I came to know my name as Abiola. As I understood life, I began to wonder why Ijaw parents would call their son Abiola despite all the other Ijaw names. My mother recounted that I was born on June 13, a day after the historic 1993 election that had just been conducted. It was a celebration of the fame of Moshood Abiola, the late presidential candidate, and perhaps they wanted me to be like him. My childhood disputes primarily involved stopping others from calling me that name, especially as children all around nicknamed me ‘Abiola milk’. Now that I fully understand the origin of the name and its intent, I now proudly bear it even though it’s too late to add that to my certificates. I doubt even with amnesia, anyone could forget my birth date if they know this story.

The second story that will forever stay in my heart is about my two nieces. When my elder brother had two daughters and a third girl was born, I saw my elder brother and his wife visibly grieving. My mother named the baby ‘Erekpo-idisenimi’, meaning ‘even if it is a girl, I like it.’ The story continued with a fifth girl, whom she named ‘Ifiemi’, meaning ‘there is time.’ This goes beyond my personal stories; informal toponyms encode jokes, tragedies, market lore and family sagas that never make it into government gazettes or school textbooks.

Across Nigeria, directions are hardly ever neutral. Ask how to find an address in Aba or Kaduna and the answer will come wrapped in stories: One-Man Village got its name from a lone farmer who held out against urban sprawl; Hospital Junction marks the spot where a missionary clinic once stood when there were no government health posts; Coca-Cola Bus Stop recalls the first refrigerated kiosk in the district. Such labels are Nigeria’s grassroots encyclopaedia, created by residents, repeated by bus conductors and traders, and passed down like family heirlooms. Scholars call this kind of toponymy a living archive because it compresses local history into a word that everyone, literate or not, can recognize.

Nigeria’s literacy rate was about 69 per cent in 2023, and even among the literate, few possess home libraries or stable internet. Place names, therefore, serve as mnemonic pegs. They trigger stories at bus parks, barber shops and evening football viewings. If a junction is called War Front, someone will ask why, and an elder will recount how soldiers camped there during the Civil War. The answers transmit not just nostalgia but civic lessons: who organized the first borehole, which women’s cooperative fought for a market stall, and when the troops advanced across the Benue. Remove the name, and the oral hyperlink collapses. Cultural geographers warn that renaming without community buy-in ‘erodes belonging and weakens collective resilience,’ particularly where written archives are scarce.