Tag Archives: name origin

Ritual: Finding Baby Names Through a Shaman

Nationality: Korean-American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Parkside, USC

My informant SJ told me about another Korean ritual where expecting mothers go to a shaman to get a name for their baby. SJ said that all the women in their family had gone to a shaman to get names for their babies, and when their mother was pregnant with them, she did as well. Koreans see it as an auspicious ritual and believe that it will bring prosperity to the baby. This was how SJ got their name and it means “Wise Existence”. Every name has a different meaning and it is based on many aspects, like when the baby is due and what gender they are, and their name also helps to determine their spirituality and their future.

As I was hearing SJ tell this story, I thought that this was such an interesting way of finding baby names and I love how meaningful each name is. It then made me think about my own name and how my parents came up with it, so I decided to call my mom and ask her about it. After talking to my mom on the phone, I actually did find out a lot of interesting things about my Mandarin name, 李小菲. She told me that because I was born in 2003 the last character in my name has the grass radical in it (the top part of the character that looks like a line with two dashes in it). She laughed and explained that this was because 2003 is the year of the sheep and sheep eat grass. I also laughed in surprise and didn’t know if I should have been offended that my mother decided to name me after grass. She then went on to tell me that the name as a whole meant living freely with a life full of joy and how that was all she wanted for me. I was touched to hear this and now I have a deeper appreciation for my name.

Ojinnaka-Folk Title/Name

Nationality: Nigerian American
Age: 55
Performance Date: 4/24/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Igbo

Context: This name was given to my dad by my grandfather or his father. This name is a title given to sons who have surpassed the expectations of their father. 

  • The name Ojinnaka means that he is greater than his age-mates because of his father. Meaning that the greatness of his father is passed down to his son.
    • Thoughts: This was something that I never knew about so learning about the significance of my dad’s given name was really eye-opening. Like I stated before with my mom, names in my culture are very significant because they are given on the basis of a wide variety of things. Names can be given based on traits and characteristics displayed during the time spent in your mother’s womb, you could be named based on the day you were born, the environment you were born in, or as a thank you to God for bringing you into the world. Every name has a meaning and is something that is very important when it’s given. My dad’s name was given to him by his father because he made my grandfather proud and wanted to mark this by bestowing the name Ojinnaka to him. I enjoyed learning about this because it really opened my eyes and made me value my name even more. Names are really cool because they carry so much weight in a variety of contexts and cultures. I believe all names have meaning and value, and learning about this reassured that belief.

Malewal of the Thieves

Nationality: Indian
Age: 55
Occupation: Financial Manager
Residence: San Ramon, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

Main Body:

Informant: So the village we come from? It’s called Malewal. Our ancestors, seven generations up from my dad, so nine generations up from you, there was Chandu, he was the first of two people who came and settled in our village. He shared our last name, he was our ancestor. So those two started the village and this is a story about Chandu.

So at some point in the past there was more than one Malewal in that area, so people would ask, “Which Malewal are you from?” And the Malewal we came from was known as “Malewal of the Thieves.” The story we heard, and I heard this multiple times is, well, Chandu was a farmer. Living hand to mouth most of the time. But Chandu, he also … at times … well he liked being a thief. 

And again, I don’t know the full story. But there was one time where – there was a town called Anandpur Sahib where Sikhism as a martial religion, the last guru, that’s where it started. Straight line, from Malewal, it’s around ten kilometers. There were a lot of Sodhis there, Sodhi is a last name, that was the family. It was a Sikh name. Apparently they were the descendants of some of the ten gurus. They were more affluent. And Chandu, for whatever reason, had enmity with them. So one night Chandu’s father-in-law is visiting, and it’s night and they go to sleep and their beds are right next to each other. So at night, he walks all the way to Anandpur Sahib. He steals a horse, he was a horse-thief. He comes back to our village but goes even further and drops it off at a friend’s house at another village.

The Sodhis come to Malewal in the morning, following footprints or whatever. They suspect it was Chandu. They accuse him but his father-in-law vouches for him saying that Chandu was next to him when he fell asleep and when he woke up, Chandu was still next to him. So the Sodhis had no proof. So that’s the story. And that’s why we’re from Malewal of the Thieves. Chandu was definitely a real person but I have no idea how real this story is. 

Background:

The informant is my father who was born and raised in northern India in the state of Punjab and immigrated to America over 20 years ago. He was raised for a time in a rural village setting which is where much of our family comes from. The village he came from, Malewal, is the center of this story. The story was well known not just within his village but within the surrounding villages as well. It was how people identified where it was he was from. 

Context:

I am back home due to shelter-in-place. One night when my family was sitting in the study I asked my father if he had any folklore samples I could add to the archive. This was one of the ones he shared with me.

