My Name is Innocent – What’s in a Name?

name Innocent

“My name is Innocent.”

“…Come again… Did I hear that right – Innocent or Innocence?”

“You’re damn right…”

“Your mother actually named you ‘Innocent‘?” “What were your parents thinking?”

In my line of work, my customers and even colleagues tease and express surprise every blessed day that I am at work.

I cannot remember thinking much about why my parents named me Innocent until I was an old twenty nine year old man in grad school in Madison, Wisconsin. One of my professors was certain – as if he knew something that I did not – that it was not by happenstance that I had been given the name. I decided that I wanted to know whether there was a story behind it, and if there was a story, what was it? Why did my parents name me Innocent? In fact, why are you called Grace or Nicoline, Valentine or Paul, Alice or Prudence, George or Kolkman, Eva or Albert, Angel or Kenneth, Laura or Simon …?

What’s in a name?

“I named my son after my very beloved brother-in-law who passed away recently”, Ibani, a woman I talked to told me as I interviewed sources for this story. “He was everything that I could ask for and then some more”, she added over the telephone line, her voice still ostensibly laced with raw emotion more than a year after the death of her brother-in-law.

In the village of Kom – Northwest Region of Cameroon, where I am originally from, names not only commemorate the life of a personal or family hero or role model; vernacular names are like capsules of aspiration, ambition, gratitude, defiance, fortitude, and prayer. Read meaning into names like Ibani (light), Afumbom (God’s gift), Komtaghi (let Kom talk or Kom has spoken), Nsah (the Lord is judge), Anibom (God’s grace), Mbzigha (it’s a large world).

Another peculiarity with names of Kom origin, unlike names from many ethnic groups as I found out, is that parents generally do not name a child after a living person – for fear it can bring ill-luck. But is there any more grounding to this philosophy than populist apprehensions?  My uneducated opinion is speculative at best, but speaks of a people that will generally not be rushed into providing a report card of a life until the end of the term or semester. At death, there is a complete picture of the life and work of the person after whom you are naming your child.

“Take a look at many Africans who, at the outset of fights for independence by African states from colonialists, named their kids after influential leaders of the day” said Professor Mucho. “They gave their kids first names such as Kenneth (after Keneth Kaunda), Julius after Julius Nyerere,  Zik in short of Azikiwe, Kwame Krumhah, Haile Selasi, Leopold Senghor, Milton Obote…  These leaders and several others fought a good fight in the eyes of their citizens and many young Africans my age at the time. Whether or not they would rename their kids the same names after the evolution of the political careers of some of these leaders is a matter of debate.

Call a dog a bad name and hang it

I have argued in another article in The Chia Report (Black History Month – A Post Script) that some names can, and do, shut doors on the bearers because their peculiarity to certain racial and ethnic groups enables soft profiling that leads to disqualification based on negative stereotyping.  Some concede that the release of Alex Hailey’s legendary movie, Roots, may have arguably sparked the departure from mainstream names – Brown, Milton, Celeste, Monique to the Shakas and Kintas and other somewhat fascinating names that are adaptations to those in the movie. Lots of African Americans born after the mid seventies, for instance, have names that are very exotic and unique – Lakeesha, Lashawnda, Shanee, DeShaun, Shaquille…  Because these names are typically African American, the task is arguably made easier for some employers that could, otherwise, be discreet screeners.

These issues are not specific to the United States or African Americans. Like everywhere else in Africa, names in Cameroon reveal different ethnic origins. Such revelations have led to exclusionary politics during voter registration in favor of the ruling party. How you solve such victimization of ethnic identity remains a head scratcher.

But the solution probably has nothing to do with a new and emerging trend among young parents who are generating new names through name combos. A name combo is when both spouses take parts of their first names to create a new first name for the newborn. For instance, Solomon and Shannon would name their daughter Sosha. While these new creations escape any ethnic or racial profiling at first, the last names still provide opportunity for profiling. The difference with dead-certain and obvious names is that combos generate curiosity, which is a window opener as opposed to door closer.

Why my name is Innocent

I don’t know your story, but you may, unlike me, already have been inquisitive enough to know the story behind your name. It is possible that your parents talked to you about it. It is possible that you figured it out all by yourself. Some names are straightforward enough and figuring out what they mean doesn’t need much. There are other names, still, that mean absolutely nothing to the parent naming their child. For them, a name is a name.

I did not repeatedly call and write my Dad in Cameroon to find out the meaning of Innocent. I called to find out why I was named Innocent. ‘ Innocent’, in its most common and day to day use means ‘not guilty’. That I knew. What I needed to know was WHY my parents named me Innocent.

So, after all the nagging, my father finally gave up and told me the story:

My lone paternal auntie – Dad’s sister – was dearly close to my father. They played with each other as kids and as teenagers growing up. Then something went wrong in the family and my auntie got blamed for it. She was devastated by the accusation. She shared her story with my Dad. The verdict was what it was and neither of them could do anything to change it.

My aunt got sick and died not long after the accusations levied against her. She had not had the opportunity or the means to prove that she was not responsible for whatever she had been accused of. As close a brother and friend as my Dad had been to his sister, both of them knew what the truth was. No one wanted to believe their side of it. Powerless and speechless in a society that believes that kids can be seen but are not to be heard, my Dad named me Innocent in memory of his sister.

Innocent, therefore, is a living reminder to my Dad of the innocence of his sister. In his mind, his sister is forever exonerated from her accusers and those who would not believe in her. Even more so, Innocent is also a little prayer for better world understanding, a little more caution, a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

(Courtesy DUNIA print Magazine – issue 3 (Feb – May 2011))

Innocent blogs at The Chia Report

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