Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another. This is the first Law of Thermodynamics so it is a universally accepted truth. I speak what I call elementary Igbo and I understand the language enough to be able to buy goods in Ogbete main market (Enugu) without getting cheated by the sellers and to answer questions from my uncles when I am in London as that is the language we speak at home, abroad. At this point I’ll like to reiterate what my very intelligent friend Nnamdi Chris Ekeh (who I sometimes practice speaking French with) says, ”Courtesy demands that you speak in the language you are spoken to”.
My younger brother Oghoghomena Menah Wogu, inspires me to learn more Igbo words and phrases because he genuinely cracks up anytime I say something in Igbo 🙂 🙂 and we have a few jokes we share over and over again that have to do with the Igbo language. With my little knowledge of the Igbo language, something I never fail to do is try to translate Igbo names to know their English meanings. I like music and I find Igbo names (especially the long ones) to be very musical in a way that only Igbo names can be. My sister’s name Uchechi Wogu is a sentence and I wish my name Ijeoma, was longer.
I am writing about Energy and Igbo names for two reasons and two reasons is enough reason for my overactive creative mind to write a 500+ words-long post on Facebook.
Storytime: When I was around 11 years of age, my cousin Ore who was in university at the time, told me about a friend of hers who had only his name to show for his cultural heritage, his name was Ewoma, I think, and he went to her university. She told me this story because I told her what people in my school called me. (It was Mirabell, for those wondering) We both understood that like Ewoma, we did not speak our native languages and knew very little about our cultures and the idea was that I needed to hold on to what I had, and just like Ewoma what I had was my traditional/native name ‘Ijeoma’.
The other day I was speaking to someone and he asked me if Ijeoma was my full name (I go by Ijeoma nowadays). I said Yes and asked him what his full name was. He said Chukwumaifonaeme. I told him what I thought about his name and I also said that his name has followed him, to which he replied “All our names, really”, I answered “Yes. All our names follow us”. I felt like the Energy in the name he was given is being transformed into another Energy which he now knows as his ‘personal life experience’ (I say so because he told me things about himself).
Igbo names can be lost in translation sometimes because we try to over simplify their meanings by making them out to be more literal than contextual. The very science of Igbo nomenclature and it’s roots in the philosophy of the Igbo language is so profound that even as an elementary speaker of the language, I find myself moved by Igbo names. I found a quote on the internet and this quote for me, was the cement between Energy and Igbo names although It focuses on translation:
Reading Lakshmi Holmström (1935–2016), whose translations took Tamil literature to world readers
Quote: “I think that most readers – and again I’m excepting the specialist reader or indeed the discriminating and sensitive reader – don’t understand what exactly is involved in a translation. They can’t quite grasp the notion that languages differ hugely in lexis as well as syntax; that one language doesn’t ‘move into’ another automatically. Nor do they realise that when you translate a work, whether it is a poem or a long work of fiction, you have to keep in mind the integrity of the whole thing. Words and sentences may be the bricks and mortar but it has a structure as a whole that you are constantly aspiring towards. But of course, I’m also aware that different translators read, interpret and work differently.”
This post is for my daddy, because he always says that he hasn’t done his job to teach us the Igbo language. Daddy jisike, we love you like that and we are just fine! ❤
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