What’s in a Name?
Inspired by Jola Ayeye’s Who Do You Think You Are?
Vignettes — described by Fu’ad as multiple streams of thoughts — detailing experiences with my name.
“Ope mi”
My grandfather was 84 when I first moved in with him. I was 16 and in my first year in university. He wore thick, round glasses, lace pants and white vests. Every morning, he walked around the house he built in the late 60s, tapping a cane on the cemented ground of the long narrow hallway, inspecting hinges, walls and windows.
As he made his way around the compound, he sang. I no longer remember the songs, but they must have been hymns. The compound was wide with a u-shaped courtyard. The room I slept in could be accessed through one side of the u-shape. At the end of his walk, he’d stand behind the window to my room, a room that had belonged to my grandmother before she died, and call for me in a teasing voice: Ope mi. Warmth spread around my chest when I heard the tenderness in his voice, the way he said ‘my’ as though I belonged to him and was important to him. Through the dusty windows, he saw me.
We didn’t always get along. I was quiet and reserved, slightly annoyed by the gender roles he imposed on me. He was from a different time, and instead of extending grace to him, I judged his beliefs harshly. It didn’t help that my Yoruba was limited, that I said Ekaaro sir, fluently, but stuttered when trying to communicate what I learned in school or strained my ears to understand the stories he told me. His English was straight, enunciated, but the stories never flowed as well in a borrowed language. So there were days we sat together outside the house staring at the road, saying nothing, enjoying how the sound of cars filled the silence between us. Still, whenever he called me Ope mi, I became putty, melting like butter.
When he fell sick, I was at my parent’s. It was during a long ASUU strike, and he’d collapsed by the well in the compound. I didn’t panic. My grandfather was a strong man. He drank Guinness, but he also walked to church and ate healthy food. Unfortunately, by the time I returned in March 2013, his sickness had gotten worse. He no longer recognised me and would never call me Ope mi again. At the time, I didn’t know.
After he died, my step-grandmother would recall how he called my name and laughed. It was sad laughter, the kind that followed folded lips. Less than a decade later, my uncle would tell me my grandfather gave me the name Ope. After having five biological sons, then two male grandchildren, he had thought God was withholding girls from him. He’d always wanted a girl. So when my older sister came, he named her after his mother. When I arrived, he was grateful that God had given him a second female grandchild. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be his Ope.
Opeyemi: A Short Play
What’s your name?
Ope
What’s the full one?
There’s no full one. It’s just Ope.
No, there has to be a full one. It can either be Opeyemi, Opemipo, Opeoluwa, Opemidayo.
It’s just Ope.
Okay. Can I call you Opeyemi?
No, you may not.
Okay, Opeyemi.
Opeoluwa
Breaking the fourth wall: I’ll tell you a story, but I won’t show it to you.
In my mother’s mouth, the full version of my name is pineapple sweet.
When Sugar says it, he’s trying to trigger me or scold me. My name is Baby. Or Alakija. Or Alaye. Never this.
In my mouth, it’s wrong. It’s been 26 years, and I still need to test it in my head before I say it out loud. I say it slowly so I don’t miss any vowel sounds. Still, it comes out wrong.
I rarely use it.
‘Ope,’ my mother shouted.
Press the o in orange like you’re about to sing the national anthem — the first syllable in Arise. Release the pe sound, like you’re letting go of your problems. Imagine an orchestra. The conductor waves his baton, but one of the singers goes off-key.
That’s what it sounds like when my mother screams my name. I know I’ve done something wrong. She follows it with ‘wa n bi’. I jump out of bed and run down the stairs, panicking. I take stock of my chores for the day: Did I leave the stew on fire? Did I not spread the clothes she asked me to? Did I kill someone?
One evening, I was doing the dishes when a bowl slipped under my foamy fingers and shattered. The sound of a broken plate silenced the house. Next came her cries — the sturdy voice behind the sturdy face. I listened to her scolding, how it morphed: from plates to carelessness to womanhood. Is this how you’ll behave in your husband’s house, eh? Answer me, Ope. The Ope here was quiet and softer, but it accused me, so I hated it. I hated the name in my mother’s mouth, and I hated the name for being mine.
