Moses Ochonu : "On Nigerian Nicknames"
On reading Moses Ochonu's "On Nigerian Nicknames"
In the people's world, it's names , names, names…it's the people's planet.
I was in Nigeria which was under Shehu Shagari, the second time I heard Bob Dylan chirping "You could be living in another country, under another name" but it was many years later in Stockholm that I first intuited that it was a reference to some Nazis on the run after the second world war, taking on new names and hiding mostly in South America, in places like Argentina, although, as they were to find out there was no place big enough to hide as they were being systematically hunted down by the crowned Prince of Nazi hunters, Simon Wiesenthal
Since that song " Gotta Serve Somebody" is a timeless classic, today, "under another name" takes on new topical meanings such as possibly referring to someone like Joe Biden who recently told the American people that his main rival, former President Trump, is "a danger" to democracy.
I can imagine Alhaji Atiku saying ditto about Brer Obasanjo, in retaliation for the latter saying about himself that God will never forgive him if he were to ever support Alhaji Atiku for the Nigerian Presidency. Or more likely, under his breath, as we say in Nigeria, "God punish you" - for saying that about me" (me Alhaji Atiku)
There are those suffering from normalcy/ normopathy who believe that the poem has to rhyme in this and not in that way and that it's horrible if in the lines, there's no rhyme, or reason or rhythm at all, that the novel has to have this or that structure,plot and character development (like the classical storytelling in Homer, Daniel Defoe and Chinua Achebe in things falling apart, or that the guitar solo has to be played like Göran Söllscher or Carlos Santana or Nene Tchakou
However, these are just some side comments, a train of thoughts, a sequence of words, again, reminiscing a little , wishing I were some kind of raconteur like Marlow the storyteller in Conrad's Youth and the guys sitting around the table on tenterhooks saying, " pass the bottle"
" Those who have followed my public intellectual life for a long time know about my interest in Nigerian names and onomastics."( Moses Ochonu )
Those who have followed Moses Ochonu's public intellectual life for a long time, indeed, know about his interest in Nigerian names and onomastics. Unfortunately, those who have not followed his public intellectual life for a long time, don't know about his interest in Nigerian names, don't speak big English (shmile), speak less of his interest in "onomastics." But down here on earth, life is for learning and it's never too late to learn or to begin to know. In fact, I had to look up the meaning of the darned word myself : o-no-mastics. On the other hand, as LaoTzu put it, "Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know", paraphrased by Da Mayor ( in Do the Right Thing) :
"Doctor, those that'll tell don't know, and those that know won't tell."
Names, names, names. You remember Muhammad Ali (float like a butterfly,sting like a bee) heckling ErnieTerrell in the ring with this one burning question as he punched him around :"What's my name?" - because onomastically speaking, Terrel had refused to call him by his proper name MUHAMMAD ALI - and was still referring to him by his former "slave name" Cassius Clay - which had earned him the nickname,"The Louisville Lip"...
Ayi Kewi Armah asks ( in either" Fragments" or "Why are we so Blest?" ) what happens with the self-consciousness(or some such thing of an African child who grows up being called "Mike" /"Michael"? Perhaps Professor Michael Afolayan could answer the question of how it feels, I suppose, beginning with the preamble,"What's in a name?"
Well , your namesake Michael is the name of a special archangel…which means that to some degree at least you have to live up to your name, Professor….
In the Spanish-speaking world, there are so many people baptised "Jesus "; whereas in the Muslim World so many people are named " Muhammad" - in Bangladesh for example every Muslim boy has Muhammad" as his first name, usually abbreviated Md,
I wonder how Don Moses Ochonu himself feels about bearing the name of the most important prophet in the Hebrew Bible., and not as a nickname…
In a private missive I was about to dispatch to one Gloria in Excelsis somebody I did refer to a certain "Pharaoh Harrow '', the aforementioned Gloria's special Pharaoh. I suppose that's how nicknames started and how nicknames grow. I also want to ask her this question 👍
Nota bene : Strictly speaking, "Ojogbon" is not a nickname , it is a referent.,and whoever the name fits, let him wear the crown.
With the naming, begins the sense of individuation, distinctiveness, individualism, also - so I suppose, with naming also comes the sense of community, and bonding ,and togetherness - equalisation, egalitarianism, thinking of cultures - as obtains in Ghana where people are named according to the day of the week on which they are born - to some extent in Nigeria too, lots of people named "Sunday" ( perhaps because of the church, Sunday being "The Lord's Day"; lots of people named " Friday" like Robinson Crusoe's " Man Friday". I haven't yet met any Nigerians bearing English names such as "Tuesday","Wednesday", "Thursday", "Saturday" - however, perhaps because of so many years of military rule in Nigeria and the militarisation of politics, there's a preponderance of the title" chief of staff" accompanied by the occasional salute, in even small government offices in Port Harcourt in the early 80s of the last century.( I sometimes hesitate between using the words " small" and "little" - to some extent you could call it "language interference" because in Swedish "little" is singular, and "small is the plural of little, so we have " a little boy " and "small boys"." "Small potatoes" means quite something else…)
Generally speaking, Sierra Leoenans, at least of my own speech community, like giving awarding titles. I say my "speech community" - as including both Krio and English, and as if I'm talking about a cast of thousands when in fact back in Sierra Leone, altogether, I don't think that I ever knew or met more than two hundred people ( 200) and needless to say, it wasn't everybody that was my friend. Coming to think of it, 97% of family and friends and those that I knew were Creoles, so called.
