The Story of a Name
As the short tale grows into the long tale, the original intention or motif is apt to get abolished and find itself superseded by quite a different one — Mark Twain
Zara Mohamed Abdulmajid left Mogadishu and became Iman. One of the singular icons with a single name like Sade. She then married a punk rocker from Brixton, David Robert Jones — we know him as David Bowie. Robert Allen Zimmerman won a Nobel Prize in Literature for his contributions to the Great American songbook, we, of course, know him as Bob Dylan, the troubadour who wrote songs like the song about the boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter — who was destined to be a heavyweight champion before his career was derailed. Cassius Clay’s career was also derailed for standing up to a system he didn’t agree with. Try to marry the image of young Cassius as old Muhammed Ali carrying that flame into the Olympic stadium in1996 — The Nigerian Super Eagles won gold in football that year. Soccer to the Yanks! Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul Jabbar — a hall of Fame Basketball Player and Malcome Little became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz or more famously Malcolm X. What is in a name?
This is about names. The ones we like, the ones we call things, how we refer to others, what we are called and what we want people to call us — how we see ourselves. This is also about products — the ones we build and create and the ones we consume. Serendipity has gifted us some of the best products in the world but the truly profound products have been a result of deliberate action. From time to time, deliberateness meets serendipity setting a stage for the sublime. We started this company as a curious conversation stemming from an experience, an itch we wanted to scratch but nothing beyond that — this is why we chose the name that I am announcing that we have begun the process of shedding. As the conversation deepened and became more meta, we realized that the itch was more than just an itch, it was something bigger, the potential was more transformational and with enough courage and boldness — we have a chance to rearrange the world, to solve a set of problems that while often disparate would fall under the umbrella of building a better world. We saw this new challenge and we rerouted our vision and with that and just like the people mentioned in the first paragraph, we knew we had to assume an identity befitting of our shifting tales.
Names matter. This writer is not a parent but my co-founder is and what an experience it must be for expecting couples trying to come up with a name for their child — housed in that name, their history, their hopes and their prayers for their soon to arrive gift-bearing messages, fresh from god’s eyes. The process must be fraught with a lot of emotions. Our process was too, and it was long, and we must have rejected 50 names.
Our new name is Bento. The URL will be bento.africa. A little while back we read a book — This Could be Our Future — A Manifesto for a more Generous World by Yancey Strickler (one of the founders of Kickstarter), this book got us to look deeply at kitchenware — yes, you read that right — The Bento Box — a staple of Japanese culture. Then Bento box or plate with its clear demarcations is different from a regular plate where your rice can mix with your stew and plantains in an uncontrolled way. The Bento plate, however, calls for deliberate action, to mix your protein with your carbs and maybe ignore your veggies but generally, it houses the basics of a well-balanced diet in careful proportions.
Our journey from our old identity to our new one has been in place for a while now and in a few weeks, we will solidify the changes visually and add some features that will illuminate our vision for a world that is less fragile with redundancies built into the basic definitions of a good life. A world that provides peace of mind for all those we have the great privilege of serving. Our journey has just begun and even amidst a world that feels so uncertain — the light of hope still shines.
To evolving,
— Team Bento
