HOME LIFE OF THE AFRICAN. 
103 
Most noticeable are the frequent coincidences (as in Bible history) 
between the meaning of the names and the subsequent character 
developed in the child. 
All names of persons mean something. Perhaps the name of 
some animal connected with the family fetish, e. g.,. Njaku (Ele¬ 
phant) or Njiwu (Wild Deer); or some wish or hope of the parents, 
e. g., Oyonguno (Remembrance). 
Often two or three names are given; the official one by the 
father, the pet one by the mother, and where there are foreign neigh¬ 
bors, an English one—an empty compliment to some missionary or 
trader, as a basis on which to ask gifts for their “name-child.’' 
Generally all these names are subsequently dropped by the 
child itself, who then takes a new one of its own choosing, as a 
recognition of emerging into young manhood or womanhood. 
On marriage, the husband sometimes ignores all these names, 
and gives a new and often complicated name of his own invention. 
