Such is the domination of English that, if your name means something inappropriate in English then you are destined not to be taken seriously. The quintessential example of this is the Oops tribe of Central Africa. They spoke an ancient dialect of Swahili and, as you could imagine, in their language the term has no other meaning than their identity.

You may think this is a trivial issue however, in our shrinking world, how we are perceived by the rest world has a fundamental impact on how the community is viewed, which, in turn, has an impact on the survival of the traditions and culture of the community. When we think of The Bushmen of the Kalahari we conjure up images of a happy race of hunter-gatherers living a “noble savage” type existence in the harsh, mostly arid Kalahari dessert. We see a value in their maintaining their lifestyle and traditions.

Compare this with the Oops tribe. Living in the Congo River valley, they were first encountered by Livingston on his legendary journey into darkest Africa. As they possessed no written language it left to Dr Livingston to phonetically interpret their language when writing of them. To the untrained English ear it appeared that they referred to themselves as “Oops” and, as such, that is what Livingston wrote in his journal.

Even when your name sounded noble it was a hard task to maintain some semblance of cultural integrity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The unfortunate Oops were destined to be ridiculed and their chances of cultural survival were negligible. The last record of people identifying with the tribe was in 1936 when an anthropologist visited the area. Some older people still new the name but everyone else were identifying themselves as “Uyanzi”. It seems that being laughed at for generations had taken its toll.