A few times, I’m lucky. The o in orange sound starts, and my heart begins racing. Before she can say more, she’s replaced the song with Tobi, my sister’s name, and I sigh, relieved.
Identity Crisis: Are You Ope or Tobi?
You’re a big girl. Your sister isn’t. Your sisters aren’t. Your feet are long and wide. Your uncle asks, where are you growing to? Nibo lo n ga lo? Another says, I hope you play basketball. You smile politely. A teacher calls you a giant. The market women say you’re orobo. Your mother calls you iya pati. Whatever that means. They never find your size in the market, so you walk from shop to shop under the sweltering heat, searching. Once in Yaba market, the day before your 10th birthday party, you’re wearing the tight yellow shorts your mother’s sister sent from London. Men snatch your hands, grab your cheek. Your aunty — you’re not sure how you’re related — asks if you didn’t have better clothes to wear. Don’t you know you’re a big girl? You try to shrink yourself. Girls shouldn’t be this big. You look like your daddy. Girls should look like their mummies: dainty and small. Who’ll marry you?
A clementine-faced talkative girl in church jokes that they should’ve named you Tobi, that your parents made a mistake. You’re the big one, she says. She’s the small one. She should be Ope.
Your daddy is a funny man. He once placed his right hand on your head and his left on your sister’s head. He asked if you wanted to swap places. I’ll make you Tobi. I’ll make you Ope. He mumbled incantations, magic words. You giggle. Your sister giggles. After the spell, he asks, what’s your name? You play along.
You say Tobi.
Your sister says Ope.
You wonder if the spell worked. If indeed, there was a mistake and you’re Tobi, true to the name, a big girl.
Identity crisis: Grace of God or Thank God
One afternoon in 2018, I randomly searched Yorubanames.com for the meaning of my full name, Opeoluwa. I was at work in the publishing company where I was the managing editor. It was a slow day, and the internet was even slower. I listened to the sound of passing cars, the hum of the air-conditioning, the laughter of colleagues upstairs.
Then the result popped up on my screen.
Meaning of Ọpẹ́olúwa
The grace of God.
Morphology
ọpẹ́-olúwa
Gloss
ọpẹ́ — grace, permission
olúwa — lord, God
Not thank God — decades earlier, Mrs Aliyu, the Yoruba teacher, gave my class an assignment to find out the meaning of our names. Mine meant thank God. My lips partly open, I typed a short message to my friend, a linguist who worked on the project. I think there’s been a mistake. I can’t remember the result of the conversation, but he said both versions — thank God and grace of God — were right.
Then the website should say that, I thought.
The alternate translation pleased me, but I panicked. Was it grace, or was it thanks? What bearing did that have on my person? What did it mean to translate your name into another language? I secretly loved Grace; I wrapped the words in my tongue. I couldn’t use thanks in the same way.
My mother said any translation of the name was acceptable. This irked me. For days, I had panic attacks, waking up from empty dreams with a gasp. And then one evening, a week after, as I walked home, staring at orange lines in the blue sky — the sun setting the horizon — birds flying across the sky, I said thank you. Despite the okada men threatening to run me off the sidewalk, the creepy yellow-toothed smile of the man who sold puff-puff at the side of the road, the cars honking, frustrated drivers swearing at themselves, I felt gratitude, a feeling that was encapsulated in my name. I chose thank you.
I Would Have Named You Opemipo
My uncle says he would have given me the name Opemipo. His voice is stern, the tone he uses to tell my siblings and me stories from when he served in Zamfara and the pranks we played on him as children. But I already have an ope name. And so? He’s annoyed, but it’s not with me. I can barely see his face on my phone — it’s pixelated, and the house itself, my parents’ house, is dark. But, without clearly seeing, I know about the lines on his face — his forehead and cheeks — that he’s an older man than when he lived with us, and we teased him with songs like, ‘uncle Seyi daleru, somebody tun le se’.
