Is there such a thing as authentic Ghanaian-ness? What is in a name?

We do not have a choice in the names that were given to us at birth. Names are so powerful in our culture that some people believe that they have a role to play in shaping our identities. In my culture, it is important to give a child a name that best suits them so when a child is born, they are called Saan’paga or Saan’doo (Stranger) depending on their gender until they are properly named on the day of the naming ceremony. So for example, if a child is born on a Friday, their naming ceremony will officially be on the next Friday.

I have an unapologetic bias towards names. My heart sings when I meet someone with a name like Puumaya, Nuba, Elorm, Naa, Nyamekye. I get very excited when they can tell me what their name really means. The feeling is like when a child after a long time discovers their favourite long-lost toy under the settee. Or like when you discover a GHS10 not in the pocket of your jeans just before you wash your clothes.

When I was growing up, I did not understand why I did not have a name like all the girls my age. I thought it made it difficult for me to blend in with everyone else. I had a name whose meaning anyone who spoke Dagbanli well would understand. I never met girls my age that bore my name. When I mentioned my name sometimes people would ask if it wasn’t a boy child’s name because girls were hardly named Wunpini despite the fact that it is a unisex name.

I began appreciating it much later in life and I had never been in a situation when I had to walk someone through the pronunciation of my name syllable by syllable until much later in my life. Several times I educated people on the right spelling and pronunciation of my name until I just gave up when I realized many of them had already decided it was a tongue-twister. None of these ever affected me like an incident which had the other party questioning my Ghanaian-ness.

I remember very clearly and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever forget it. It was not unusual for some people to call me “Wumpuni”. It was on one of those few occasions when an older lady mispronounced my name and I just ignored it because I had tried several times to teach her and others to say my “jaw-breaking” and “tongue-twisting” name properly. A young gentleman who heard it and knew how my name should be pronounced asked why I did not school this woman on how to say it. I told him I tried to but wasn’t very successful and that I had come to accept that not everybody was ever going to pronounce my name correctly.

This young man, a final year university student, unashamedly told me that if I did not want people to mispronounce my name why did I not pick a name like Afia or Esi; a name that was easy for everyone. Or better still why did I not go to a university like the University of Development Studies where people who had names like mine and people who could pronounce my name were in abundance. I could not believe what I was hearing from this young man. I was visibly shaken by what this young man opened his mouth that ate food and drank water to say what he had said to me. I was so shocked I had to take some time to recover from it. And when I finally did, I told him I was very happy that the university I chose to come to was called the University of Ghana and not the University of Gas, or Ewes, or Ashantis or Dagombas.

It felt like a slap to the face. I was othered in the most horrible way possible. And I shuddered to think that he would be a part of the next breed of young leaders for our beloved nation. If a person thought this way, how EVER would he think of Ghana and all its diverse cultures as a nation? If someone who had a tertiary level education spoke and thought this way, only God knows where our country is headed.

If he did not learn in basic and secondary school about the multiculturality of this country and how the differences in vegetations, landscapes, seasons, tribal marks and skin tones did not place one Ghanaian above the other or make one Ghanaian more authentic than the other then there is something utterly wrong with how the minds of some Ghanaians work.