Historian Edward Onaci talks about naming practices in the Black Power Movement, how hip hop influenced his academic interests, and why sometimes the sound of a name is just as important as its literal meaning. You can find more of Edward’s work on Instagram @onaci7. You can also read more about his research in his book, Free the Land, available at uncpress.org/book/9781469656144/free-the-land. You can find us on Instagram @namedroppingpod or send us an email at namedropping@defector.com. Namedropping is hosted by Giri Nathan and Samer Kalaf, and produced by Ozzy Llinas Goodman. Our editor is Justin Ellis, and our supervising producer is Alex Sujong Laughlin. Our production assistant is Jae Towle Vieira. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber-based media company. If you love this podcast and want to support us, subscribe at defector.com.
Historian Edward Onaci talks about naming practices in the Black Power Movement, how hip hop influenced his academic interests, and why sometimes the sound of a name is just as important as its literal meaning. Episode transcript available here.
You can find more of Edward’s work on Instagram @onaci7. You can also read more about his research in his book, Free the Land. You can find us on Instagram @namedroppingpod or send us an email at namedropping@defector.com.
Namedropping is hosted by Giri Nathan and Samer Kalaf, and produced by Ozzy Llinas Goodman. Our editor is Justin Ellis, and our supervising producer is Alex Sujong Laughlin. Our production assistant is Jae Towle Vieira.
Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber-based media company. If you love this podcast and want to support us, subscribe at defector.com.
Edward Onaci: Every one is questioning everything, down to their name. Who am I? What is the meaning of my very existence? And how does this label speak to what my existence is currently and what it should be?
[music]
Giri Nathan: I'm Giri Nathan
Samer Kalaf: And I'm Samer Kalaf. And this is Namedropping, a show about grappling with a name that has a painful history.
Giri: In this episode, we talked to Edward Onaci, who's an associate professor of history
Samer: Edward has spent hours interviewing activists in the Black Power movement, and he shares some of what they had to say.
Giri: Specifically, he was looking at naming traditions. And he focused on a group called the Republic of New Afrika, gathered tons of stories from activists in the 60s who were reconsidering these given names they had that were derived from their ancestors' enslavement.
Samer: We also talked to Edward about how his work and his love of hip hop inspired him to reconsider his own name. And he gets into his own personal name change experience.
Giri: He also talks about the legacy of the Black Power movement, specifically with respect to naming in the Black community. And he had a lot of interesting commentary about how that's played out in his own family, how they responded to his own name change. Onaci was first part of his DJ name that he slowly incorporated into his personal and professional lives.
Samer: He compares his own experience with the conversations he's had with activists about why they changed their name, or why they didn't.
Edward: I've always been interested in humans, I think, even before I was interested in history, I was just interested in words, poetry, things of that nature. And I became interested in names in high school, listening to certain rappers who had unique sounding names, you know, immediately what comes to mind is Talib Kweli, it's like, what, where does that come from? Thinking about the Nation of Gods and Earths, the Five-Percenters who, when I was growing up, seemed to dominate hip hop culture, through Wu-Tang Clan, and Poor Righteous Teachers and things like that. And they all had these amazing names. It just sounded so smart, and I wanted to be smart, like knowledge born, you know, this is like, wow, I want to be wise, intelligent. That sounds awesome. And I didn't see it as being a fascination with names at the time. But by the time I started to do the historical research that I'm, that is dominated my life for the past 12 or so years, I started to find books that were dedicated just to naming. And I saw that they use this title, onomastics. And I was like, what is that? That sounds really smart. And I want to be wise, intelligent. So let me see if I can use that word. And come to find out. It's just the study of naming. It's just the study of naming. There's a whole field, interdisciplinary field of research that calls itself onomastics. And you don't even need to say study after that, because it is the study of names.
Samer: When did when did you decide you're going to focus on onomastics?
Edward: I think the story I tell the most is when I was in high school. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I just realized I knew nothing. And I wanted to know, in particular, I wanted to learn things that would help me understand what makes Black people self hating, you know, and that question expanded to, why are people so violent? And you know, of course, at that point, high school, especially getting into college, I thought if I learned history, I could be like a revolutionary activist and change the world by teaching people. And that's just something that I felt like I could become good at. And so I think that's the straightest path that I can create at this point.
Samer: To take it from the historical to the personal, how much did you think about the origin of your own name, as you were growing up and studying and doing more research?