They made me clean everywhere, but they didn’t allow me to give you a name because I was just a small boy.
This time I laugh. I like Opemipo.
Ope, Okpe, Obe, OP — A Brief History of A Mispronounced Name
We had a garden party on Easter Sunday. It was a sunny evening, and we set the table with wine, chicken, and potatoes. The guests were from our cohort, but one of us brought his girlfriend, who I’d never met. She had friendly eyes. We couldn’t shake hands, but I imagined her grip would be firm.
My name is Ope.
Can you say that for me again?
Ope, but it’s OK. You can just call me OP.
Ope?
Yes! Wow. You’re the first person in this country to pronounce my name correctly.
She smiled.
Everyone else called me OP. I asked them to.
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In the old house, before we moved to the island, we had a neighbour whose baby sister we loved. She was only a little girl, but she made so much noise and incoherent baby nonsense. She knew my name: Obe.
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My tailor. She called me Okpe. And spelt my name Okpe.
Ope o!
June 22, 2018. The World Cup. Nigeria beats Iceland 2–0. The men and women in the viewing centre scream Ope o.
When NEPA brings light, right in time for Super Story or days after they’ve held it selfishly, the neighbourhood erupts in Ope o.
When the buka has hot amala, or the beans woman shows up with fresh agege bread, we mutter Ope o under our breaths.
When we hear of near-death experiences, testimonies of survival, we shake our heads and, with a weight in our tongue, say Ope o.
Ope o — not just a name, a word that breaks the language barrier. A collective language of thanks.
Why did the church people gossip about me? A funny one.
Start reading this by singing any of the following songs out loud:
- Ope lo ye o, baba olore. Iyin ogo ye o, Olorun Oba, Hosanna ye o, e se o baba.
- Gbo’pe mi Oluwa, osuba re ma re. Saara re na re o olugbala, bi o ti nse pelu mi ni ko ma se.
- Ope ye o o Baba, Ope ye o o omo.
- Opelope re, opelope re, aiye Iba yeye mi opelope re.
Before I knew anything about the world — how the earth moved around the sun, or how London wasn’t in the sky — I had funny thoughts in my head. Someone’s face was an onion bulb. My parents were Mary and Joseph. The people in the house behind ours watched us on their television. We watched the people in the house in front of us on our television. If I closed my eyes long enough, the world would disappear. People were what they smelled like. My Sunday school teacher smelled of kerosene.
The church people passed a secret message through several songs with the words ‘Ope’. They were gossiping about me.
Sometime before this thought first appeared in my head, I dreamt that Jesus didn’t like me. We were in the long narrow hallway of my grandfather’s house. He sat on a bench with a bunch of kids. I stood at the door to the entrance of the house, longing to join but feeling I didn’t belong there. A song, no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, played, but I heard I was condemned.
The thought came naturally. I didn’t understand Yoruba, so I didn’t know what they were saying. I also didn’t ask because I was afraid of the wrong they would reveal to me. They were narrating stories about how bad I was. I only felt better when I heard other people’s names in songs.
- Oluwa e tobi, e tobi o, e tobi — My sister’s name is Tobi.
- … A o ma damilare… My brother’s name is Dare.
I wasn’t the only bad person.
Omo ati Mama.
We called my maternal grandmother Mama. When we shouted her name to help us tamba or tell her we were hungry, she responded ‘Omo’ with the same pitch we called her.
Asake
During a long holiday that stretched and stretched until the days were the same, I asked Mama about my other names. In school, Four Akinbamidele, I discovered it was possible to have more than three names. My classmates had told me that they had seventeen names, twenty names, thirty names — all Yoruba kids whose parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties had given them more names than they could carry. Anytime I asked my parents about my other names, they would say they didn’t matter as long as they were not on my birth certificate. Finally, my grandmother would tell me the truth. She called me Asake.
