On 10/6/07, Biju Chacko wrote: > > While there were a few cases of people changing their names in a way > we would consider reasonable: Yellow, for example, changed his name to > Ian. On the other hand, Sunday changed his name to Friday, Record > Player changed his name to Football and, my favorite, Spider renamed > himself Bicycle.
at least in kenya some of these names are used because they are direct translations of african names. I met a guy from western kenya called "scorpion" because he was from the scorpion clan of one of the pokot tribes.... his name would have been 'chepkunkuil' but when he moved to the city it was easier to fit in to his urban aspirations using a more anglicised name. I have also met a guy called "toyota" and another called "rover" (toyota was born inside a toyota while they were taking his mother to the hospital). I also met a guy who had a first name "tall" (i checked his identity card)... because he was tall, and when he was a child, people used to call him "mrefu" (which is tall in swahili). presidential / prime minister names are also very popular - i have met: washington, roosevelt, kennedy, nixon, reagan, clinton, churchill, indira (popular among women) , havent met a Bush yet.