Edward: I didn't think about it too much growing up, I started thinking about it a lot in college. Mainly, again, I always have to come back to that hip hop influence, because it was pretty, it was pretty big to me, in high school and college. And just again, the fact that people were taking these steps and coming up with these names, I just always thought was really powerful. And something too that I should consider. But when I started to do research on African people in this country, and in other places around the world, I started to understand why people like Malcolm X were like, Hey, that name is a slave name. And I was like, for some reason, it's like, you know what, I can't keep my last name. And it was my last name, because I thought it was important that the—what people call the slave name, right, even going back to the X in Malcolm X is the last name, his last name, because that's the part that people inherit. Whereas the first name is what my parents gave me. And I'm named after my dad, I'm also named after my grandfather. And so I was just, I was thinking, you know what, last name's gotta go. That's not who I am. And I talked to a couple people, folks from different countries, and, you know, told them that I was thinking about changing my name, they all cheered me on like, Yes, do it, do it. And they helped me come up with Onaci, which ona in Swahili, it means to feel, perceive or see. And then chi is Igbo. And the thing I like about chi, and my understanding of it is, is a shortened version of the Most High, but it also can't connote that. It's kind of like one's personal spirit guide, personal guide, right? And when I thought about them together, it just really seemed that yeah, that that's, that sounds like what I'm about, right? I'm seeking what I understand the most how to be, which would be love, you know, would be dignity, would be freedom, as opposed to especially what I was feeling in those moments, destruction, violence, torture, terror. And yeah, well, I had a couple of elders who had changed their names, who I was in conversation with. And as soon as I told them that I was even thinking about it, one of the first questions was, Are you going to change it legally? I was like, I don't know, did you? I don't even, I hadn't even thought about that. And just, I've been a DJ producer, since 1997, that's when I first got my first set of turntables. And part of the naming process for me again, influenced by the rappers, was what is something that I would want to use as my musical self right? And really just as myself but me in the music. And so I came up with Brotha Onaci. At first I thought I was just going to use it musically, right? I would just be Brotha Onaci. But keep on reading, keep on writing, keep on doing that research, and having these conversations with people who had either changed their names or were just from different countries, and they saw the value in African people in this country going through that process. And I said, you know what, I should do it legally. And I found out that in the state of Illinois at the time, because I was a poor lowly grad student—that's the only time being broke ever worked out in my favor—that I could actually do it without having to pay the legal fees. I did have to pay to get certain documents notarized. I had to get birth certificate duplicated, so I had to pay for that type of stuff. But I didn't have to pay I think it was like $500 or something crazy. It's like my rent isn't even that much can you believe that? My rent wasn't even $500 at that time. And so I said, You know what, let me jump on this. Let me just go all in. Because why would I come up with something that is supposed to be me, and I only, I limit it to this one realm in my life, which isn't the total me, right? Yeah. So I went on ahead went through the legal process as soon as I found out that I could. And that was the summer of 2008.
Giri: How did your family respond to your name change? And can you talk a little bit about naming practices throughout your family as well?
Edward: So, I love telling this, I got to talk to my parents about this, to see how they remember it. But the way I remember it, is both of my parents, because I told them separately, both of them, I think their first response was, what are you Muslim now? Right? Not in a good way either, like, I can't believe you. You know, because again, that's how they understood name changes, was with the Nation of Islam, doing it for religious reasons. Both of them were, yeah, they were a little resistant at first, like what's this crazy guy doing this time. But then I explained to them, I said, look, I'm keeping the names that y'all gave me. You know, I understand there's a lineage in my name, and it has nothing to do with that last name that you did not choose. And I think that that made a difference. Because, you know, I was like, I value what you gave me, you know? After a short time, they were all for it. My mom calls me Brotha Onaci, and she has her own way of saying it that is uniquely her. My dad uses it. My siblings, my cousins, everybody uses it. And I didn't even ask them to, you know, it's just with social media, I guess, because they see me DJing and all that type of stuff. I think they just made it easier for them to accept it, because that was my online brand. In terms of my family, we have some great naming practices, we have a lot of combining in terms of the family members who I'm familiar with. So on my mother's side, in particular, my grandfather's name is Jory. And my grandmother's name is Chesterene. And of course, that's a combination right there, by the way. And my mother's name is Jorene, which nobody else on the face of the planet has, because it's a combination of these two names that were somewhat unique. Right, actually, I don't know if anybody else out of my family has the name Jory either. I gotta find out where that comes from. My aunt has a combined name. I know that there are others. One of my cousin's is named after a fine alcoholic beverage. Right? And what I recall my aunt saying in terms of the logic behind that was again, just like the way it sounds, I don't even know if if she is really that much of a drinker. But she liked the way that sounds. And so I didn't even know it was a drink until I was older. I was like, that's just my cousin. Right?