The Other Names: Jesus Loves Ope or Jesufemi
My earliest memory of Sister Yinka is running away from Mama in her Ajinomoto shirt, out the door into the next house, Sister Yinka’s house. I am a chubby child, but I am fast and too slippery for my old grandmother. I’ve just returned from playgroup, the pink school where we sing, ‘toys, toys, toys, who will buy me toys?’ I am not wearing any shirt, just my nappy or underwear. Sister Yinka laughs. I think she’s in secondary school, wearing a green waistcoat and pleated skirt. Or is she already in university? She says, Jesufemi, throws me up and then down. Go and meet Mama. When you finish eating your eba, I’ll come and carry you. Her voice is singsong, with laughter in the edges. I don’t want to eat eba. Mama will force it into my mouth. We’ll fight about it. But Sister Yinka’s voice, the way she says my name is a promise. So I return home, into my grandmother’s willing hands. To date, Sister Yinka is the only one who calls me Jesufemi.
Esther is better. It’s English. Easy to pronounce.
My primary two teacher, Ms Afoloyan, went to Mecca and returned wearing colourful scarves and calling me ‘Esteri Ayaba’ (Esther, wife of the king). I loved this version of a name I was told my paternal grandmother gave me, a name I shared with my mother.
Two years before this, on the evening before my first day in primary school, my sister told me that I had to stop using my middle name, the name everyone called (Ope) and begin using my first name (Esther). I don’t remember why, but it must have made sense to a five-year-old. I recognise it now as placing value on the English language over Yoruba (or being ashamed of the latter).
By the time I finished primary school and started secondary school, I didn’t want to be Esther anymore. So I switched back to Ope. It was the first act of reclaiming my roots.
But you don’t even look Yoruba?
Everyone in my family has had a moment in their life where strangers assume we’re not Yoruba. My mother tells the story of the day she stood at a bus stopin the 80s. A stranger walked up to her and started speaking Igbo passionately to her. He might have been toasting her. She doesn’t know.
When my older siblings were in nursery school, they told their teacher they were Igbo because of their complexion. Their teacher believed them, even though they had Yoruba names. My uncle, who tells this story, is more disappointed in the teacher than my siblings.
One evening a long time ago, my family discussed this. It wasn’t a planned conversation, neither was it serious. We joked that we had to investigate why we were all being told that we didn’t look Yoruba, what it meant to look Yoruba. The irony: we agreed that my father didn’t look Yoruba.
When I studied law at the University of Lagos, I had to sign a form with the sub-dean. As she went through my form, she paused each time she read new information.
Your name is Ope?
You’re from Oyo? Where in Oyo?
That place doesn’t exist. I know Oyo very well. Go and do your research properly. You might not be Yoruba.
In a second experience, I attended a monthly dinner on the island that a friend organised. When I got there, most people hadn’t arrived. But there was one guy. We got talking, and somehow, the topic of my ethnicity, came up. I didn’t look Yoruba. He agreed. He called me Chioma. I called him Emeka. We’re friends now, and we’ve kept our secret names.
One more: At NYSC camp. They had this argument about my tribe too. One guy was confident I was lying about my name. He didn’t think I was Yoruba, but he was also sure I didn’t look Igbo. So he said I was from Rivers.
Nickname
As a child, all my nicknames revolved around my size. I had one family friend who would always say ‘o ti wu wu wu, o de ma be’ every time he saw me. It was practically a nickname.
As an adult, my subconscious started to dissociate from these names, and I began to call myself names that I chose. It’s fascinating how easy nicknames can stick, how friends and loved ones will accept them and replace your real name with these nicknames. Spicy Ops. General. Butterfly. Sunshine. Ope Dollars.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Philosophizing:
A name is a fluid thing. It’s more than the sum of your existence. It’s who you are at this moment. Who you’ll be tomorrow. It transforms itself, taking on different meanings, depending on who uses it, how it sounds in their mouth. It’s also not you. It has a separate identity outside you, so you can bend it and make it conform to your will. A name is not a dictator. It won’t determine the course of your life. It’s a label, distinguishing A from B. Even if I weren’t Ope, I would still be Ope.
Baby, girl, you’re still a flower (still a flower)
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