At the school that I attended,at the time, I'd say that circa 80% of the students were Creoles.
These are some of the nicknames I remember, incredibly, not a single girl or woman among them.
The Principal Mr .A.T, Thomas ( a Gambian, the father of Aman Thomas) was known as "Pompey" ( Pompey the Great) because his noble visage was the spitting image of the photo of the bust of the Great Pompey as he appeared in our first Latin book. I don't know who first gave him the name, but it stuck; and I'm not sure that he was aware that's what we called him.
In the first form our classmate Nestor Cummings-John who had light green eyes was unkindly called " steam fish, puss eye"
In the third form I nicknamed Akintola Wyse "Cromwell" (Oliver Cromwell) and the title fitted him to a T - Aki lived at Mends Street , and after school we i.e. he, and I and Abisodun Wilson often went home together and had long, interminable chats about our history lessons ( when we read Animal Farm, it was about The Bolshevik Revolution) although, unlike Cromwell Akintola was a staunch Methodist, I re-baptised him "Cromwell" because from an earlier period he was already so anti-"The Divine Right of Kings" and in form 3 he was so ardently pro-Cromwell and shared other personality characteristics with the man and with our history teacher Mr.T.C. Deight,( Pa Deigh). Aki was also so scrupulously honest ,like Baba Kadiri. Akinola was my roommate at college,1965-66. A very real guy. Sad story : He had two girlfriends ( simultaneously) and once I messed him up badly, I mean,real bad. I was his lookout man for visiting hours on Sundays.I had to go up to the junction to spy out which of the two chosen ones would be coming to get her share on any given Sunday, so that he could pre-arrange her framed picture on the desk by his bed. ( I had to vacate the room of course) and on this occasion, when I got back to the room sometime just before dawn ( Monday morning) there was this terrible anger -more than a frown written all over his face and I heard him telling me, gruffly " Cornelius, dis ting wae you do me so, ah noh lek am O!"
Wae ME do YOU? O me miserum, I had mistakenly (not deliberately -of course not, told him the wrong chosen one was coming that Sunday and he had lovingly arranged some flowers around her framed photograph on his study desk next to his bed.
I wonder what Aki the stauch Methodist would have thought of the LGBTQ issues these days. Back in 2002, I was delighted to hear that Honest Johnny/ Akintola Wyse (Cromwell) had been appointed Chairman for the Public Service Commission…
In the fourth form our classmate George Morgan had the nickname "Jeru Man O war" because of the look of his shoes and boots that he used to wear in those days.He was a rich kid ,his family owned the main pharmacy in Freetown. He was also the vocalist in fellow classmate and friend, Desmond Easmon's band, "The Tornadoes''
Blyden Jenkins-Johnston was my classmate in secondary school 1963 - 65 and at college where I gave him the name "Jolly Papa" for reasons that were obvious to both of us, and because of his more than occasional philandry, in the Honours list of my college newspaper "The Vulture" which only survived its first edition I awarded him the title "The Random Sampler" (a title which secretly delighted him, no end) one Jean McMunn wrote a witty panegyric poem about this , which I think started
" Sugar Daddy of my heart
Boys my age aren't worth a fart "
In form 3, ( 1960-61) Mr. Inyang, our geography teacher from Calabar, Cross Rivers State ,Nigeria ,was nicknamed "Heng an dae" because, Michael Jackson style, the hem of his trousers hung a few inches above his shoes. Once when we were on a camping expedition with Mr Inyang somewhere in the bush, when we returned to the bush he was accosted by a drunkard who was found sleeping in the bus;the funny part of it was that Mr. Inyang's altercation with the drunkard was in English, whilst to our delight the drunkard was letting loose a long stream of the choicest and most creative "mami cuss" that we had ever heard -Mr Inyand was powerless, all his usual classroom authority gone, as the drunkard's mami cuss continued to pollute the air. Mr.Inyand used to say that pronunciations va-ree ( vary) pulling his leg we used to ask him ,what is the correct pronunciation of LakeTiticaca, just to confirm his pronunciation of the last two syllables -ca-ca
I.T.A Wallace-Johnson was sometimes referred as "bra leppet" -in Krio
C.B.Rogers-Wright's nickname was "Shekpendeh"
SIr Albert Margai the rascal was affectionately known as " Akpata"( the rock) - by his fans
And in the Congo ( Zaire ) Mobutu Sese Seko was nicknamed " The Leopard" and his son who he appointed MInister of Information was known as " Saddam Hussein"
Some really distressing news ,and this is not a nickname:
In namibia there's a politician named Adolf Hitler
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