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What's in a name?
SW Radio Africa
March 11, 2008

http://swradioafrica.com/pages/inaname030308.htm

IT is March 29, the day of the elections. You enter a polling station to cast your precious vote and find yourself having to decide between candidates with odd names like Cowboy and Rufurwekuda News.

Zimbabweans are enduring shortages of a lot of things. But funny names are not one of them.

Looking through a list of candidates released by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) at the weekend, Zimbabweans' love for odd names comes to the fore.

Voting is supposed to be serious business, but electors will be excused for dissolving into insuppressible mirth when handed ballots on March 29. There will be names such as Rufurwekuda News in Zaka, and Dokotera Normington in Bindura.

The ballot papers will reveal that the middle name of Harare North Movement for Democratic Change legislator, Trudy Stevenson, is "Dicky," and that voters in Mazowe North will have to decide whether or not to elect a candidate going by the name Township Chigonero as their representative. Oppah Muchinguri's middle name is given as Charm. Then there are the really exceptional names.

For instance, there's a candidate known as Nichodimus Antimalaria in Nyanga North. The aspiring public servant was perhaps born during an anti-malaria campaign, which his parents were spearheading and fell in love with the theme.

There is Khisimusi Moyo in Bulawayo's Nketa constituency as well as Mteto Cowboy and Sai Shady. One candidate is called Chikwinya Settlement, while another is Hotera Svondo. Yet another answers to the name Pilot Sacks. One can only imagine what the parents of Moreprecision Muzadzi were thinking when they named him, it is also a wonder what could have befallen the parents of Tagurabadza Tofamangwana when they named their son. All these names could be in the script of a comedy but they will be on the ballots.

But what, after all, is in a name? Why do parents burden their children with funny names, like, for instance, Synodia?

According to Wikipedia, "naming is the process of assigning a particular word or phrase to a particular object or property. This can be quite deliberate or a natural process that occurs in the flow of life as some phenomenon comes to the attention of the users of a language." So a name, especially in this part of the world, must carry some meaning. Some of the names connote the brutality of the times during which they were adopted, such as Teurai Ropa.

But what is the significance of Facemore, another name on the ZEC list of candidates? Or Mainroad, Nephat, Bednock, Wilstaff, Ready and Jennuphar, which are all first names of candidates in next month's polls.

Some names represent secret ambitions and dreams of parents, which would explain the names Pilot and Nurse Murevanemwe, to which candidates in the election answer. There's even a Brainee Mfuka in Mount Darwin. And if names can give clues about where a child was conceived, questions must be asked of the parents of Steers Mangoma.

In Zimbabwe, names are also couched to convey subtle messages between parents. So whoever named Girls Ndlovu of Lupane was perhaps tired of them. The ages of candidates are not given, but could it be that Settlement was born around the time of "internal settlement" before independence in 1980? Though this election comes at a definitive moment in the history of this country, casting a ballot may have its own humorous dimension.

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