Analysis:

I had never heard this story before and it was entertaining to hear somewhat of an origin story for my family. I could find no record of this story or of Malewal being referred to as “Malewal of the Thieves” anywhere online. However this story is very credible. We know Chandu to have existed and stealing a horse is a very doable action. While the story itself does not have much to analyze I think it’s interesting in how it shows how a village gets its name. How one story leads to a label surviving nine generations. Even now, when the other Malewal apparently has ceased to exist, my father says that locals still know Malewal as “Malewal of the Thieves.” While the validity of the story itself is unsure, its impact on how the village has been named and perceived is all too real.

Mount Diablo

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Walnut Creek, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2019
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Text: JC: The there’s a mountain near where I live called Mount Diablo, and there’s a story surrounding the mountain regarding how it got its name. Back in 1805, Spanish conquistadores were pursuing the Volvon tribe, or anybody who was resisting missionization. So the tribe entered a thicket, and they the spaniards cornered them. And the Spanish word for thicket is “monte.”

AT: Wait, what’s a thicket?

JC: A thicket is, I don’t know, trees and bushes and stuff, right?

AT: Ah, okay.

JC: And so the Spanish thought that they cornered the Volvon there, and that they were gonna capture them, but the tribe escaped in the middle of the night. So the story is that the spaniards named the it “monte del diablo,” or “thicket of the devil”, because of the native people escaping them. But then, the word “monte” got mistranslated by Americans into “mount diablo,” instead of thicket, because they did not know what “monte” meant. And so the name still lasts today. Even after that, people continued to make up stories about how the mountain got its name, because if you look at a picture of it, people are like, “Oh its peaks are devil horns,” or, “That’s where native people did Satanic rituals.” But none of that is true. And in the 1900s there were all of these newspaper articles speculating how the mountain got its name, but it’s really just because of that original event.

AT: Well is it possible that even that could have been made up?

JC: Totally, because the thing is, there is no primary documentation of it, so most of the information has been orally transferred. The reason I know about it is cause it’s right by my house.

Context: JC is a 19 year old history major at the University of Southern California. A resident of Walnut Creek, California near San Francisco and an adamant history buff, JC is well versed in a lot of local legend surrounding his famous and historically colorful place of origin. The exchange above took place over coffee when I asked JC if he knew and slang from the Bay Area. He gave me legends instead.

Interpretation: I think that this legend is significant due to the fact that it not only engages with the situations regarding the name of a place, but also the translation of a words across three different languages. Firstly, the fuzzy origin of the name of the actual place shows how easily different influences such as topographical features (devil horns), convincing oral tradition (the thicket story), and possibly even predisposed racists views (satanic rituals) can have on the understanding and belief of a place and its history. Additionally, this is a local legend tied to this one specific mountain. So, I find it even more interesting that part of the legend holds this mountain and the confusion around it solely responsible for the supposed mistranslation of monte into mountain instead of thicket. In this way, the “name origin” nature of the folklore surrounding the mountain provided a nexus for other “language folklore” of a similar topic.

Also, I like how at the beginning of this exchange, JC presented his version of the legend as the sole story associated with Mount Diablo that held any validity, only later admitting that other stories surrounding the site existed. Even so, he quickly dismissed them as rubbish. Only when I asked for proof that he had as to why his version was the most valid did he admit that there was no way to actually know for sure due to the lack of evidence. This folkloric exchange therefore provided an example of the way that people treat the folklore that they receive, and though the medium exists in multiplicity and variation, this demonstrated how people tend to hold the version that they heard first as the absolute truth.

For another version of this legend, please see p. 457-470 of Bev Ortiz’s “Mount Diablo as Myth and Reality: An Indian History Convoluted.” American Indian Quarterly Vol. 13 (1989)

The Origin of Adjorlolo

Nationality: African-American (Ivory Coast/Scottish/Welsh)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shoreline, WA
Performance Date: 3/25/17
Primary Language: English

Context: When I told my roommate about how I was collecting folklore, he offered to talk about some of the stories he’d heard over the course of his life.

Background: My roommate comes from a mixed-race family, one side of which originates from the Ivory Coast of Africa.

Dialogue: It is said, that my great-great-grandfather, who lived inn Ghana, who was the first man to be called Adjorlolo, um, had sixteen wives, and… I’ve heard between eighty-four and ninety-six kids.

Analysis: This one is pretty straightforward in terms of being a simple piece of folklore about a family’s origins. I found it interesting that the number of offspring from the first Adjorlolo was debated amongst the family. Also interesting was the fact that this was only the great-great-grandfather, which leads only so far back in time. A really good example of how a family’s history can be lost to time quicker than expected, to the degree that legends of eighty-something children and sixteen wives can spring up and become rooted in the family’s history by the time its fifth generation comes around.