I was commenting with my co-workers the other day that my niece and her boyfriend had gone to Sema (a local store) and found a bunch of t-shirts displaying funny local names. One of them, for example, read “Hello, my name is Yuderkis” and so on. She said they reminded her of me, because I usually give weird nicknames to people and I had given my sister Judith the nick “Yuderkis” due to an internal family joke.
Today, while reading the newspaper at the office (it is part of our work), Jose Manuel was reading the list of school seniors that had been granted scholarships at INTEC. He was reading their names and some of them sounded really funny to him. Now, we were not making fun of anyone, but we were just commenting on how some people actually had weird names that you just couldn’t help but laughing at.
For example, I mentioned how African Americans in the US usually had weird, unpronounceable names like Sharmawonda, L’ Quondania, TeShervillmen TaQualidpanunda and so forth (no offense, but these are really weird names). Jonathan said that these names were used to show pride in their heritage and that usually those were their slave names or African names of their ancestors. To that, I said that it was very nice of them to show pride in their heritage, but that they should consider the rest of the world and try to name their kids in a “user-friendly” manner.
We were all talking about this when I said: “just imagine this: I have Spanish ancestors, so my name must’ve been something colonial of the sort. Granted Enedina is an old Spanish name, but what if I called myself “Bartolomea” (in reference to Bartolomé Colón)? This made us all laugh and we decided that for the day we would use our colonial names instead of the names given to us by our parents.
Today José Manuel is called Ovando (honoring Fray Nicolás de Ovando).
Jonathan is called Lemba (honoring a long lost and unknown African ancestor).
Paola is called Anacaona (honoring the Taino Queen)
My name is Bartolomea.
So, if you want to talk to us today, please call us by our heritage name (Paola kindly made name tags for us to show at our desks).
What would your name be?
Today, while reading the newspaper at the office (it is part of our work), Jose Manuel was reading the list of school seniors that had been granted scholarships at INTEC. He was reading their names and some of them sounded really funny to him. Now, we were not making fun of anyone, but we were just commenting on how some people actually had weird names that you just couldn’t help but laughing at.
For example, I mentioned how African Americans in the US usually had weird, unpronounceable names like Sharmawonda, L’ Quondania, TeShervillmen TaQualidpanunda and so forth (no offense, but these are really weird names). Jonathan said that these names were used to show pride in their heritage and that usually those were their slave names or African names of their ancestors. To that, I said that it was very nice of them to show pride in their heritage, but that they should consider the rest of the world and try to name their kids in a “user-friendly” manner.
We were all talking about this when I said: “just imagine this: I have Spanish ancestors, so my name must’ve been something colonial of the sort. Granted Enedina is an old Spanish name, but what if I called myself “Bartolomea” (in reference to Bartolomé Colón)? This made us all laugh and we decided that for the day we would use our colonial names instead of the names given to us by our parents.
Today José Manuel is called Ovando (honoring Fray Nicolás de Ovando).
Jonathan is called Lemba (honoring a long lost and unknown African ancestor).
Paola is called Anacaona (honoring the Taino Queen)
My name is Bartolomea.
So, if you want to talk to us today, please call us by our heritage name (Paola kindly made name tags for us to show at our desks).
What would your name be?
1 comments:
el mio seria algo asi como "Petronila Alejandrina"... por mis ancestros o_O....Jajajaja
ya hubiese demandado a mis padres si me hubiese tocado uno asi..aunke.. mi 2nd name I HATE IT ( LEONOR) :S
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