My names? There’s no such a thing!

My name includes one word that should be close to my chest. Every Luo individual has such nying juok. In a Nilo-Saharan custom no longer in force, you kept it top secret lest a witch lay hold of and use it to plot your death.

I was called Ochieng because I was born “under the sun”, that is, around noon (from the Luo word chieng, “the sun”). Only at baptism did my mother choose Pilipo for me (“Philip”). She had no idea what it meant.

The important thing was that the British missionaries had ordained that you could not be a Christian unless you carried a Euro-Hebraic name (even if it be Hitler). What if she had known that Pilipo came from the Greek Philihippos and was no more heavenly than a “horse lover”?

If the Luo had had the “family names” institution, I would now be Philip Otani – Otani being my father’s name. Indeed, my people of Rusinga know me as Ochieng Otani or, more correctly, Ochieng k’Otani or Ochieng mak’Otani or Ochieng wuod Otani.

The Luo words “maka” (or mak’ if the next word begins with a vowel), ka (or k’) and wuod mean “of” or “son of”. Some well known examples are Ouma maka Dudi, Ochola mak’Anyengo, Otieno mak’Onyango, Ojwang K’Ombudo and Oludhe Macgoye (the k anglicised in the last one).

Other systems

Equivalents in other systems include Bruce MacKenzie, Marshall McLuhan, Sunniva O’Neill, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles de Gaulle, Vasco da Gama, Ludwig van Beethoven, Otto von Bismarck, David ben Gurion, Osama bin Laden, Ibn Battuta, William ole Ntimama, Daniel arap Moi and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Philip Ochieng, then – and the more than 10 endearing terms that you do not know -- is my own name. But note the singular verb “is” in that construction. It means is that, even if I chose to use all those names officially, I would still have only one name.

I reiterate that my name is Philip Ochieng. During the Kriegler inquiry, people constantly introduced themselves something like: “My names are Robert Ali Matatu, Wafula Kimani, Nyamweya arap Fulani.” I continue to hear this nonsense from especially our television screens.

When they borrowed the creator Goddess of the Nilotes – worshipped as far as Mesopotamia, India, Australia, Britain and Mexico – the Hellenes called her Myronymos because she had 10 thousand names. Yet she always insisted that she had only one name.

She would have said: “My name is Achieng Anath Aphrodite Artemis Asenath Aset Asherah Asiis Astarte Astoreth Athena Brigit Cara Chebet Dagda Dana Demeter Diana Enkai Ereshkigal Esther Eve Friya Gaia Hathor Hawwa Hebe Hera Inanna Iao Io Ishtar Isis Khasaya Leviathan Mary Medusa Minerva Mumbi Nyakalaga Neith Nephthys Ninhursag, Ninki Nut Oestre Onyame Pandora Persephone Rahab Semele Sophia Tefnut Tehom Tiamat Usha Venus and so on ad infinitum.”

By this, the divine sovereign Maat reminds you that in her system – which includes English – your name is always singular no matter how many words may compose it.