Don OkoloNewsOpinionWhat’s in a Name? How African names were substituted at baptism hotspots

When it impacts your culture and who you are…it matters

A Rose by any other name…

Maybe this Shakespearean adage couldn’t alter a Rose and her scheme of hodgepodge attributes of great smelling whiffs to stand as something else: A Rose would remain a Rose, if one called it by any other name.

Enter Jerry Rawlings of Ghana talking about nomenclature, the Christening of persons born in East, West, South and Central Africa, and of such consequence, the death of the African culture and everything she was uniquely known for, sandpapered off in that systematic, disentangling of her sinews from that tightly woven fabric by the masters of her destiny –the insipid, vacuous colonialists who came upon her shores in the days of yore.

Jerry Rawlings made great relevant points. The one that got me seeing double with revulsion was this, and I am paraphrasing here, I don’t mind you Christianizing me, but please do not westernize me. I sat back to think about that. I realized that we, as black Africans, have been had and that we have done a great deal in the propagation of the white man’s major scheme, the westernization of the African. I guess we couldn’t spit out this bleached and brutal cauldron they poured down our throats with one hand, while the other hand rubbed away at the pathway down with the soothing hands of a massage therapist.

That was the quintessential ‘Hook Line and Sinker’ swallow. As you can see, we are stuck with cheap porcelain, rusted metal hooks and loopy lines that were supposed to save us from drowning. But we drowned one hundred and fifty years ago.

Whether you believe it or not, this nightmare cannot be rewritten. The white man and her culture scored enough points in this game of culture restructuring we would never catch up to deliver a counter punch. Give it to them: they won the doggone game. My problem is why are we still helping him propagate the seeming victory he scored by his non-valiant deception in the name of offering Christianity into a world they believed was lost?

We weren’t lost. We were in our niche, where subtlety was at her best in its tropical form, Where our posture of benevolence with her savannah upbringing and warm tropical nudging stood us seven feet and up, and our magnanimity of spirit cooked up vibrant fares in the vales of plenty but required that we served it ripe and boiled it to perfection slowly and methodically, and then served it on a platter of pure earthenware with the same equanimity as Moses had when he presented God’s demands to Pharaoh.

They branded us with names like Monica, Silas, Donatus, Agnes and, even Jerry, (probably the stylized corruption of Jeremiah) inadvertently advancing the white man’s hold on us. We’ve been had –and royally, too.

English names, European names, aka, Christian names were viable substitutes, not just according to Jerry Rawlings, but according to any man who ever thinks rationally, or who thinks along the same vein as Shaka Zulu, or any of the great  African warriors of the past. African names were substituted at baptism hotspots. African names were rejected when proffered as if The Almighty Father would reject names like Obiageli, Okolo-Ojukwu, and Gwagwalada.  And I remember this because the African names so tendered do not have a saint in the realm of God with a name like that. So, they flat-out rejected our soul in the process of aligning us with the same Deity we have followed for thousands of years. They branded us with names like Monica, Silas, Donatus, Agnes and, even Jerry, (probably the stylized corruption of Jeremiah) inadvertently advancing the white man’s hold on us. We’ve been had –and royally, too.

We must have this run-away train stopped and, maybe, just maybe, we could rewrite these bad quotients destined to lead us to doom –you know, into that vast chasm of total annihilation of the black race. It is coming, and don’t you doubt it.

It is getting worse, people. Technology is working the kinks in the body-cultural with the same smoothness and efficacy as Michael Jackson moonwalk. The closeness of humanity by way of the fluid tapestry of information in everyone’s hand, in their cars and homes will always exacerbate the blending of these various cultures to the benefit of the white man. Now, you have blue blood Africans with far-fetched beliefs and cultural leanings to shame his/her ancestors. They make no attempt to relate to the cultures and traditions that gave birth to them; they would rather adopt sickening falsettos to sound more like their conquerors. Ok, we got that out of the way!

We must have this run-away train stopped and, maybe, just maybe, we could rewrite these bad quotients destined to lead us to doom –you know, into that vast chasm of total annihilation of the black race. It is coming, and don’t you doubt it. African languages would disappear in the melee; inter-marriages would have their toll. In some African households, they communicate in the English language and present their children as savvy and brilliant to their friends and neighbors because the child does not speak his/her native tongue. Like it is a badge of honor.

I speak three other languages including the one you abuse” That is a direct quote from a movie I saw a long time ago. Most Africans are westernized, and they would deny this fact if you asked them point blankly. That was what Jerry Rawlings was bemoaning. Even as her bane resides in the men and women who run their affairs, the ones they had chosen over the years to represent them, the greater shame black Africans have in embracing of foreign cultures they believe are superior to theirs.

All cultures, including that of the white man, have incredible virtues. The intrinsic worth of every culture is unfathomable and should demand strict adherence for those who value it. But I guess we got something out of it: Thank You Guys for JESUS CHRIST. I would let Everything You Rammed Down My Throat Go…But that One Person…the Second Person in the Trinity.

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