Samer: Do you mind sharing the cousin's name?
Edward: Her name is Daiquiri
Samer: Ah
Giri: That is pretty sound. Yeah.
Edward: Yeah, exactly. I didn't know it was an alcoholic beverage. So it's probably in, in elementary school at some point. So yeah, we do have some interesting naming practices. My siblings came up with names or found names that were unique for my nephews. It's just it's something that even though it's not blatantly political, for them, it's something that folks in my family have valued.
Samer: Just to go back a little bit, because we're talking about figures who influenced your desire to go in this field, could you say a little more about what was specifically interesting about Malcolm X and his work? Because the evolution of his name, when we were doing research, seemed to pop up a lot in your work and studies.
Edward: Yeah, yeah. Well, for me, Malcolm X was important, first and foremost, because, you know, I grew up in the 90s, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which is a military town. I mean, Virginia is a military state, there are bases everywhere. And that just wasn't something that people talked about regularly. Right? The—and I come from a military family. And the whole thing was, we live in the United States, America is great, defend it no matter what. And I hear that message. I believe that message. At the same time, I'm thinking man, Rodney King, is that what America does to people, and I'm seeing other situations that make me not comfortable with just accepting that blindly, right? And so I eventually read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. And even though it was written well before I'm born, even though he's living in a completely different context, experiencing different things, up to that point, I didn't have any role models outside my family, who I felt as though really exemplified or showed me how to move through the world in a way that is not demeaning, that, in a way that reaffirms one's self respect, dignity, and stands up to injustices. Right? So I recall, thinking it was real simple. He's born Malcolm Little. He goes to jail, converts to the, to the Nation of Islam, takes the X, and becomes El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz at some point. But as I read thinking specifically of names his autobiography, I realize there's just so much more to it. I mean, the fact that he talks about what people called him when he was a child, the fact that he went to prison means he became state property. And he was assigned a number that more than the name his mama gave him, right? It's that process, in his own recalling of that process of getting these different names, and changing, sometimes purposely changing them over time, I found to be really, really powerful. And it made me wonder, well, how many other people have these types of stories? How many of them think about this from time to time? You know, what does my name mean? Where does it come from? And in thinking about African people in the United States of America, in particular, how many of them go through at least a portion of that process, and they feel a little uncomfortable with what they're thinking about where their names come from, and things of that nature. And so I really wanted to be able to explore that. And it made me wonder how many other people think this way, how many people raise these questions, and for those who not only raised them, but were in a culture where that was the norm. It just became a really good area of study, for me to to explore some of these questions.
Giri: And as you got deeper into your study of the Black Power movement, what did you find in terms of general themes about the naming practices that you saw?
Edward: Yeah, well, at the foundation, many of the people who I studied, they didn't like their, you know, what they called slave names, because they were what they called slave names, these are names that they felt were forced upon them, their ancestors, and they just didn't have a connection to it, at best. And at worst, you know, to paraphrase the status of core here, just a little bit, it made them think about all the horrors that their ancestors had lived through, right? Another thing is about self determination. And this probably the biggest theme. Self determination that allows them to, if nothing else, just wage struggle even better, do a better job as revolutionaries. And one of the ways that they could do that was to disconnect their minds from the broader culture, down to the name, right? So every one is questioning everything. You know, again, at least among the people who I studied, they're questioning everything down to their name, who am I? Right? What is the meaning of my very existence? And how does this label speak to what my existence is currently and what it should be? Right? So that's, that's another thing, just that deep thinking about the nature of revolution, about self determination. And then a final theme, you know, we've been talking mainly about the individual, but also what about the group? What does it mean to be Black people? What does it mean to be African? What if African spelled with a C, what if it's spelled with a K? Right? And the thing that I find particularly fascinating about that is, folks were questioning by questioning the group name for what what do folks call themselves if they're the descendants of people who were taken from their homelands, taken from their original cultures, taken from their families, their languages, all that stuff—what does it mean to try to recreate that?
[music/ad break]
Giri: I know you've specifically studied this group called the Republic of New Afrika. I was wondering if you could put them in the broader landscape of Black Power movements. And tell us a little bit about why you decided to study them in particular.
