There are many in the newer generation, and I would not be surprised if there are some in the older generation, who do not know that Beijing, the Chinese capital that just hosted the 29th Olympiad, was until recently known as Peking. The city of Mumbai in India was actually called Bombay. The two countries, China and India, have since gone ahead to effect changes to restore the names of their cities and towns to their original ones.
Africa’s problems with colonisation had not only been that of exploitation and indoctrination. It also involved a more sinister and humiliating one — ALIENATION. Having been detached from ourselves with new names, Africans, for years, have been battling within themselves for self-realisation without success because we do not want to believe that names play a serious psychological role in identity awareness.
The examples of China and India only go to establish the fact that Africans were not the only victims of Western infiltration of other people’s cultures. The difference, as was evident, is that while others have tried to recover their self-esteem and restore their self-dignity, we Africans are still waiting for some benevolent outsider to come and confess to us one day, that they have done us a great harm and that it will be better for our psyche, independence, cultural redemption and dignity as a people to go back for the indigenous names they have surreptitiously taken away from us.
The names came in various forms through different routes. There were those that were indigenous names but which because of difficulty in pronunciation, were misspelt and mispronounced. That is why today, we have the Akims instead of the Akyems; Ashantis instead of Asantes; Akwapims instead of Akuapems and many others. In this category, one could say the damage is not so much, since it is easy to go back to the original pronunciation.
In another category are names of places that have been totally replaced by foreign ones and unless you are a student of history or driven by curiosity, you will never know that Cape Coast is the same as Oguaa; Saltpond, Akyemfo; Elmina, Edina; Winneba (Windy Bay), Simpa and Dixcove, Mfuma. That means the original names are lost, maybe for ever. But we do not mind losing a national heritage such as the names of our towns in this manner.
Some of the names came with imperialist motives. That was how almost all our natural landmarks like rivers, lakes and mountains came to be known by foreign names. These names actually originated from the countries the so-called explorers who claimed to have discovered us and our land and all that are on it, came from. In the process of doing so, we made some fundamental mistakes from which not even our professors of geography and history could save us the embarrassment and national humiliation. Afadja-To (Afadjato), is an Ewe name, meaning Afadja Mountain. Soaked in that colonial mentality, we decided to misname this natural monument — the highest point in Ghana located in the Volta Region, and forced our children to imbibe this information for more than 50 years that we regained our independence from colonial rule.
There is the Asu-Kawkaw (Red River), which we have decided to name River Asukawkaw. These are just two examples, and I know there are similar ones that go to illustrate how we have duplicated the names of our rivers, mountains and lakes, because we have failed to take due cognisance of our language.
The greatest damage was reserved for personal names. These names, rooted in colonial history, came from several fronts. Some were created to suit the tongue of the colonialists. For example, the name Ghartey, which has become very popular in Simpa because of its links with royalty, was Gyateh. I got to know this because a senior member of the Ghartey Family, who was once the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), told his class in Broadcasting at the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana. The name got corrupted and became Ghartey, because the colonialists could not pronounce it well. Since then, Ghartey has become part of our history books and every year, during the Aboakyir Festival, the name Ghartey, which is the title of one of two royal houses (the other being Ayirebi-Acquah) becomes prominent.
The good thing is that the old broadcaster said he had since made amends by restoring the family name by giving the true and proper name, Gyateh, to his children. How many others have come into the limelight in this way?
Others were given to portray the work or job that was associated with us in relation to them. So if you prepare meals, you are Cook. The original name is lost and we have in its place a Cook Family. There are the Butlers, the Brews, the Riversons, Mallets (Omelette), and their conglomerates such as Brew-Butlers, Brew-Riversons.
With time, we became so fascinated with foreign names that it became fashionable to coin any fancy name by adding a few letters to local names, the most common being SON or SEN. So any thing plus either of these suffixes forms a name. So that someone called Obuor can Europeanise it into Rock and add SON and then a modern name, ROCKSON, the son of Rock, is created. They are too many to mention and almost every coastal town has its fair share but with a heavier concentration in areas where the Europeans first made their landing on the coast of the then Gold Coast Colony.
Some of the names could not be avoided. They came about as a result of marriage or procreation. When those foreigners finally depart this country, they leave behind their children, grandchildren and others who carry on with the naming process.
The missionaries did not come alone with Bible and religion. They made sure that the transformation was total and so the indigenes must be given new names, hence what became commonly known as Christian names. It, therefore, came to pass that any fancy European name became a sacred name here, to symbolise our acceptance of God.
In families where Europeanised names already exist, it becomes obvious that a person’s name cannot necessarily tell which part of the country he/she comes from. Sometimes one could hazard a guess that the origins of that person will lie along the coastal belt, even though that may not be true in some cases.
It is like the Ghanaian is desperately running away from him/herself. So pervasive is the foreign name craze that our football teams have joined in. So if you hear that Arsenal is playing Asante Kotoko, you may be making a mistake if you conclude that the Porcupine Warriors are in a tough encounter with the Gunners from London. Our version of Arsenal are based at Berekum in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Somebody may ask; what is in a name? Yes, there may not be anything in a name. But when a people become obsessed with names of other people, then it means we are taking the psychological bend. In a situation where we are fighting a lot of complexes, especially inferiority complex, and still struggling with identity crisis, we need to worry about the excessive adulation of foreign names.
For the personal names, we could do very little about them. But for God’s sake, let us retrace the names of our towns, villages, rivers, lakes and mountains and go back to our roots and end the tautology.
We will not win any medals adopting foreign names. It will only mean that we are not fit to be what God created us to be and reinforce the generally held perception that the Black man lacks self-confidence and is incapable of standing on his own.
There is an explanation why our brothers and sisters who were taken into slavery lost their identities in terms of names. What about those of us on the Mother Continent? What excuse do we have and what inspiration or even solace do we offer our Diasporan relations if we should also lose our identity in such a careless manner?
If the Chinese, the Indians and other countries have refused to be given new names, why should we not?
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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