Embracing the Multitude

‘Shed that name they put you in.’ —Obongjayar, ‘New Man’

It is a new day.

For the last two or so years, I have called myself, been called, and gotten published under the name Grey Atanda. Before that, in 2017, I was Atanda Obatolu; a young man with a new image of himself, having only just come to terms with his queerness. And before that, I was Faruq Obatolu, my legal name, cishet and stiff, in a long, problematic heterosexual relationship that destroyed me when it ended. Now it is 2022. I am 24 years old, gender nonconforming and more confident in my body than ever before. I am more aware of myself, more deliberate and intelligent—and I have decided to adopt a new name, Ìjàpá. Ìjàpá Ọlọ́gbọ́n-Ẹ̀wẹ́. The cunning tortoise.

As soon as a self is born, it is branded with a name. Most times, the name is afore chosen, waiting, and after birth, the name is wrapped around the new self like a shawl. Amongst the Yorùbá, of whom I am descended, there is the concept of –orúkọ àmú t’ọ̀rún wá. This translates into ‘preordained name’, the idea being that certain children, by virtue of how they are born, must necessarily be called certain names. For example, I am called Òjó, one of my many birth names, because I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. Children born in the footling breech position are called Ìgè; twins are called Ìbejì, and each of the pair is called Táíyé and Kẹ́hìndé respectively.

Yorùbá people understand that names do not function merely as a form of identification. We believe that names carry individuated value, surrounded as we are by the superstition that a child’s various names are linked to its destiny or serve as translations of its ‘selves’. This is what we mean when we say, ‘orúkọ n rò ẹ́’, which roughly translates into ‘your name burdens you with this.’ It is so important to get the names of a child right that, in the old days, parents consulted the oracle before naming their children. As though to wear the wrong name were a terrible thing indeed, some kind of curse.

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison also understood this well. In her decades-long career as a novelist, she could never write a character properly unless she had given them the correct names. For her, a character’s name was a crucial piece in the puzzle of their personality, and it was important to get it right in order to be able to properly represent the character. When she used the wrong name, the character would refuse to come alive on the page, remaining resolutely elusive until she found a fitting name.

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