Edward: So a little bit of explanation. The movement, the New Afrikan Independence Movement, got started in 1968. They come together in the final weekend of March and 1968, in Detroit, to determine what is the best path forward at this point, right? Martin Luther King, Jr, SNCC, all those folks, they struggled, they forced the state to come up with the civil rights and voting rights amendment. And at that point, legally, they had won, they were full citizens, finally, they were no longer second class citizens. New Afrikans disagreed. They said, actually, we were never citizens. Citizenship was forced upon people who didn't have any say in the matter, right? The 14th Amendment should have been offered as a choice that this newly freed nation could then discuss, debate, without the influence of, of white folks, right? Debate this amongst themselves and come to a collective decision. And they said, because that never happened, people who call themselves New Afrikans claim as their rightful territory, the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, which they're seeking to obtain as part of a reparations negotiation with the United States of America. And so the Republic of New Afrika is also those people, right, as a nation, that the people who, because of human trafficking, because of enslavement, have become disconnected from the continent of Africa, from the specific ethnic groups, languages and ancestries that they were part of, and have come to the point where they have to make themselves anew, right? So they are New Afrikans.
Samer: We wanted to ask you about that. What was the importance of, in the New Afrikans name, changing the C to a K? Or what was the explanation behind it?
Edward: Yeah, well, in the 1970s, there are anti-colonial revolutions happening all over the world. And one place where that's occurring is on the continent of Africa. And as colonized peoples, they're also questioning these these names that they have, right? One of the good examples of that would be, you know, Gold Coast becomes Ghana, Ghana being one of the major West African empires prior to the onset of colonialism and enslavement. People in Ghana go through that, like, yeah, we're not the Gold Coast. That's what the British called us. And there was an activist who's from Zimbabwe, he travels to the United States, he's thinking about all this, he's talking to activists in the US about this. And he's informing them that, hey, most of the languages, don't use C in the way that you think, right, and so it'd be more accurate to use K and a whole bunch of activists in that era—that's like '74, I believe—they start replacing the C with a K, at least when they're talking about Afrikans, Afrikan Americans, and some of them, to make a profound political point, they also use that in their spelling of Amerikkka, oftentimes with three Ks, just to be clear about how they really feel, right, about what was going on, about the history, about what they're fighting against.
Samer: I was gonna ask, because we've talked a lot about people who decided I want to change my name because of what it means and what history it evokes. One example that we found in your work was Marilyn Killingham, who, she decided to keep her name. I guess, could you talk a little bit about her and what kind of tension she felt between her political commitments and her personal name?
Edward: Yeah, yeah. I love talking about Mama Marilyn Preston Killingham. Yeah, so first of all, she she wasn't one of the original founding members of the new Afrikan Independence Movement, specifically of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika. But she was around all those folks regularly. She had connections with folks from the Revolutionary Action Movement, and she got involved as soon as she could. As she's involved, people are changing their names. I mean, it's pretty common for people as they're going through, I'll call it, for now, an induction process, right? Probably, that's probably not the most accurate way to, to discuss it. But as folks, we went through an induction process to be a part of the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Oftentimes, they would have a naming ceremony, right? And so folks would be given names, or they might have chosen names. And those would be their names within the movement. She decided not to do that. And her logic was one, she said, I'm named after my mother. My mother's name is Mary. Right? And so why would I get rid of the name of my, that my mother gave me that is actually, you know, comes from her name. What is also really important about that is she considered her mother to be an Afrikan warrior, someone who was fighting against oppression, seeking justice, those types of things. And so that made her a warrior in Marilyn Killingham's name. And so she wanted to continue to be associated with that. She did feel some tension. She did say that she had pressure placed on her by others within the movement that she needed to get rid of her quote, unquote, slave name. But she just this, she decided that wasn't for her. You know, part of it was she was a devout Christian. And she associated the name Mary, which again was her mother's name, with a really important figure in the Christian religion. And so she never took on an Afrikan name. And what really stands out about Marilyn Killingham for me, to this day, is I reached out to her, got a answering machine. And then two weeks later, one of her friends calls me and says, hey, she wants to talk to you, but she's on her deathbed at the hospital. And that's why she hasn't called you back in all this time, right? And so I just happ—so happened to be in the area, this is in DC, I just so happened to be in the area at the time, that's like, you know, think, either that day or the next day, go to the hospital. And man, we had probably the most powerful conversation I had had up to that point. Because she's telling me about her life. She's telling me about her views on, you know, not just the New Afrikan Independence movement, but on on names, on everything. And, you know, I did the interview, and then I just, I just went back for the rest of the time I was in DC, when I was able to, I just went back several times just just to hang out with her and talk because she just had she she wanted to talk to you, she wanted to share. And the conversations were just so good. Yeah, so she definitely helped me break out of everyone changed their names mindset.
