoney:
This terrible act of children bearing their biological father's name as surname in Nigeria started with Millennials, and it is a very shameful thing culturally. Most of us do not understand the importance or significance of surnames. Surnames are not just names for the sake of it.

A surname is a way or medium of honouring your ancestor. Africans, over the years have been brainwashed by the western culture that our ancestors evil spirits. Due to this, many Africans attach evil to the name 'ancestor'.

Culturally in Africa, surnames are adopted in turns. You adopt your grandfather's name as your surname, and when you give birth, your child adopts your father's name as surname. When your own child gives birth, the child adopts your own name as surname. That is how it goes and that is how lineage are honoured and preserved.

Millennials and Gen Z Nigerians now give their children their names as surnames without any atom of respect for their fathers, thereby cutting off their fathers from the lineage. If you so much cherish your name, you can give it to one of your child and has Jnr attached to it. People do it. But not cutting off your own father from the lineage by making your kids adopt your own name as their surname. It is bad and alien to the African culture.

Do not be fooled by the white culture which wants you to believe that African ancestors connote evil. To be ancestor na turn by turn. One day, you too go be ancestor.

Good point you raised here. I’m changing the surname of my baby girl now to my popman🥳

Na wa o.

Nothing wey no be problem again.

Why will someone even attempt to change his ancestral surname ?

Do they have any plan to sleep with their cousin in the future?

IamAtAnger:
I don't think so .... anyone one you choose, na you born them. But If your lineage na dangote or Otedola or any name wey carry weight or dey open doors, u no go wan change am... na poverty dey make most people wan breakout

It’s money for you about everything.
And something told you that if you change your father’s name, you will break out of poverty.

Lolz.
Africans are funny.

Rapmoney:
This terrible act of children bearing their biological father's name as surname in Nigeria started with Millennials,

Not exactly true...it dates back from the colonial era.

Once we started getting western education, when the first kids were registered in the new western education schools, many of the colonial era teachers and missionaries used the names of the fathers of the children as surnames. Some even used the villages of the kids as surnames (that's how our first prime minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa got to be called that...Tafawa balewa is his home town. )

Yeah, and while some continued using the surname they got at these schools for their families, others changed the same convention


Two examples from African countries

The current leader of Togo is Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé HIS Surname is his father's first name Gnassingbe Eyadema...whose surname was his father's first name

Another example that goes the other way....Barack Hussein Obama junior, the son of Barrack Hussein Obama senior, the son of Hussein Onyango Obama, the son of Obama.