The meaning of my name — Part I
Every new acquaintance I make will eventually ask me the meaning of my name (Tèmítọ́pẹ́). There is usually something in their tone that used to surprise me: I would realize they believed knowing the meaning of someone’s name is not, for that person, the same as knowing the meaning of sentences in their mother tongue. This was especially the case when I was younger and there were not many kids around who could answer the same question confidently. I cannot recall having any knowledge that is older than the knowledge of the meaning of my name: it is the language I speak. Now that I know a bit more about European languages and names, I can understand the reason behind that tone. With a few exceptions, the names currently used in mainstream Western cultures originated in a language that the bearer does not speak; in fact, it is usually a language no one speaks. Whenever I think about this, I feel lucky and I feel the Yoruba people, like many indigenous peoples, possess a great treasure: if we have our language so close to us, in our names, how are we going to lose it? Unfortunately, it is possible; even though Yoruba is spoken by more than 30 million people and the Yoruba people themselves are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, there are serious concerns it is part of a fading cultural ecosystem and that future generations will cry or, worse, ignore its loss.
Makers of my luck have been my parents, who decided to prioritize Yoruba over English when we left Nigeria. Even today, Yoruba is our preferred medium of communication. It feels awkward to speak any other language with them, because any other language puts a thin, but visible, veil between us. I know this is the opposite of what happens in most Yoruba households I have known about in Italy, where I grew up, and in UK, where I am currently living. This phenomenon, of course, is not limited to Yoruba or Nigerian people alone. It usually takes as little as a generation for immigrants in the West to lose touch with their mother tongue; the loss and the struggle to reconnect were the theme of a beautiful poem, titled Mother India, I listened to recently and which I include here in its entirety, with the permission of the author, Zahràà Salloo.
Of the dohl drumming beats biting at my
When the sun sets, leaving a trail of saffron
In its wake, coating rolling fields of cottages,
I press my hands softly to my belly, rubbing
Circular motions of the wheelbarrow, vibrations
Of the dohl drumming beats biting at my
Heart, humming hymns that ink my skin,
Searching for space to seep in, and
Settle in thin valleys of veins that run through
Lal lands of flesh. I cradle the mango in my
Arms, its ripe body nestled between my bosom,
My silk sari caressing every soft moan, as I
Sway side to side, then bite firmly, juice oozing
From every pore, my fingers sticky with thickness,
My tongue seduced by its sweet fertility, sprouting
Roots from the tip of my tongue, twisting tea-leaves
And turmeric-tainted petals flowing out of my mouth,
To stand firm, free, from the fire of the sati that my
Des had strapped me to, applauding me as I burned
Through flames of orange, green and white, and
Inhaled the poisonous fumes of victory as they dumped
You in the dirt so deep that when I wanted to find you,
Digging with broken tools, and scattering your seeds
Into tarmac, waiting for you to grow in this barren Jamin,
They handed me basmati, jalfrezi, and poppadoms, and
Let you die with my thumb pricked by your thorn, reminding
Me when your body cracked in labour, blood spilling as
I was snatched from your womb, and suckled a foreign
Mother’s breast, her milk massacring my route back to
My beloved gareh.
The poem was recited as part of a series of poetry on race and resistance, and it is what caused me to finally sit at my desk and start typing this; I want to introduce you all to a little Yoruba (Yorùbá) by explaining not just the meaning of my name, but the general schemes under which most Yoruba names (Orukọ́) fall into. But first, a few linguistic points.
Tones
Yoruba is a tonal language (like many others) and a different inflexion over the same sequence of characters can drastically change the meaning of a word. I will try to provide the correct tone markings for every name whenever they are introduced.
