Title: Rwandan Names

General Information about Item:

Customary Folklore: Rwandan Superstition – Names

Language: English

Country of Origin: Rwanda

Informant: Bryan Manzi

Date Collected: May 20, 2019

Informant Data:

Bryan Manzi is a male Dartmouth student in the class of 2021.  He is from Kigali, Rwanda. At Dartmouth, Bryan studies Computer Science.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Rwandan traditions center on the community and the natural world. Animals are seen as predators, as the rural landscape of Rwanda in history has given locals close interactions with animals and the natural world. In light of this, evil spirits are best warded off through a connection to nature. Since names are very powerful items in Rwanda, a community may invoke the name of an animal in order to fend off possible evil.

Social Context: The superstition was relayed through an in-person interview with the informant at Dartmouth College. The tradition was learned by the informant in his native village, where people who he knew were named after fierce animals.

Item:

When there have been multiple deaths in a family, a child will be named after something ‘bad’ in order to ward off evil for that child.

Audio File:

 

Transcript:

B: Bryan Manzi

L: Alex Leibowitz

L: So why don’t you tell us your name, background, school, class year, what you study, et cetera, so we can kind of jump into it.

B: I’m a ’21. I’m studying computer science. I’m from Kigali Rwanda. Hmm.

L: Gotcha. Okay, and I guess kind of as you know, we’re doing this collection project mainly about folklore around evil spirits, you know, including evil eye, just basically anything to do with evil spirits. I know you said you had some stuff kind of from Rwanda be really curious to hear

B: Yeah. So we have a weird culture on evil spirits. It’s like kind of split depending on how rural  the community of come from is. On my dad’s side, there’s this belief that there always people who want to curse you. There’s like this belief that someone out there some evil person exists who wants to put some kind of evil curse on you so they would name people. On my dad’s side of the family after, after ugly things and terrible things because they believe that would make it less likely for the evil spirit to come after them. So my great great granduncle is named ‘hyena,’ the Lannada version of hyena. Okay, and the hyena is the most terrible animal in Rwanda and I don’t know why. I have another friend who’s named ‘termite.’ Yeah. Well that’s like a really really low, a bad thing to name someone in Rhonda as well, because it’s like the dirtiest thing possible. The reason is that it typically would happen in a family where someone has already died. So many people have died already. So it’s like they have evidence that evil spirits are coming for you and so they want to name me after something terrible because of that. Yeah.

L: Interesting. And I mean that something is that something that I mean, I think you were naming examples from today. Is that something that people kind of in your generation like the younger generation would do for their own kids or…?

B: I probably wouldn’t in my kids after something like that, no. People… people do believe in evil spirits. Yeah, people do believe in evil spirits. No one, no one would test it. No one would test whether or not it’s true. For example, there are witch doctors who exists outside of Kigali. Kigali is the capital. Yeah. So there are people who practice witchcraft outside of Kigali but no one, I wouldn’t go and mess with them. Like maybe it’s not true. But I want to find out if you don’t find out and they’re definitely stories of like in like the tabloids of Rhonda which talk about, like witches flying over churches and reaching a force-field of churches and like falling down. Wow. Yes. There’s a lot of Stories the people do believe this. Yeah.

L: Great. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Informant’s Comments:

“So, it’s like they have evidence that evil spirits are coming for you and so they want to name me after something terrible because of that.”

Collector’s Comments:

The invocation of a name in order to ward of evil spirits exemplifies the law of similarity in which two similar things are related. The name protects the individual against evil spirits, since the bad thing one is named after gives that person power against the evil.

Collector’s Name: Alex Leibowitz

Tags/Keywords:

• Rwandan Superstition
• Names
•  Law of Similarity