When I was about 11 years old, I had a crush on a boy in my school. He must have been in Class 7 or thereabouts.
Anyway, I liked this little boy because I thought his name was very unique.
He had two English (or is it Christian?) names. David-something.
To me, at that age, that was the cutest name I had ever heard. I miss being that young sometimes.
Years later, I saw my father’s birth certificate for the first time in my life, and guess what? He was also a David-something.
Turns out, many of my aunts and uncles from my father’s side of the family have two English names.
Most of them came about after they were baptised, if I recall the story correctly.
I want to think it was my late grandmother’s doing. She, too, had two English names. One of them is my first name, Selina.
As old as 16, I knew I was going to give my children those kinds of names.
They were going to be obnoxious and pretentious-sounding, but also very fancy.
And teachers would always ask me what their actual names were.
“Is his name Philip or David?”
“It’s both. Just call him. Philip David,” I would say with a smirk.
But then again, we must not forget that we are Africans and we have our own way of doing things.
Even in our various Kenyan tribes, we name children in very specific ways.
The most common way Kenyan children are named is after their grandparents.
I, for example, hit the name jackpot when I received both of my grandmothers' names.
I am the first daughter, so I was bound to be named after my father’s mother, Selina.
But my mother likes to have the last word, so my middle name is her mother’s middle name.
I like to think that for this reason, I am an old soul.
My elder brother’s name, I have never really understood the meaning behind it.
He is named after an Arch Angel and an African freedom fighter.
Very fancy name and no hint of a Luhya name at all.
My Luhya name is as Luhya as it gets.
There’s an S, H, K and a U in there.
Now, for my younger sister, I am still puzzled to this day how they arrived at her name.
It is the name of the former wife of the freedom fighter my brother was named after.
Her Luhya middle name is my late uncle’s. How does a girl get a boy’s middle name?
They did it as a way to remember my uncle, who had died a year before my sister was born.
I’m sure in your culture, there is a way you also name children.
When I was naming my child, I was so relieved that my brother had had a daughter two years prior and named her after my mother.
Her middle name, at least.
Don’t hate me for saying this, but I just didn’t want to name mine a name from the 70s.
So instead, I took a leaf out of my parents’ book and named her a variation of my and my partner’s mother’s names.
So in the end, I still got two English names, and they are as fancy as it gets.