Fighting Female Inferiority Starts With Owning Our Names.
an essay on why freedom is an illusion until women’s names are theirs to define.
It was December 2016. The last time I was in the East to celebrate Christmas. December meant going to weddings and visiting family members in Arochukwu and Umuahia. Family members who often questioned why the then 17-year-old me could not remember how they had taken care of me at age six.
I remember we went to a wedding of one of my cousins at Eziukwu, which is my mother’s ancestral homestead in Agbagwu, Arochukwu. It was not the wedding that fascinated me.
What fascinated me the most about the Eziukwu home, was a well-detailed family tree containing names of the close to twenty generations of men that had created the Torty Onoh dynasty in Agbagwu.
The only problem? There were no women’s names. Not the wives. Not the daughters. No single woman was included in the family tree documenting my mother’s lineage which goes all the way back to the 1700s.
Now, I have always loved names. Unlike lumping people into figures, identifying and saying the names of people gives them a semblance of humanity.
A name to me is the first signifier that a person is a human being. It is until a child is named that they are considered welcome and totally human in Igbo culture.
So when women have our names and naming processes blatantly erased, misnamed and given to men to decide on, we essentially say that women’s lives are not real.
It is not only in my mother’s family that I have noticed a pattern of erasure. In my father’s family, I can trace my ancestry up to six generations using my father’s name.
It goes like this:
Ukabia gave birth to Ezuruonye.
Ezuruonye gave birth to Onuoha.
Onuoha gave birth to Nwosu.
Nwosu gave birth to Ugwunna.
Ugwunna gave birth to Nduka.
Nduka gave birth to Angel.
I have always wondered why the name of the woman who gave birth to Ezuruonye was not documented. Surely the truth is that no legacy is continued and no family is maintained without the back breaking work of women. If her name was erased, what my forefathers in essence want me to know, is that women are merely tools in the propagation of a legacy.
In the past, I used to say things like women should strive to make a name for ourselves so we do not get erased. But fuck that sincerely.
I do not know any detail about Ezuruonye except the fact that he is my ancestor. It was not a requirement, that he had to be great at farming or trade before his humanity was considered worthy enough to be included in the oral praise chants which are the major medium for preserving our lineage history.
It is sad that society teaches young women and girls to see the names we currently answer as temporary. A lot of girls hold back from living their lives fully because to them, their real-life starts when they get the name that makes them human i.e when they get married.
They do not consider their achievements done with their own last name as worthy because the life in which they did all these, is not truly theirs.
How do we fight the idea that women are not inferior or second to men if women live all our lives as though it is borrowed?
How do we fight the idea that women are truly complete in and of themselves if we still make life difficult for women who do not get married and those who do not change their names upon marriage?
How do we question the idea that marriage isn’t ownership and the transfer of women like property if women are not psychologically secure in our names?
If women know at the back of our minds that though we may get married and have the peripheral respect that comes with a man’s name, our ability to ensure he does not take his name back through throwing us out for not being ”good wives” is contingent to our worth, peace and respect in the eyes of society.
I used to judge women who upon marriage, cleared their entire Instagram feed and only started posting from the wedding. Or the women who deleted their Twitter accounts and created new ones. Or even the women who for months would have ”Mrs. X” as their Twitter names.
I used to judge women like that but I no longer do.
They are only acting in line with sexist commandments that say that a woman’s real life begins upon marriage. Some people would argue that they do these things to signify a new beginning. But their husbands hardly ever clear out their Instagram feeds. Because their husbands know that marriage is just another beginning or phase like graduating. It is not the ultimate beginning that debunks all other phases they went through.
The truth is until women are secure in the knowledge that their names are theirs, they would live their lives holding their breaths waiting for the God-King whose name shall make them human and who invariably will make them worthy of a slice of illusionary respect.
I recently painstakingly found the names of some of my female ancestors.
Now my declaration of faith is this,
On my maternal end,
I am Angel Chinenyenwa Nduka-Nwosu.
Daughter of Ugonma Esther (Onoh) Nduka-Nwosu.
Daughter of Mercy Mgbokwo (Okoroji) Onoh.
Daughter of Aviazunwa Priscilla (Okoro) Okoroji.
Daughter of Mkpinweze Okoro.
I am Angel Chinenyenwa Nduka-Nwosu.
Daughter of Ugonma Esther (Onoh) Nduka-Nwosu.
Daughter of Ezeogo Isaac Okwara Onoh.
Son of Mrs. Sarah Ijiko (Ihendu) Onoh.
On my paternal end,
I am Angel Chinenyenwa Nduka-Nwosu
Daughter of Ndukaku Lincoln Nwosu.
Son of Mrs. Virginia Nwanyibeke (Nwaubani) Nwosu.
Daughter of Mrs. Akuugbo Nwaubani.
I am Angel Chinenyenwa Nduka-Nwosu.
Daughter of Ndukaku Lincoln Nwosu.
Son of Ugwunna Nwosu-Onuoha.
Son of Mrs. Ugbala Nwosu-Onuoha.
Let it be said that my declaration of faith is this,
I am Angel Chinenyenwa Nduka-Nwosu, in the collective memory of my ancestors and lineage I shall NOT be erased.
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