What's in a Name?

By Sonia Qi

Characters in books often have their names deliberately chosen to correspond to their personalities and destiny. Yet in real life, many people feel their names do not suit them or feel the need for a name that fits their new environment, so they go through the process to legally change it. Officially changing one’s name only requires a petition and a public hearing, but it is also easy enough to ask people to call you something else. However, is it really that simple?
Names are central to one’s identity. A name can act as an identifier for a person’s gender, age, and ethnicity. After being called by a name for years, that name is no longer a normal word, but instead something linked to personal stories and social relationships. In Homegoing, characters have different types of names and relationships with their names that are inextricably linked to their destiny. 

​A surname is the family name inherited from one’s ancestors, and in Homegoing, it also represents family history, status, and responsibility. The white chief of the Cape Coast Castle, a fort used in slave trade, passes the last name of “Collins” on to his progeny. For Quey, inheriting the family name also means inheriting his father’s whiteness and the family business — slave trade. Quey must compromise for his family, blaming white people in order to feel a sense of kinship with his fellow Africans, reluctantly taking over his father’s work, and marrying the daughter of the Asante king for protection. Unlike his father, James refuses to follow the path his family chooses for him. He cannot feel at ease with the money and respect garnered to him by the slave trade. To escape the control and shameful work of his family, James abandons his name. He moves to a remote village with a brand new identity, so he can be his “own nation.” There he is given the name “Unlucky” because his crops never grow, and yet he feels he is fortunate to be named Unlucky. 

"The convicts working the mines were almost all like him. Black, once slave, once free, now slave again."
— Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

Name is so essential to one’s identity that the lack of a name can signify the absence of identity or a universal identity. H, who is given a letter as a placeholder for a name, is held captive as a slave, convicted of an unfair charge, and eventually works as a miner. He is nameless, powerless, and has a life like many others. Having no unique identity, H is a member of the union. He stands in for the “freemen” that work like slaves, those who get thrown in jail for minor reasons, and those who work underground for years. He also represents those who die in dust explosions, those who suffer death for not finishing a task, those who die in rebellion against the boss, and those who are oppressed because of their color. Another character with a similar identity is Ness, short for goodness. Working in the cotton field for her entire life, she is killed by her owner after saving a girl from being beaten by the owner’s son. Like H, Ness embodies the anonymous slaves that work industriously, are cruelly tortured, and die quietly. She is one of them and all of them. They are insignificant while living and have nothing left after death. 

“‘Taking away your name is the first step’”
— Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

    A cultural name often represents a culture’s history. Changing an African cultural name to an English name, similar to the prohibition for the slaves to speak in their own language, is a step toward erasing the African culture and identities of individuals. Ness is stripped of her original name, Maame, and Akua is forcibly given the name Deborah; in this way, both are forced to undergo the process of assimilation. Beyond calling Deborah “sinner” or “heathen,” the white Missionary constantly refers to her race and connects it with the Christian belief that he wants to impose, attempting to turn her against her culture. In the example of Kojo, the only thing he has of his mother is his name. Kojo is still a baby when he leaves Ness, and he knows nothing about the history of his family or people. His African name is an essential part of his identity, and shortening his name to Joe is akin to cutting himself off from his heritage. The name Joe might make Kojo more American and perhaps even make his life in the U.S. easier, yet at the same time, he loses part of his African identity.

“We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
― Milan Kundera
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Sometimes, people change their names voluntarily, which often signifies their transition to a new identity. Amani changes her name from Mary because she thinks its meaning of harmony suits her new identity as a singer. Despite the criticism of abandoning their original name, it is not uncommon for people to use a different name in a new country primarily due to pronunciation or spelling issues or potential discrimination based on their foreign name. Personally, adopting the name Sonia marked an important change in my life when I moved to the U.S.. In the beginning, Sonia felt very much like a normal word, given that Sonia was a random girl’s name my mother found online. I could just as easily have been named Emily, Claire, or Hannah. My Chinese name is different; Leheng was selected by my parents. Le is equivalent to the word “laugh”, and heng has the same pronunciation as “forever” and means a type of jade, an auspicious item in Chinese culture. Compared to the name I had used my entire life, I could barely feel any connection to Sonia. Nevertheless, I stuck with Sonia to avoid questions regarding the pronunciation of my name and not being even more different from all my classmates. I separated my life into two worlds and used my names as the key. In both worlds, there is a part of me that exists outside the perimeter and never gets seen. This two-world system operates so well that having my father calling me Sonia would be weird to me. As I live with this identity, and more and more people recognize me as Sonia, it almost feels as though I am using my experiences in America and emotions related to this identity to fill the name Sonia. This name becomes more special to me that I started to also identify myself as Sonia.