What's your name?

Senegalese people seem to have a knack for remembering names. I have been introduced to people once or twice and in passing they will call out to me by name. I usually have no idea who they are or how I know them. It’s pitiful. In Senegal, I seem to have a mental block on Senegalese names. No matter how many times I am told names I seem to forget them quickly. Perhaps it can be attributed to my unfamiliarity with the pronunciation. It would be a faux pas to call Boubacar, Babacar or Halib, Habib. My name retention problem is especially embarrassing with the people in my class with whom I chat with on a daily basis. In order to remember people in my head Alisa and I, (we have all of our classes together), have begun to refer to people by nicknames. I can remember the nicknames but never their names. So far we have Versace whom we call Versach because the first time we bonded with him he was wearing a brown bootleg Versace tee shirt (and a faux Dolce and Gabana belt). This guy has invited us to tea and a sociological discussion yet we have no idea what his name is. Then there is “rasta hat man” who is a bit of a rubble rouser and once argued with students who interrupted our class to announce a strike. There is the woman who looks like a “Fatou Gaye” offspring. Fatou Gaye was Mari’s host mom and most recently Julie’s host mother in Yoff. All of her children have very similar looking faces. We have succeeded in remembering one student’s name because he is a god-sent. His name is Vieux, which in French means “old” (it’s helpful to note quirks). He also gave Alisa his phone number which helps. There is a student in about four of my six classes who knows my name, where I live, the classes I take and probably my social security number and I for the life of me cannot pronounce his name. I tried to play the trick of having someone in our group ask him his name while being introduced to him but nobody could not understand what he said.

The reason that this is such a big deal is that names in Senegal are very important. Firstly, children are usually named after a close relative or even a co-spouse. Naming someone after another person demonstrates the respect you have for them. This means that there are about five people per extended family with the same name. In my host mom’s family there are about four Abys, which is the name of her mother.

Secondly, when you are introduced to someone in Wolof you, as part of the greeting, are supposed to repeat their name. Sometimes the repetition gets so intense that one person is saying the other’ name while the other is trying to talk to them. My host dad has a habit of repeating the persons name as they are talking. It makes my listening comprehension impossible.

Thirdly, culturally it is important that when you know someone’s name or in my case should know someone’s name that you throw it into conversation as often as possible. You can state someone’s name a several times in a simple greeting conversation. It is as if saying the word for “you“ is impolite.

I have found that Senegalese with “Western” names, usually denoting that they are Catholic are easier to remember. I had no problem remembering Patrick’s, the man who sells English study guides outside of my Medical Anthropology class, name or Francois who is in several of my classes. This confirms my hypothesis that my horrible memory for Senegalese names is attributed to my unfamiliarity with the sounds of the words.