There is power in naming

Writing Back
Ranga Mataire

On Thursday last week, Government renamed some streets, roads and avenues in the capital Harare.

Off went some old colonial relics and in came names of our valiant struggle stalwarts who gave all for the liberation of the majority.

As has become the norm, those whose business is to oppose anything proposed by the Government were apoplectic.

Actually, the renaming of roads had the surprising effect of resurrecting a long forgotten former Minister in the name of Walter Mzembi who felt duty-bound to express his “valued” views about this development.

Mzembi thinks that no one should name anything that he/she did not beget. Well, everyone has the right to express his/her views about anything and it is not up to us to begrudge anyone for expressing his or her shallowness.

Let’s start from the beginning. Whose land is this that we have streets bearing alien names with no relation to our well being as a people? The land and space is ours. Which country in the world prides itself in having alien, slave or colonial names that serve nothing but reminding us of a sordid past when our forefathers were called ‘boy’ no matter how white-haired they were?

Is there an opportune time for renaming our streets, buildings, rivers, towns — mountains?

In fact, what is it in naming something? What and who is empowered by naming something? What does it do to our sense and sensibility?

Naming the world around us is very crucial. By not naming your world, you mute your experiences. You deny it and push it down. In fact, naming something bestows ownership, particularly if the naming is derived from our culture, history and language.

Ngugi waThiongo reminds us that the choice of language and the way we name things plays a pivotal role in people’s definition of themselves in relation to their natural environment and society and of course in relation to our entire universe.

For the exception of only one or two, most of the names given to streets and roads have a direct reference to individuals who played some sole in birthing our nationhood.

It is often said we are all products of our social and historical experiences and what a better way of immortalising our history by giving names to places that we occupy? History becomes alive and immortalised when its participants become part of our daily nomenclature.

Thomas Stearns Eliot better known as T.S Elliot, yes that America-British essayist, playwright, literary and social critic has an illuminating passage that deserve charitable reproduction, in which he talks about the power of naming.

To name a thing is to acknowledge its existence as separate from everything else that has a name; to confer upon it the dignity of autonomy while at the same time affirming its belonging with the rest of the nameable world; to transform its strangeness into familiarity, which is the root of empathy. To name is to pay attention; to name is to love. Parents name their babies as a first non-biological marker of individuality amid the human lot; lovers give each other private nicknames that sanctify their intimacy; it is only when we began naming domesticated animals that they stopped being animals and became pets. (T.S. Eliot made a playful case for the profound potency of this act in “The Naming of Cats.”)

The essence of this passage is to bring into life the idea that naming something confers dignity and in a way immortalises the named object.

Any country that values its being in the universe confers names to its territorial space. It is part of identity preservation. Our struggle for independence was a profound and enduring episode in the trajectory of our country and it is only befitting that some of its participants are immortalised for the benefit of generations to come.

In “The Name of the Wind” Patrick Rothfus argues that words are pale shadows of forgotten names. Rothfus says; “As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can also wring tears from the hardest of hearts. When you name something, it immediately becomes more recognisable, more manageable.”

The famous African abolitionist Olaudah AEquiano is referred to by at least three names in his autobiography titled “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” (1789). The idea of giving slaves new names was to disconnect them from their origins, their culture, their language and their lineage. Without any connection with their language, slaves became disempowered and rootless.

In Marcus Rediker’s book “The Slave Ship” (2007), enslaved peoples referred to each other as ‘shipmates’ and therein started the dis-membering of interpersonal relations within and amongst slaves. It completely deprived the slaves of any sense of identity and sense of belonging. The likes of Mzembi must be made aware of the fact that naming things is an essential human need and it is through naming that we make sense of the universe. English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon, who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor or England and is often referred to as the father of empiricism popularised the saying ‘knowledge is power; and there is power in naming things.

I find no contradiction at all in the Government renaming our streets, roads or avenues. It is through this naming that we situate ourselves as an autonomous group of people with a keen sense of history and immortalising our valiant struggle.