What’s in a Name?

Shakespeare’s profound question has proven very applicable to our first few months in South Africa. Most volunteers received South African names from their training families within the first few days. Translated, most of the names are very flattering: gift, treasure, and beautiful one. However, the Nkosi’s (our training family) did not give us names, explaining that we would most likely get names at our permanent site and that they didn’t want to confuse us with too many names. In hindsight, it was very thoughtful on their part, but at the time we felt left out introducing ourselves as “Joe” and “Kelli” while our peers got great cheers as they introduced themselves as “Deneo” or “Simphiwe”. On the other hand, some of the volunteers ran into trouble with their newly adopted names. One woman’s new first name translated to gift and surname translated to cow making her a ‘gifted cow’. Another volunteer found himself with big shoes to fill when he was named Shaka, the name of the larger than life Zulu king, and was stationed in the heart of the Zulu nation. Although Joe has received many nicknames over the course of our stay, (The Nkosi family still calls him “Cool Iron,” and much of the village of Bundu and the PC training staff will forever remember him as “Yebo”) they are no substitute for a traditional South African name.

Our patience finally paid off and we were given the traditional names of Thabo and Thandeka at the principals’ workshop preceding our site visit. Joe’s name, Thabo, means happiness and Kelli’s name, Thandeka, means lovable. They are pronounced ‘ta-bow’ and ‘tan-day-ga’.

Our names and the names of others have played a big role in our adventure to date. One of the more popular questions we get is “Do you remember my name?” This question is usually followed by disappointment because we are horrible at remembering names, although we are constantly trying to improve. South Africans seem to take great pride in their names and it has been fun getting used to our new names and leaning the beautiful names of our neighbors and fellow villagers. Most people have a ‘traditional’ name and a Christian name that is the English equivalent, if one exists. Some of our favorite names (translated to English) are Happy, Freedom, Gift, Surprise, ‘when boys are left alone’, Given, Answer, Innocent and Precious.