Yorubas are deep thinkers that you can call dyed-in-the-wool philosophers. Whoever is in doubt, should appraise himself with their ways of life, ranging from their proverbs, their anecdotes, their totems, the way they name their children at birth and such other sundry practices.
In other lands like the United Kingdom, for example, you have people bearing Mr Wood, Mr Stone, Mr Hammer, etc, and they don’t bat an eyelid about it.
Such names raise all manner of questions in the minds of Yorubas, for example. “Mr Wood or Mr Stone; is he a person begotten through the instrumentality of a strange goddess of the forest or of the rocks? Or why should someone bear such name as Hammer?”
The reason is that Yorubas don’t believe anything is ever done without a reason. To them, everything that happens to a person has its reason, routed in something, perhaps mystical or mythological.
It is commonplace in Yorubaland, especially among the Ijebu, for example, to hear songs like: “we hin’le wo, k’o to f’omo f’oko, we hin’le wo, k’o to f’omo f’oko, ana buruku, ko je ka m’eni ‘re o, ana buruku ko je ka m’eni ‘re o; w’e hin’le wo, ko to f’omo f’oko”.
It’s an admonition for parents to carry out proper background checks on the families to which they want to give their consent for their children to marry.
I’m told it helped many marriages in the past in Yorubaland; unlike now where supposedly life-time relationships are entered into, in cavalier manners that reduce such traditional but very helpful methods, into irrelevance.
No wonder, marriages crash these days with the speed of lightning. If you are in doubt, someone told me of a marriage that crashed irretrievably, some twenty years ago, the very night the wedding was consummated. If that was indeed true, perhaps it would not have happened, if certain checks and precautions had been taken!
My maternal grandfather was a very well known personality in the community where I come from. He was more popular by his nickname of Oriadetu than his real name and when I asked what the name meant, I was told the full name was “Ori-adetu-n-be-be-aran, ori-ad’aran-n-pe-te-oba”. It was my cousin, Senator Biyi Durojaye who some years ago, explained to me that the grand, old man who passed on, in the late 50s, had a royal carriage in his imposing personality that he was fond of dressing flamboyantly, if not glamourously, daily, as if every day was a festive time.
One of the songs I heard usually rendered in his praise was: “afai j’oba, o njaiye bi Oba”, literally translated to mean something like “not himself a king, but has a lifestyle fit for kings”. The man, I later got to know, had a rich, if not royal, pedigree in the community.
In that same community was a man renowned within the community’s borders and beyond, as a tremendous man of supernatural means, when it came to matters of traditional methods of healing of the mentally deranged, for example.. My peers grew up to know him as “Ojumokan” but it wasn’t until a few years ago I got to know that stretched to the limit, the full name is “ojumo-kan, ogun-kan”. His house was said to be full of charms, amulets, concoctions, et al.
Ajomale is also a popular name in my community, as indeed other parts of Yorubaland, up to Ondo state;but the name is abbreviated. When elasticated, it becomes “Ajo-male-ma-se-sin”; “he resembles a muslim but doesn’t practice the religion”.
In Lagos, Gbaja is an illustrious name associated with law, medicine and sports. The latest guy popularising the name is the current majority leader in the House of Representatives, Femi. Before him in that lineage were the twins, Taiwo (MT), a one-time public relations man in Leventis and an unrepentant sportsman and fanatic and his brother, Kehinde (MK) the lawyer, who was, at a time, a commissioner in the Lagos State cabinet during the military era.
Full pronunciation of that name is Gbaja-bi-a-mi-la. Hope someone will tell me what is the true meaning of that name in Yoruba, or Eko!
One of the ward chairmen in the old Mushin Local Government arrangement when I sought election to become Mushin council chairman in the early 90s was Mr Noah Banire. He held sway for our party, the SDP, in the popular Ward A2 where Akala is situated in Odiolowo, an area where the Amosuns, (Abidoye the elder and his junior brother, Ibikunle who’s serving his second term as Ogun State governor), once resided.
Mr Banire was huge in stature as he was in humour, proverbs and totems. It was from him I learnt that the expanded meaning of his surname was “oju-ba-ni-re, ore-o-de-nu”. It must have been a nickname adopted by his forebears but which eventually became the adopted and family name for their successors.
The same goes for a name like Ajumobi which can be stretched to its limit to become “Ajumobi-ko-kan-t’anu; eni-ori-ran-si-ni-lo-n-lani”, meaning “common parentage is no yardstick, only those divinely assigned to help, will”
There were also these two brothers in my community, one of who was the progenitor of my best friend of 60 years, Alhaji Abdulrasaq Olatunji Salami. They drew a very thin line between their real names and nicknames. Tunji’s father’s nickname was “Bereja (ana) meaning “ask for yesterday’s suspended fight to resume”. He was best known by that nickname which implied he must have been a quarrel-some person; at a point in his life, although his real name was Salami. Conversely, Bereja’s brother was nicknamed “Adaramaja”, meaning “too good to enter into polemics with anybody” but that became his real name that his son, Akinola, a first-class law graduate and attorney-general and commissioner of justice in Ogun State during the Bisi Onabanjo era in the Second Republic, also bore, which he passed on to his children among who is Bolaji Adaramaja, before she shed that name to get married to Dele Momodu, the Ovation magazine publisher.
When you hear of a Mr. Oke, it could mean Okegbenro by which the irrepressible journalist and PR bonhomie, Gbenga is known or “Oke-bi-orun-ko-si”, by which a CAC cleric in London is identified.
Ajayi’s name was first made popular by the missionary priest, Bishop John Crowther before the advent of one of the most profound historians in our clime and one-time vice chancellor in one of the University of Ibadan, Professor J.F. Ade Ajayi. When that name is stretched, it means “Ajayi-ogidi-olu, oni-kanga-a-ji-pon”, the bottomless pit of water or wisdom or something like that.
Biobaku, the surname of a highly respected scholar and ex vice chancellor of the University of Lagos, Saburi, is said to be the name given to a child with survival issues; the reason why the full name is: “bi-o-ba-ku, agba-ni-da”. “If his life is not aborted in his infancy, he grows to become old”..
Just as the name Durojaye tells that it’s bearer is an abiku, who died as suddenly as many times as he came. Or, when a child is born with his legs coming out of the womb first instead of the head, an instant name he gets is Ige, which fully means “Ige -a- t’ese-bi”, the one that came to this world, with the legs, instead of the head first. Why some people also describe Ige as “adubi, olosa Molete” is another matter for chroniclers of Ibadan history to help unravel!
Depending on how they want to be deployed, Yoruba names are capable of several meanings and interpretations; and whether their negative or figurative application is meant to serve certain pre-determined end, is another matter.