THE French give their children French names and the British give their children British names.
The Chinese have Chinese names and the Spanish have Spanish names.
These people give their children names which represent and celebrate who they are, where they come from.
However, there is a strange phenomenon among Zimbabweans.
We pride ourselves in naming our children after the British, French, Portuguese, everyone else particularly in the West but not ourselves.
It is a tragic trajectory.
Dr Augustine Tirivangana cautions that the names we give our children whose origins we neither know nor understand are sometimes an invitation of evil from the ancestry of those who are inimical to us.
Do we inadvertently curse ourselves because we cannot leave well alone?
The British have done the worst anyone has ever done to our land and people and yet we seem still so besotted with them.
It does not sound wrong in our ears and hearts that we keep calling ourselves by strange foreign names, names of a people who tormented us as no-one ever has.
It does not say something to us that you will never find the British perusing dictionaries of African names to find names for their children.
They don’t study African history to find names for their children, so as to name them after Nyamanda, Lobengula’s oldest son or Lozikeyi, Lobengula’s widow.
It is an anathema for the British to honour anything African.
It does not happen that they name their children Nehanda, Kaguvi, or Mkwati.
As far as they are concerned, Africans are lesser beings and they cannot stoop so low.
But when we give our children their names, names derived from their ancestry, rejecting our own, indeed we accept the status they give us, that of lesser, inferior beings.
But how dare we the descendants of Murenga, the chosen ones of Musikavanhu and heirs to this sacred land so rich and beautiful?
During the liberation struggle, everything was faithful, so critically clear.
You gave yourself a name which announced and celebrated what you were and what you were about.
It could not occur to us to do otherwise.
Some comrades simply called themselves ‘Chimurenga’ and that is what he/she was about.
Cde Josiah Tongogara called his first born, ‘Hondo’ and hondo (war) was Cde Tongogara’s life.
The ZANLA military supremo could not call his first child anything else.
We also had Cde Vimbisai Rusununguko.
In fact, there were many Rusunungukos, Kanyaus and Ropas.
We were cherishing something deeply rooted in us, something for which we were prepared to die for.
I called myself ‘Cde Ropa Rinopfuka’ to warn the whiteman that the blood he shed to rob us of our land shall be requited, that it will not be easy with him in the end.
Comrades were so in love with the revolution and its heroes, they could not contain themselves.
It flowed into everything.
After the liberation war, Zimbabweans were still imbued with the liberation ethos.
They were celebrating their victory, epic achievement and everyone felt so special.
Children were named Farisisai, Rusunguko Makomborero, Tapona and Vimbiso, among other names.
Names such as these flourished in the land.
There was a resurrection and explosion of African names, names of gratitude for the bountifulness come upon the nation – Tinashe, Vongai, Tawonga, Rugare, Chipo, Chidochashe, Zvikomborero, Tendai, Nyaradzo, Kudzaishe, Kupakwashe, Shingi and so forth.
These were the born frees, but when these born frees had their own children, something changed. They were reverting to white names and whiteness – Cynthia, Laila, Jeremy, Lizzy, Hillary, Jaimie and many more.
There is a preponderance of white names and whiteness is surely being reinstated.
It boggles the mind when you see Zimbabweans going on Google and scrolling through pages in search of European names, the more esoteric the better.
We know what this trend says of our children, our people and our land.
It is not right because these are not white children.
They are Murenga’s children and as long as we continue in that trajectory how shall the land bless us?