Giri: We've touched on this a little bit. But one thing I found really compelling and reading your work was all the different ideological strains that people were drawing on when they're coming up with these names. So you have some present day African dialects, and you've got some ancient Egyptian names you're drawing on, and Arabic or names that have importance in Islam, alongside, you know, names with Christian significance. So I was wondering if there are any particular names that stand out for you, in that sense, or just general observations that you had there?
Edward: Oh, man, you know, it's hard to choose just one. The one that I tend to talk about is Chokwe Lumumba. He joined the movement in 1969, he was a student in Michigan, and he wanted to have a name that he thought would, one, help him disconnect psychologically and spiritually from the sight of, you know, enslavement, settler colonialism, etc. But also would be meaningful to him in terms of his values, right. And so his first name Chokwe, he said, means hunter. And it's the name of a group of African people who were struggling, fighting, sometimes to the death, against the slave trade. And I want to, if I recall correctly, I think he said around Angola, present day Angola. He also took on the name Lumumba, which was huge for a lot of people in the 1960s because they witnessed even from afar the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, you know, a anti colonial figure being an elected official who was assassinated with the help of the British and the Americans. And you know, a lot of people understand that to be one of the reasons why the DRC is now in the state that it currently is, a state of turmoil. And to Chokwe Lumumba, he saw the combination of these names as being something that would speak to his values. And it was something for him to try to live up to, which is something that he tried to do through a lifelong dedication to first the PGRNA. But then through the creation of the New Afrikan People's Organization, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, he saw this all as working toward making people's lives better, right. And that's the connection that he made to his name.
Giri: As time kind of passed, did you think there was spillover from these naming practices in the Black Power movement into naming practices in a, you know, less overtly political, or at least different politically-oriented era? What was the legacy there?
Edward: Yeah, I do think that there's a legacy just of the 1960s in general. One of the jokes I make in some of my classes, so I do teach a little bit about Africa in my classes, and we always come to the point where we're talking about Kenya, talking about the Land and Freedom Party, Jomo Kenyatta. And I jokingly say, how many children born in the 60s got the name Kenyatta, right? Because that was somebody who a lot of folks respected and looked up to when he was in his prime, right? I think that spills over because even though, for the folks who are focused on Black Power activist and New Afrikan Independence Movement folks, they understood names as cultural and political. A lot of folks you know, one of the things about names is people just like the way stuff sounds, you know, and I never want to minimize that. I never want to minimize that. People like how stuff sounds. So they hear, even if they don't know who Jomo Kenyatta is, they hear Kenyatta that like, hey, there's a country named Kenya. That's pretty, that sounds like a girl's name, Kenyatta, huh, if I have a little boy, right? They people, either subconsciously, or very overtly, go through that process. Even if it's not because of politics, people would start to see stuff like that. They hear stuff like, you know, Umoja, Nia, Imani. And, again, even if they're not, culturally, trying to, I guess, quote, unquote, re-Africanize themselves or something like that, they just like how the names sound, it sounds kind of unique, right? It sounds pretty. It rolls off the tongue a particular way, whatever it may be. And so the political realm has an impact on the broader culture. But there's also a way in which the political is really just doing what people had been doing for some time, right? People all over the world, they want names that are meaningful, that sound strong, that sound pretty, whatever the case may be, that they think can instill particular characteristics in themselves or their offspring. And so Marilyn Killingham, she's like, my mom's an Afrikan warrior, right? Chokwe Lumumba, gifted hunter. How many Shakas were there, how many Nzingas? And apart from that, apart from just the African names, people looking for unique names, they start to make stuff up, which people had always done, they start to take on words, ideas, and you know, they might change the spelling of it a little bit, right, something like Patience, which I don't think is a product specifically of the Black Power era afterwards, but they start to take on those types of names that are qualities, and sometimes they'll just spell them a little bit different, or they're add another syllable to it, because it just sounds good, it looks good on paper, whatever the case may be. And so I do think that there was some influence in terms of people taking on African names, or Islamic names for those who were kind of close to those circles. But beyond that realm, people were kind of just doing what they always do.
Giri: Thanks for listening to Namedropping. You can find more of Edward's work on Instagram @onaci7. And you can read more about his research and his book Free The Land. The link to order that is in the show notes. You can find us on Instagram @namedroppingpod or send us an email at namedropping@defector.com. Namedropping is hosted by me, Giri Nathan, and Samer Kalaf. Produced by Ozzy Llinas Goodman. Our editor is Justin Ellis and our supervising producer is Alex Sujong Laughlin. Our production assistant is Jae Towle Vieira. Thanks to editor in chief Tom Ley and the rest of the Defector staff. Defector media is a collectively-owned, subscriber-based media company. If you love this podcast and want to support us, subscribe at defector.com.