Names & Significance

What’s in a name?

My father says he had a hard time picking a name for me. According to him, his late mother who died a year before my birth had said she would like to be reborn to my father so that he can educate her to the highest possible level. I am made to understand by everyone who knew my late grandmother that I’m her spitting image and some people go as far as calling me her reincarnate.

Anyway, my father decided to give me a name that directly translates to book of God because he said that my life has been customized by the creator from the inception. It’s a name that catches everyone’s attention in my home country. In high school, my classmates called me Bible to keep it short and simple. In college, my colleagues thought to shorten that even further and that landed me on “Bb”. This name was quite the name!

Upon migrating, I figured that people had difficulties with pronouncing my name. For starters, the pronunciation begins with the conflation of two consonants “Nw”, and no English word has such conflation of consonants so for me, I don’t go to war with people who can’t pronounce my name. I don’t see it as an act of disregard. I have absolutely no point to prove with my name to anyone else except myself.

I put together the initials of my name(NEO), and that is the name I go by in America because:

1. I like it.

2. Everyone can easily pronounce it.

3. People don’t seem to struggle with remembering my name.

Of course, I’m aware that the name immediately sounds masculine especially owing to the popular movie The Matrix with a central male character named Neo. But I also embody a fair deal of magic as a person so I find Neo a very befitting name for me.

Oh, what’s the actual name? Nwed. From a lovely Nigerian village. Nice to meet you!