NATIVE NAMES 



15 



Our appeal was responded to with wonderful rapidity, and 

 but an hour afterwards Issa ben Madi, who undertook the 

 choosing and hiring of men, was besieged by an eagerly gesticu- 

 latino- crowd as he sat at a table in the court of our house. 



To separate from amongst the number of applicants by a 

 series of inquisitorial questions those hopelessly ineligible re- 

 quires a considerable amount of tact, and to make out the 

 wonderful names of those chosen requires a very good ear. 

 To give one or two instances of the styles and titles assumed 

 by these swarthy hidalgos : here was a certain Omari wadi 

 Nassib Naddin Hamis ben Easchid, meaning Omari, son of 

 Nassib, slave of Hamis ben Easchid ; and Almass wadi Uledi 

 Naddim Abdallah Hamis, meaning Almass, son of Uledi, slave 

 of Abdallah Hamis. A good many add to their names the 

 attribute Naddin Balosi, or slave of the Consul, which merely 

 means that after the abolition of slavery they had entered the 

 service of some European or East Indian. Instead of these 

 terribly long titles, the men generally become known by quite 

 a short nickname, indicating either some personal quality or 

 accidental circumstance. For example, in our retinue we 

 had twelve men owning the fine-sounding baptismal ^ name of 

 Almass, meaning precious stone ; but very soon one became 

 AlmiSss Neussi, or Almass the Black, another Almass Njekundu, 

 or Almass the Eed, their complexions justifying these pseudo- 

 nyms ; whilst others were even more closely described as Almass 

 Msangu, Manjeina XJnjanweri, and so on. Yet another Almass 

 was called bischibu, because he was at one time in the service 

 of Bishop Hannington ; and yet another was Almass mitende, or 

 Almass of the Dates, because he once carried a load of that fruit. 



The men who offered themselves to us for service in such 

 numbers belonged to many different races, and I cannot now 



^ The author says twufname, or baptismal name ; but we doubt if all these men 

 had been baptised. — Trans. 



