Please ask Uhuru to merely name the new chief justice

The English verb to nominate simply means to latch onto a name, for instance, for appointment to a task.

My dictionary Collins defines to nominate as “to propose (someone) as a candidate (or) to appoint (someone) to an office or position.”

The English verb derives from the Latin noun nomen, which meant a name.

Nomen is what gave us the word nomenclature, which refers to the formal system of names used in particular academic fields.

To nominate, then, is to propose or appoint someone by name for an office.

Thus, apparently, what President Uhuru Kenyatta has submitted to Parliament (for approval or rejection) is the name of the person whom he proposes to appoint as our next chief justice.

According to Collins, to nominate is “…to propose someone as a candidate…” nomination (noun) is thus merely the proposal.

Concerning the chief justice, what it means is that Parliament is what enjoys the constitutional power either to approve or to reject the name proposed as our next chief justice (CJ).

However, we know from practice that, because the proposal is so high-powered, it is most likely to pass muster.

If, then, to nominate is but a technical term for to name, what can a newspaper sub-editor mean by the headline “Uhuru submits CJ nominee name to house” (page 4 of the October 3 number of The Standard)?

First, it is not clear what the President has submitted and to whom? Secondly, it claims that the “nominee” is the chief justice’s own.

The sub-editor thus uses a word which simply repeats something that he or she has already stated.

INCORRECT

He or she has committed what we often condemn here as tautology.

To “reverse back” is a good example, where the adverb back is completely unnecessary because its semantic import is already contained in the element “re” of the verb to reverse – to “verse back”.

It is thus completely nonsensical to ask President Kenyatta to submit to the legislature his “CJ nominee’s name”.

Please ask Mr Kenyatta merely to name the “CJ”.

Many of your readers (including tourists and subscribers abroad) will, otherwise, be quite nonplussed by your term “CJ”.

For this abbreviation of “Chief Justice” is acceptable in a newspaper only when you have, earlier, spelt out the term “Chief Justice” and immediately followed it by the abbreviation in brackets.

In the phrase “a nominee’s name”, the word “name” is completely superfluous because, in practice, a nominee is, etymologically, the same thing as a name.

Indeed, as we have just seen, the two words have the same etymological root.

Indeed, a name is what makes it possible for you to nominate, that is, to appoint by name.

As a rule, a name is the first of all those things which enable the potential employer to distinguish an applicant from all the other candidates.

That is why it is an utter waste of words to speak or write of a “nominee’s name”. For only as a named person can you ever qualify as a nominee.

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