A Lagos-born poet reads about a father outraged that his son will take his bride’s surname and considers how names travel in Yoruba tradition and nineteenth-century African lives
Sunday, 25 October 2026. Camberwell, South London. My aunt’s living room after the christening, the baby asleep under a mound of aso oke, eleven relatives arguing about the jollof, 6.15pm.
Seven Names Before Lunch
Today my cousin’s daughter was named. In Yoruba tradition, the naming ceremony traditionally comes on the seventh day after birth for a girl, or as close as London calendars allow, and the baby receives several names: one given by the parents, others by grandparents, an oriki, a praise name, and sometimes a name that refers to the circumstances of the birth. My new little cousin is now Oluwatobi, Ayomide, Ifeoluwa and four others I have written on the back of a napkin so I do not shame the family by forgetting. Her parents will call her Tobi. The grandparents will call her whatever they like.
So I came to the London Prat’s piece on whether a son should take his fiancee’s last name with the amused bewilderment of somebody from a culture with a generous supply of names. A retired insurance manager from Ealing threatens to boycott his son’s wedding, withdraw funding and disinherit the family Labrador because the son will take his bride’s surname. The ancient family heritage turns out to begin with a button maker in Birmingham in 1892.
A Boy From Osogun Becomes Samuel Crowther
I keep returning to Samuel Ajayi Crowther this week. Born Ajayi in Osogun around 1809, captured and enslaved as a boy, freed by a British naval patrol and landed in Freetown, he was baptized in 1825 and given the name of an English clergyman, the Reverend Samuel Crowther. He carried that name to his ordination, to his bishopric and into history. He also kept Ajayi. He was both, all his life.
That is the thing Victorian fathers and Ealing fathers never quite understand about names. They are not property to be guarded. They are coats to be worn, layered, exchanged, kept for some occasions and set aside for others. Crowther wore an English name while translating the Bible into Yoruba. Nobody in Osogun thought he had betrayed his ancestors. Nobody in London thought he had stolen theirs.
Toru Dutt Wrote In Three Languages
The Indian half of my reading life offers another example. Toru Dutt, born in Calcutta in 1856, was a poet who wrote in English and French, translated French poetry into English and retold Sanskrit legends in English verse. Her family had converted to Christianity. She lived briefly in France and England, studied at Cambridge lectures, and died of tuberculosis at twenty-one, in 1877. Her book Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published after her death. Her poem Our Casuarina Tree, about a tree in the family garden in Bengal, is still taught across India.
She moved between languages, faiths and countries with a freedom that would have given the Ealing father a heart attack. She did not lose herself. She multiplied herself. Every new language was another name she could answer to.
African Politics And The Names Of Nations
African politics, too, is full of renaming. The Gold Coast became Ghana in 1957. Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, the land of upright people, in 1984. Lagos lost its status as capital to Abuja in 1991, which Lagosians have never forgiven. Countries rename themselves to escape colonial history, to claim a new identity or to announce a political project. Nobody in Accra mourns the Gold Coast. The name served a purpose and was put away.
The Ealing father is behaving like a colonial administrator watching a flag come down. The name was never his to keep. It belonged, briefly, to whoever was using it. Now the son is using a different one. The Labrador, I am confident, will not notice.
The Jollof Argument
The jollof argument in my aunt’s living room has now moved on to the eternal question of Nigerian jollof versus Ghanaian jollof, because my cousin married a man from Kumasi and his mother brought her own pot. Both pots are empty. Nobody will admit which emptied first. This is the true politics of West Africa, and it is more civil than most elections.
My cousin’s husband, the man from Kumasi, has taken none of our names and given his daughter one of his. My aunt has accepted this with grace, which means she raised one eyebrow at the ceremony and lowered it at the cake. In Ealing, apparently, a surname can end a family. In Camberwell, a baby can absorb seven names, two jollofs and a Ghanaian grandmother without blinking.
A Poem For Tobi
The poem I wrote for the christening was read aloud by my aunt, who changed two words without telling me and improved both. It ended with a line about a child who carries many names like a basket carries fruit, never too heavy, always enough to share. My aunt said it was respectful. That is the highest praise she gives. I am keeping a copy on my diary pages, beside the napkin with the baby’s names, which I am still learning. The Ealing father could learn them too, if he had a week and an aunt.