By Okey Ikechukwu
The theme was “Named, Unnamed, Renamed: Power, Memory and the Architecture of Identity”. That is cryptic, almost parabolic, on its own. Then the organizers chose as title for the Keynote Address “The Weight of a Name: Power, Memory and the Architecture of Identity”. And the topic was inflicted on me at short notice, with no option of refusal.
So there I was at Things Fall Apart Village, venue of the event as Keynote Speaker. This is an event designed to bring the literary world to an resounding standstill.
The weight of a name? Do name have weight to begin with? In any case, how do we even come by names generally?
It was with this question that i ventured into the day’s engagement. The attention of the audience was drawn to St. Augustine’s book, Confessions, where the mantold us how he learnt the names of things as a child.
He said that he observed how older people, referred to the various objects around them by a sound or ‘name’, and how whenever that sound was made it meant they were talking about the object in question. “That was how I learned my letters”, he said in the book.
I asked the audience whether the story was different for anyone at the event. Dead silence. Is the story different for any of us here today?
I then swung out at contemporary academic philosophers, by pointing out that it was actually Augustine (354 – 430), and not Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) who came one thousand five hundred years after him, that first propagated what university teachers now call the “pictorial conception” of language. This is quite contrary to what you find in all major philosophical works on the philosophy of language in the world today.
But back to the matter of names in themselves.
Every name is a word with meaning, both with animate and inanimate objects. In the case of human beings, those giving it may have in mind simply the ancestry, cultural or religious tradition, or inheritance of the named one. But is often ends us conveying the essence of what the individual is in his essence as a human being, even at birth.
I shared an encounter I had with my father at the age of nine. I had somehow felt the need to look up the meaning of names in my primary school Michael West Dictionary of English Language. The given meaning of my first name, ‘Clement’, which was also my father’s name was “mild and merciful”.
That was my father, exhaustively defined in just two words, or so. So, I later met him in the evening to find out whether his parents knew the type of person he was when he was born, before giving him such a name. It remains a vivid experience to this day, because here was a man who could not be described in any other way, other than to say this man is clement.
A time also comes when a change in name is necessitated by a personal attainment, the expression or manifestation of a new, richer or fuller version of the person; which the old name cannot correctly depict. This may even come as a title, that eventually takes over as new name.
That is, the old you becomes part of the “ingredients” uses in producing the new individual. The old is still embedded, but as a lower stage of development that has been transcended. That is the explanation for the progressive change of name for ancient priests in all deep spiritual traditions, worldwide.
So, that is the weight of a name. It can change with increasing transformation, or decrease until it becomes the extreme opposite of what it was supposed to positively depict.
Take, for instance, the light, God-given weight and brightness of Lucifer; a mighty Angel who became so dense because that his light diminished and he ultimately became known as The Darkness. The weight of the negative equivalent of a name.
I then raised the question of the weight of the specific names our parents felt we should bear in this life. Do our names carry the echoes of who we really are, as defined by your place and circumstances of birth and growth and by even previous incarnations? And what have we done, and are still doing, to further define and establish the persons sitting in this hall today.
None of us here is defined by the joy of the parents who gave us names, or by our initial innocent whimpers as babies born into a world that was not quite as warm, gentle, nourishing and moist as our mother’s wombs.
My inner perceptions, parents’ beliefs, expectations and hopes were all embodied in the name Okechukwu. It was both gratitude for a son and a declaration that this was a child of God and also a handwork of God, with a specific gift; or endowment. So, naming me at birth was part of the story of their lives; while what I am today is the story of my own life.
That I why there is the saying: “What you are at birth is largely the handiwork of you parents; but what you are in later life is always the sum of your thought, decisions, words and actions”.
To name someone is to place them within a story. To rename them is to alter the terms of that story.
The Power in a name does not merely reside in the name itself. It is also the authority to stand forth as the reality embodied in the name. That is why Friedrich Hegel said: “Every reality is a realization”. A mango tree exists as the full realization of what lay in the mango seed as a possibility. It’s name changes from mango seed to mango tree without any ontological losses recorded.
It is within this complex, but essentially simple, nexus that a name gets outgrown; but without being thrown away. You admit that mango seeds exist. You admit that the mango tree came from the mango seed. But you do not call a mango tree a mango seed.
From this analogy we move on to the essence of Ikenga in the Igbo cultural tradition and anthropology.
This is simply depicted as a sacred carved wooden figure, on which is depicted the major achievements, proof of personal strength, industry, major titles, Ichi, and much more of the person whom owns it. The right hand of the Ikenga is often seen to be wielding as machete, as tool for survival and symbol of strength.
This symbol of strength is called “Okala Dimkpa”, meaning that a man is half defined by his strength and industry, not just by his mere existence and that he is nothing without igba mbo.
So why are we going to see when we look at your Ikenga today? I asked the audience. What do you see when you look at the Ikenga of those ruling us today? Why are the names of some present and past leaders whispered today, while others are proclaimed?
It is because of what they are by name. It is what their actions have defined them as, despite the possibly beautiful names they received from their parents.
I moved from the above to the word ‘Ijele’ and how the weight of that word has come to depict royalty and excellence in some aspects of Igbo cultural Anthropology. That is why, for some of us, the Ijele is not just a masquerade. There are big and small masquerades. Then there is the Ijele.
