SURNAMES

Who taught you that your children should answer your own first name as their surname rather than the one you bear? This is very dangerous and misleading because your surname, also known as your last name, is a “hereditary name passed down from one generation to another.”

Surnames are used to identify and distinguish individuals within a family or lineage. Apart from reflecting a person’s ancestry, surnames could also reflect an occupation, achievement, or geographic origin.

Many years ago, surnames did not exist anywhere. Check ancient books and documents like the Bible; you would hardly see names. In some cases, a person’s father, mother, brother, occupation, function, or even town was used to identify him or her, but not as a surname per se.

It is said that surnames emanated from the Eastern Roman Empire. It reached the rest of Europe in the 11th century.

In most African countries, especially in Igboland, surnames never existed till the colonial era.

In precolonial times, children were identified by their mothers’, not even fathers’, names in Igboland. This system was found more comfortable owing to poligamy. People were addressed, for instance, thus: Emeka nwa Mgbafo (Emeka the sin of Ngvafo), Nneka nwa Ekemma, etc.

The attachment of their mothers names cannot even qualify as surnames. Moreover, they were not written.

The scenario changed with the introduction of school education, when children were required at school to give their surnames. As the children were confused about what that meant, they were simply asked to say their father’s name. This is the origin of surnames in Igboland and many other African nations.

Apart from the school, institutions like the court, police, and prīsons and white collar jobs demanded people provide their surname, in this case the names of their fathers.

This is the reason why a surname is literally translated in Igbo as Aha Nna or Afa Nna. The translation is poor and could be misleading because some came to understand surnames to mean the name of the father of a person.

N.B

Surnames do not have Igbo or African origins. They originated from Western education and, in our own case, col0nialism. Those who developed it did so to preserve our various ancestries or lineages.

The same name should therefore be allowed to run from generation to generation in order to keep the ancestry straight and alive. Surnames are not meant to be changed except when serious need calls for it. I wonder what such a serious need can be.