Yoruba has 7 vowels: a, e, ẹ, i, o, ọ, u. The difference between o, e (o like coat and e like mate) and the open variants ọ, ẹ (ọ like son and ẹ like pet) is the first important tone difference. Furthermore, Yoruba has three tones: high, marked with an acute accent (á) mid, unmarked, and low, marked with a grave accent (à). So do not confuse ọbẹ (sauce) with ọbẹ́ (knife) or o bẹ́ (to be pierced, busted or to explode); do not call anyone olè (thief) if what you meant is ọlẹ́ (lazy) and pay attention to the difference between o pẹ́ (to take a long time, to delay) and ọpẹ́ (thanksgiving).
Gender
The Yoruba grammar is genderless, the Yoruba culture is not ordered around gender and structured on patriarchy in the same way that European cultures are. This might seem counter-intuitive now, given what we see, and I will surely come back to this matter in future, but I hope the light of the few linguistic examples I am going to give below will pierce trough the fog of current politics. (Yorubas’s don’t do gender, by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, is an illuminating read).
The words for female and male are respectively obirin and okurin. One does not depend on the other, instead they share, equally, a common suffix. Eniyan is the gender-neutral word for humans, much like the English person, but less ‘political’ than person. The western ideas of man and woman, meaning human beings of specific genders that have undergone and completed a gender-specific development, are not translatable in Yoruba; there are no words for them. There are no specific words to distinguish sons and daughters, every child is ọmọ, the sex can then be specified as ọmọ okurin or ọmọ obirin. This all seem to suggest that in the Yoruba language (hence in the culture), okurin and obirin carry no meaning other than biological traits, or, said otherwise, that no social meaning is attached to anatomy (at least not one that is detectable in language).
As a consequence most names are unisex, while a few of them are expected to be given to one particular gender. However, my guess is that even in the majority of the later cases, the expectation is generated by contemporary usages and external influences and not by meanings or origins.
Seniority
While gender does not play a large role, seniority does. Yoruba’s social relations are organized around seniority and two strangers that meet for the first time will quickly find a way to work out who has seniority in order to use the correct linguistic forms. Yoruba people refer to their seniors using a plural person, while prefixes (brother, sister, auntie, uncle) are always used together with personal names. In general, usage of personal names is frowned upon and, except in youth, is often avoided even between age-mates outside intimate situations. Two adults will often refers to each other with the name of their first born preceded by Babá or Mamá.
Yoruba names fall into the following 4 main categories; I am going to talk about the first two here:
- Oruko Amutorunwa: names brought from heavens
- Oruko Abiso: names given at birth
- Oruko Oriki: names given to pet
- Oruko Abiku: names for those who are born to die
Oruko Amutorunwa — Names from heaven
These are destiny names, assumed to be brought from heaven and depend on predetermined circumstance that precede or come together with the birth. Newborns are not given these names, they are born into them (although family members might fail to recognize it).
Taiwo and Kehinde, (Idowu and Alaba)
Two of the most common destiny names are Táíwò, and Kẹ́hìndé, one cannot speak of one without speaking of the other for reasons that will become immediately apparent.
Táíwò, and the linguistic variant Táíyé (or Táyé) are a short version of Taiyewo, from Omo — tò — áíyé— wò. Omo is child, tò is the verb for tasting, and wò is a a tone that signifies the completion of an action .
Kẹ́hìndé is K, a building block for adverbs, ẹ́hìn (the ‘h’ is not pronounced, but makes the ‘i’ heavier) is back, both the anatomical part and the relative position of something or somebody, dé is the verb for arriving (“nigbawo ni a de?”, when will we arrive, was our mantra when we were kids and our parents took took us to one of those insufferable long car journeys).
Taiwo is the one who comes first (first baby in a twin set) to taste the world and Kehinde is the one who comes last (second baby in a twin set). Whenever you meet yoruba twins, you will know one of them is Taiwo and one of them is Kehinde and, as I said earlier, it is not a name that needs to be given. The traditional story explains Taiwo’s intention in coming first is to look at the environment the twins are about to enter, decide whether it is a good one and grant the go ahead to Kehinde if he or she is satisfied; it is believed that Kehinde is the true elder of the two and that in fact she or he sent Taiwo out in an errand to taste the world: it is a myth reviving at every birth.