It does not dance for money because it is sufficient unto itself. It does not try to entertain anyone, because that is beneath its dignity. It does not ask anyone to get out of the way when it is coming, because it cannot contemplate that anything would possible want to stand in its way. It expects, and knows, that people would know what to do.
Its name is its essence and glory. And it is because its name and glory precede it that people consider it an honour to help clear the way when they hears (even before confirming) that the Ijele is approaching. Who, or what, would stand in the way when the ijele is afoot? It is just not done!
The Ijele does not ask the big and small masquerades to leave the Village Square when it wants to enter. They have to. They are not the Ijele. They are masquerades and that is the essential difference. The Ijele must take pre-eminence as a matter of course. And, mind you, there is no question of arrogance or preposterous self-inflations here. It is the nature of the Ijele to live thus. It is the aristocratic Principle of nature at work.
So do not expect that the Ijele, given the weight of its name , would acknowledge the cheer and applause of the crowd, no. Do not also expect that it would genuflect and thank anyone for getting out of the way as it approaches. Absurd! There is no contemptuous air of superiority on display here no. It is just the natural majesty conferred on the Ijele by its very identity, as well as the triumphant embodiment of the Aristocratic Principle of Nature.
The Ijele’s majesty is inherent in, and internal to, it. What can you give to Ijele? How would you even approach it in order to bestow anything on it? Who are you to enter the square while it walks the square? Please note this: there are masquerades and then there is the ijele!
At this point I confronted the audience with this question: “Ndigbo, whose son and father Chinua Achebe is, where are your Ijeles today”?
But, going back to the more conventional thoughts on the matter at hand, I pointed out that names could commemorate circumstances of birth, seek to preserve family histories, invoke beliefs, or suggest hopes for a child’s future. Names could also point to hardships survived, a promise fulfilled and much more.
It could be given in reaction to other things. Even so! The sanctity of names and the architecture of identity resonates strongly in the Igbo Kolanut ritual. For, there is probably no greater forum for the display of the solemn, almost priestly, majesty of a mature Igbo elder than in the process of blessing and breaking a kolanut.
The core community values encapsulated in the ‘process’ of eating the kolanut are such that the person whose duty it is to break the kolanut does not just pick it up and break. That is why you have the Igbo saying: “When an old dibia (native doctor) makes an offering to the gods it is as if he is the handing over of the sacrifice to the spirits by one who is seeing them face to face”.
He may begin by saying: “He who brings kolanut brings life’. This means that the presence of the kolanut at a gathering is, first and foremost, an opportunity for prayers. Prayers strengthen life and the living. Therefore, to bring kolanut is actually to bring an opportunity for prayers, for humble appeal for guidance and for the strengthening of life and the living.
The living envisaged in the Igbo notion of community is always a ‘living together with one another in goodwill’. The person praying over the kolanut before breaking it will say: ‘He Who lives above, the Giver of life, protect us’. He will also say that the river should not dry up and that the fish should not lack water to swim in, thereby emphasizing the interdependence and reciprocity in nature.
Against the background of the foregoing, I invited the audience to take a calm and sober look at the Ikenga of the individuals leading them today.
When it is said, in the process of breaking the kolanut “Elders shall live and the young shall live”, or the one who says: “Our harvest shall be rich and none shall pray for the misfortune of another, lest his farm be the only patch of earth without rain” it is all about community of all things, in that broader, overarching notion of spiritual reciprocity.
It refers to a network of identity architecture that is at once history and continuously-lived reality.
These are the real issues for many who think that they are advancing Igbo interests, values and culture by all manner of excrescences. Cultural identity is found in names, as a people’s memory of who they are, their worldview and what life truly means to them. While some names preserve histories, remind a people of crises survived, others preserve the language of colonial and missionary institutions and spiritual histories.
It is because identity is like a building put together over time that its foundations can only carry some things and not others. Its architecture is borne of self-development education, relationships, social expectations, and cultural engagements. And a name may become dated due to new expectations or demands attached to them, and the values they appear to represented; just as we may discover dimensions of ourselves that neither our families nor our communities anticipated.
That is why your identity, my identity and Igbo identity cannot be reduced to inheritance. That is why, sometimes the most significant act of self-definition is to choose another name. Yes! A chosen name can establish a boundary between a dated, identity and an emerging organization new one. You can remember where you came from, but I will not allow your origins to dictate every destination.
But renaming does not automatically produce liberation. A new name cannot erase history, dissolve prejudice, or resolve every conflict between personal desire and social expectation. Liberation can come through retaining a name while refusing the assumptions attached to it. Sometimes the deepest act of independence is to accept an inherited name on entirely new terms.
The essential question is not whether the name has changed, but whether the person has gained greater depth, maturity, understanding and inner freedom to inhabit it.
Yes, the weight of a name comes from the worlds it carries. But this includes the pressure of history, the intimacy of family connections, the authority of institutions, the expectations of culture, and the aspirations of the individual concerned. Yet no name, however ancient or celebrated, can contain the full measure of a human life.
The task, therefore, is neither to worship the name nor to discard it without reflection. It is to understand its weight, challenge oneself to body forth its power or whittle down the power its stigma carries; and show how it might be carried differently. For in the end, identity is not simply the name written on a birth certificate, spoken at a ceremony, or remembered in an archive.
It is the architecture of a spiritual being in a material body, in search of fulfillment.