What order of your name(s) says about state of our education - Part II

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on naming nomenclature drew mixed reactions for and against depending on the generation of the respondent. My objective at the outset had been to point out how an anomaly in our educational system had actually become an ‘acceptable’ thing. But others disagreed and were convinced and argued strenuously that there was nothing wrong with our current name usage tradition! This in sociology is also called the ‘normalisation of deviance’.

The term was coined by sociologist Diane Vaughan when reviewing the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Vaughan noted that the root cause of the Challenger disaster was related to the repeated choice of NASA officials to fly the space shuttle despite a dangerous design flaw. She described this phenomenon as occurring when people within an organisation/community become so insensitive to deviant practice that it no longer feels wrong. Deviation occurs because of barriers to using the correct process or drivers and peer pressure. As in other areas of life, a repeated misuse of naming nomenclature has over time come to be regarded as the done or ‘right’ thing.

A one Dr Frank Nnaku who agreed with my observations noted that he had been battling with his students (to no avail) for nearly two decades. His students did not accept his correction and argued that “I was given my surname first and then I got baptised later, so my surname is my first name and the baptism name is my second name”. Others argue that the order of their names is their own preference! His students still want to be called Odongo James or Mukasa Philip.

‘Ampurire Ronald’ (sic) seemed to support Nnaku’s students. Mr ‘Ronald’ argued that my article was really disturbing and disrespectful of our motherland. He did not appreciate the importance I placed on complying with a ‘Western personal name order’. Children usually get the ‘English’ names at baptism, which used to be several years after birth until recently. Why did I then think that those English names should be the first ones in the order?

“By the way, did you consider why the English want the so-called given name first and surname last? Or why Uganda decided to go with surname first and given name last? What really is the difference between the first name and the last name and who should be determining my first and last name?” What mattered to him was the ease and comfort of Ugandans, not Google algorithms or someone in the immigration office at Heathrow. Real whacky I suppose.

It thus struck me that there is a lot more to this name thing than I had imagined. For starters, there are Africans who have abandoned Western names. In our own contemporary space we know of people like Amama Mbabazi, Amanya Mushega and Kahinda Otafiire. These gentlemen in abandoning their Christian names (note the emphasis on Christian as opposed to first name) were defying the colonial narrative to which ‘Ampurire Ronald’ seems to be partially oblivious. Ironically, the name ‘Ampurire’, like most surnames from Western Uganda, is derived from the evangelical movement that preached puritanism and pietism. In the end, this movement managed to erode large swathes of the Runyakitara naming traditions (anthroponyms, ethnonyms and toponyms).

Other societies have not been spared by the naming fray. There was Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) and Malcolm X. They were protesting the slave names they had been given as a process of erasing their Africanness. From Kenya there is Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Not only did he ditch the James name, he now writes mainly in Gikuyu as a political statement. Many West Africans appreciate the political sensitivity of naming and don’t use Christian names generally.
I will leave it here but I guess one could write a whole history of names, starting from their etymology to their political correctness. What’s in a name anyway?

Prof Sejjaaka is country team leader at Abacus Business School.
[email protected]
@samuelsejjaaka