What about Ìdòwú and Àlàbá? Idowu is the first born after a twin set, while Alaba is the second (or fourth of a quadruplets). There is also a name for the third child after a set of twins, Idogbe, but I have not met any of those yet (no surprise there). Unfortunately, I do not know the etymology of these names names yet.
Ibeji, ibi(=birth)-eji(=two), are a central concept in Yoruba culture; which is surely connected with the fact that Yoruba, for reasons yet to explain, have the highest rates of twins in the world.
Yetunde and Babatunde
Yétúndé is composed of Yé, root of Iyé (=mother) tún, adverb for recurrence, and dé, seen above (arriving). In light of this, the foxes among you, or anyone that speaks an indo european language, will easily decompose Babátúndé in Babá(= father) — tún — dé.
Whenever a mother (grandmother) dies, if the next born in the family is a girl, she is Yetunde, mother has returned. If, instead, the dead grandparent is male and the first newborn also, then he is Babatunde, father has returned.
These names are not given when the dead grandparent and the first newborn are not of the same sex. They indicate the belief that the ancestor is back to life as the newborn. When you learn that the name of the Nigerian Nobel laureate Soyinka is Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, you have also learnt something about his family history.
Dada, Ojo and Aina
Seldom, a child is born with locked hairs, thus he is Dàda, which is also the term used in Yoruba to refer to dreadlocks. Dada is a term used widely in Nigeria and now part of Nigerian-English. Traditionally, ‘Dadas’ are believed to have particular character and health traits linked to their hairs and it is recommended that Dada hair are never combed. Nowadays, tradition is fading away together with its superstitions and the name disappearing. Some people are never told they are Dada, even though their families know they are.
Ojó, male, and Aina, female, are children born with their umbilical cord tied around their necks or, in general, with a difficult birth. This, of course, is not a rare occurrence, and especially Ojo is a common name (Aina, on the contrary, is usually not a name that stays attached to the girl).
Oruko Abiso — Names given at birth
These are names given by next of kins in a ceremony that is traditionally held between the sixth day and the ninth day after birth (one particular day in that range depending on the cultural background). These names are to be interpreted as the mother (or next of kin) talking, they are often a wish for the newborns and the families they are born into. These are the names most Yoruba people are known by (when they are not given English names) and this is the category my first name falls into. The number of names are in the thousands, I can only give a few examples here, taken from my family, but you can find out about many more in yorubaname.com.
Tèmítọ́pẹ́, Ti — èmi — tó — ọpẹ́
Ti : belonging to
èmí: me
tó : enough for, suffice for
ọpẹ́: gratefulness, thanksgiving
can be translate as Mine is worth celebrating.
Olúgbénga, Olú — gbé — mi — ga
Olú: lord (religious)
gbé: carry, lift
mi: me (preposition)
ga: high, be tall
can be translated as The Lord lifts me up.
Ọláwùmí, Ọlá — wù — mí
Ọlá: wealth
wù:attract
mí:me (preposition)
can be translated as Wealth attracts me.
Olúwafẹmi, Olúwa — fẹ — mi
Olúwa: lord (religious)
fẹ́: love, admire, want
mi: me (preposition)
can be translated as The lord loves me.
Bídèmí, Bí — dè — èmí
Bí: give birth to
dè: before (waiting for)
èmí: me
can be translated as Born before I returned and it is usually given to a child born when the father is away out of town or out of country, as my father was (in Italy), when my sister was born.
If you have made it here, I have already stolen 10 minutes of your time, so I am going to wrap up here, very inelegantly. If I have managed to instil some curiosity into the language and culture of my people, or to speak more Yoruba (if you yourself are one), then I will have accomplished all I set out to do.
