When the Catholic Church Names You

“Very generous of you, Dr. Mandi.” I spoke too brightly.

“Ah, there’s the issue of nomenclature to iron out. I’m quite happy with my initials. You must call me S. P. J. C.”

“That would be presumptuous. Besides, it’s such a mouthful! Ess Pee Jay Cee.”
“Well, that's what you get when the Catholic Church names you. Simon Peter came with baptism. Jude with confirmation. My parents threw in Chika to appease the ancestors. For years I didn’t know how to hold the names together. You don’t walk up to people and introduce yourself as Simon Peter Jude Chika Mandi. Somebody might fall asleep while you’re at it. But my chemistry teacher in secondary school solved the problem. He strung together the initials I have used ever since. Saved me a lot of headache, that wise fellow.”

Okey Ndibe
Arrows of Rain, 2015, p. 81-82.

"I Always Mispronounce My Name...I'm Reclaiming the Original"

Source: anglianwater

(The Guardian)--The Facebook name-pronunciation feature made me realize that, after a lifetime of code-switching, I want to pronounce my name as my mother intended

Facebook’s feature allowing you to choose an accurate pronunciation of your name for everyone to see (and hear) seems simple enough. Helpful, even. But I haven’t pronounced my name correctly in the last 27 years, and I’m afraid to start now.

I introduce myself as a three syllable SAH-dee-uh, when my name is actually a two-syllable Sa-Dhya, adapted from a sharper-sounding Arabic name to roll off a softer, Urdu-speaking palate. The trick is in the D. When I spell out “D as in David” to the Comcast rep on the phone, what I should be saying is “D as in Theo.”

But I don’t say that. Pronouncing my name the way my mother intended is more foreign to me now than the other way around. Here’s the uncomfortable reason why: I’m afraid my name sounds too ... ethnic. That Sa-Dhya won’t fit in with her mainstream white American friends and co-workers anymore. That saying my name “the right way” will somehow negate the fact that I was born in this country and feel more American than Pakistani.

What's in a name? Soyinka Rejects "Nollywood"

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet..." Shakespeare asserts in Romeo and Juliet. Really? Well, Nigeria's Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka agrees, especially with regards to the enduring moniker, Nollywood, given to the Nigerian video-film industry in 2002 by The New York Times journalist, Norimitsu Onishi.

In his "Everything is Oversize in the Birthplace of Nollywood" Keynote Address at the FESPACO's CODESRIA-Guild of African Filmmakers workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2013, Soyinka lamented the '''N' word [that] constitutes a mutative explosion that I consider most unfair to others in the same creative field--the cinematic--more especially as there have been predecessors who impacted on our cinema world without burdening themselves with such a verbal albatross."

The Nobel Laureate further clarified his disappointment: "My complaint therefore is not against borrowings and adaptations as a principle, but against the lack of originality that translates as plain, unmediated imitation, or a tawdry, unenhanced borrowing that is conceived and delivered on the very edge of the pit of banality, and out of which it has no wish to clamber, once it has fallen in.  It indicates a pre-set mind, a basically unadventurous mind dressed up in castoff clothing, of which nothing can be expected except as a breeding ground, a reproductive automatism of its own kind--especially in taste."