PRESS RELEASE
Jan 14 2014
TAOBQ unveils a top 10 list and a new concept for identifying people of African heritage
A new year, a new concept and a new word for affirming African heritage!
The TAOBQ (the African Or Black Question) campaign revealed its araning concept and its first ten 10 subjects yesterday.
“Araning is the act of giving one’s self or someone else an African
name in order to unequivocally assert their African heritage,” explained
TAOBQ co-ordinator Kwaku at the Xtra History & Reasoning Session
presentation entitled ‘Araning: The Importance Of African Names In
History & Our Daily Lives’, which took place at the
Harrow Mayor’s Parlour.
Aran is made up from African Reclaimed And Named, a concept that
encourages Africans, particularly those of note who’ve contributed to
world history, to be given African names, so that there’s an obvious
connection of their achievement to their African heritage.
Whilst individuals are welcome to aran themselves, TAOBQ will only aran posthumously.
The person at number one of the top 10 list is William Kofi, the 19th
century Chartist leader. The araning concept was born as a result of a
young person saying they had learnt about the Chartist at school. But
with his surname spelt Cuffay or Cuffe, it was not obvious to her that
he had African heritage, until she saw his image at a community history
event.
Kofi is a Ghanaian name for a male born on Friday. Kofi’s grandfather
was taken into enslavement from Africa, possibly from the area now known
as Ghana.
At number two is the Maroon leader and Jamaican national hero known as
Nanny, which we contend to be a corruption of Nana, a Ghanaian title for
a king, queen, chief or revered elder. Her brothers, apart from Johnny,
had typical Ghanaian day names such as Cudjoe and Quao.
The African-American inventor Kwadwo Lewis Latimer is accorded third
place. Kwadwo is a Ghanaian name for a male born on Monday.
Elsewhere on the list, at number four is the African British classical
composer Babatunde Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. His name is Yoruba for
“father returns”. Although he never met his doctor father, who never
returned from Sierra Leone, one can imagine the composer might have
longed for his father’s return as he gravitated towards Africans from
the continent and the US, and infused his compositions with African
sensibilities.
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