“What’s in a name?”

(‘Romeo and Juliet’: Act 2, Scene ii)

by Charles Sarvan

I was sent a copy of an article titled, ‘How Sri Lankan Tamils came to have English names,’ written by Vinod Moonesinghe (https://roar.media/english/life/history/how-sri-lankan-tamils-came-to-have-english-names/amp). What follows is but a snippet in response. I offer as a suggestion (and not as an assertion) that these are often not English but Christian names: by “Christian names” here I include the pre-Christian ‘Old Testament’. Of course, one must bear in mind that there are Tamils with English or Western names who are not Christian, and Christian Tamils with Tamil names: I tend to think the last is on the increase.

Empires, whether deliberately intended or otherwise, are powerful disseminating forces. To cite an example, Ludwik Zamenhof (1859-1917) invented the artificial language, Esperanto. He hoped it would be a step towards dispelling misunderstanding caused by linguistic incomprehension. He hoped Esperanto would lead to the creation of greater harmony within humankind. By and large, the attempt failed but today (whether we welcome it or not) we have a natural, a living, Esperanto in the English language, commonly shared and freely used. At present, it is the world’s language. English has this role and status because England had the most extensive empire the world has seen to date. As England declined, so too should have the English language, as happened to Roman Latin. But England’s decline was marked by the ascendency of yet another English-speaking country, the USA. (I think it was Shaw who quipped that England and America are two countries separated by the same language.) English was and is the first-language in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Several other countries use English as one of their official languages: in Zambia, it’s the only official language.

Christians formed a small, obscure sect until another earlier empire, the Roman Empire, took it as its religion: ironically Christianity, a pacifist religion in doctrine, spread thanks to military might. From Rome, Christianity spread to England, then an unimportant country. The generally accepted story is that the Pope sent the monk Augustine in 597 to England in order to convert the pagans there to Christianity. ‘Fast forward’ a few centuries and England, no longer pagan but a Christian country, dominates the seas and is arguably the strongest power on the planet. But it was not only England: other European nations such as Spain, France, Portugal and Holland were also Champions of Christianity, and saw it as their duty to proselytize. Often it was a case of the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other.

The cradle of Christianity was the Middle East, and Biblical scholars are in agreement that Jesus spoke Aramaic. His original name, Yeshua, was made more linguistically palatable by being altered to “Jesus” – as were several other Biblical names, including those of the twelve disciples. The West, having adopted a religion with roots in the Middle East, adapted it to their culture. Understandably, they appropriated the religion and made it their own, expressing it in their own cultural terms. So it is that the Virgin Mary came to be visualised as totally European, sometimes with blue eyes and even with blond hair. Christianity had become a Western religion. A short story by Doris Lessing, titled ‘The black Madonna’ is about an Italian prisoner of war during the Second World War, detained in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Called upon to paint the Virgin Mary, he causes shock and outrage by producing a black Madonna: a black Virgin Mary for a black people.

Christianity, quite naturally, was brought by Western powers to the rest of the world as their (Western) religion, and the natives who embraced Christianity, in their innocence (and “innocence” sometimes is a synonym for “ignorance”) took over Western cultural elements, names being one of them. I use the term “natives” without apology because though it was once pejorative, it is now a matter of passionate claim and contest. Generally, the natives did not, while accepting doctrine and core belief, express them in their own native cultural terms. They lacked the necessary courage and confidence, not to mention creativity, to say that God being universal and equally accessible to all who believe, there must be the representation of God as an African and in African terms, for Africans; an Asian representation and cultural expression of God for Asians and so on. Africans, Asians and other non-Europeans should not have been made to worship a God in the European image. However, a white God reinforced the superiority of white people. And part of this superiority was white (Christian) names. It can be generalised that Christian natives were less enfolded in traditional culture than those who had not converted. Are Tamil Hindus more embedded in Tamil culture than Tamil Christians? Of course, this raises several questions such as: What is “culture”? Isn’t there more than one culture within a country? If so, can we privilege one expression of culture over another? Can one always separate culture and religion? Doesn’t what is called “culture” change over time? And though not always, isn’t change as good as it is inevitable?

Many Moslem females wear the hijab; Jewish men, the kippah; Sikh men have their turban and so on. These are outward signs of an inner conviction. So too many natives had Christian names to signify their conversion and belief – but the names were not Middle Eastern but European!

Another aspect worth mentioning is that of power, and the prestige, status and allure that go with power. If a new religion is brought to a people by foreign individuals who represent an economically poor and militarily feeble country, it is unlikely that that religion will find fertile soil, will grow and flourish: see Christianity and the Roman and British empires. On the other hand, success, both economic and military, has an attractive shine and one understands those who align themselves with the successful, in this case by taking European names. The economic and military success of Europeans led some, if not many, natives to think that “pagan” (non-Christian) gods were either weaker or false. One is reminded of the contest between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of the (“false”) god Baal where the offering of meat by the latter was not accepted by God. And Elijah mocked them and said: “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is meditating, or he is busy, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” (The Old Testament,1 Kings 18: 27).

Names can lead us into cultural and political history. For example, in Sri Lanka during times of anti-Tamil riot and pogroms, physical assault, even life and death, depended on one’s name. Simply stated, whether the name ended with a consonant or a vowel: was it Rajaratnam or Rajaratne? Shakespeare’s Juliet, who innocently asked what’s in a name was, after all, only about thirteen years of age. “Judas” is now an insulting adjective, and no longer a proper noun. Post-Hitler, the name “Adolf” is rare in Germany. Are certain names in Sri Lanka being quietly altered or dropped altogether? Names bear investigation