Try and find out what that name means

Names from around the world. If you want to give your baby girl the name Chryssalis, I will have neither the desire nor, indeed, the authority and ability to stand in your way. PHOTO | UNSPLASH

What you need to know:

  • Luo parents habitually give the name Ochieng to children born “under chieng’”, which is the Luo word for the sun and its phenomenal effects down here.

  • But mightn’t the lady above etymologically share her first name Cicely with Sicily, the Mediterranean island near Italy? Do the two words Cicely and Sicily have the same etymological root?

If Cicely is the middle name of a female Kenyan MP, she would have received it for the same reason I received the name Philip, namely, imposed immediately upon birth or, through a superstitious unction called “baptism”, imposed by Euro-Christians on the whole world’s non-Caucasians. It was thus that European imperialism forced Caucasian nomenclature onto the world’s non-Caucasian elites.

TYPICALLY

Yet if I visited Kamchatka and found any native called Ochieng, I would wonder deeply how his parents had come by such a typically Luo name. The Luo are the culturo-linguistic group on the eastern and northern shores of Lake Victoria among whom I was born. Thus Ochieng (male) or Achieng (female) is not a family name. The Luo have never had such an institution.

ETYMOLOGICAL

Luo parents habitually give the name Ochieng to children born “under chieng’”, which is the Luo word for the sun and its phenomenal effects down here. But mightn’t the lady above etymologically share her first name Cicely with Sicily, the Mediterranean island near Italy? Do the two words Cicely and Sicily have the same etymological root?

MARRIAGES

Mightn’t that imply that the Luo are related to the Sicilians? It is, of course, extremely unlikely. Yet in these days of international air travel and close inter-culturo-linguistic contacts, flings and marriages, the latter supposition may be worth examining. Are the Luo and the Italians somehow related? Mightn’t that be one explanation for the fact that both communities are so temperamental, so easy to provoke, especially on political issues?

QUESTIONS

Indeed, the lady above might have been born at an airport in one of the insular Mediterranean countries — on Sicily itself, say, or on Cyprus. Unfortunately, however, Kenya’s newspaper writers and editors never nowadays try to help their readers even concerning such important questions. That can only be because those in charge are not interested in such questions.

HISTORIC

No, I do not deny the possibility that the lady politician in question was born on the historic Mediterranean island of Sicily. Howbeit, whenever anyone of Kenya’s news media tells a story involving a lady Member of Kenya’s Parliament, the teller never seems quite sure of the member’s first name. In the case with which we began our story today, is it really Sicily? Isn’t it, rather, Cisely?

MODERN

Though Sicily is also known to me, it is only as the name of a small Mediterranean island whose modern inhabitants are also Caucasian Europeans. But, of course, my knowledge is not necessary for the naming of anything or anybody. If you want to give your baby girl the name Chryssalis, I will have neither the desire nor, indeed, the authority and ability to stand in your way.

SURVIVAL

“Contrariwise” – as a celebrated children’s story teller used to put it – I might even give you loud support because, where nutriment is concerned, a new-born human baby behaves exactly as greedily as a maggot. Indeed, for reasons that should be obvious, the human baby deserves the most indulgent of all motherly givers of material means of survival.

Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist. [email protected]