What's in a Name

I am just back from a week in the U.S. for work, happy to have seen family and friends, and to have stocked up on hard to find goods. I'd be even happier if both my bags hadn't been lost, meaning my marathon session at CVS was essentially a waste of time. But ahhhh, the luxury of choice in shopping...

Combine that trip with a week in Burundi for work, and there isn't a lot of Rwanda-related news at the moment.

But as I've lived here almost three months now, a I learn a lot of small, interesting things about life here.

Something that can be endlessly confusing (because its very difficult to know if/how people are related), but is cool, is how people are named. There is no such concept as a last name (or nom de famille). Most people have two names, often an English or French first name and a Kinyarwanda last name.

So, for example, Joseph Ishimwe.

But in this fictitious example, Joseph's son wouldn't have the last name Ishimwe, nor would his father. Ishimwe is just a name that his parents liked. And this is what he is probably called by his family, when speaking the local language. My guess is that people used to just have one name, and with colonialism and the European custom of two names, just started adding a European name as a first name.

Now, Ishimwe has a meaning - joy. And because so many people have names that mean something, quite often the name that is chosen in English or French has a more literal meaning than the names we are used to in English. You meet your Marys and Josephs here, but I also have meet people called, Blessing, Patience, Prudence, Innocent, Aime (Loved), Dieudonne (God-given), Beau (Handsome), etc