What's in A Name?

 

Many well-known actors, authors as well as not all that famous people have changed their birth name into something they felt would make them more marketable. For instance, just to mention a few, that's what people like Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe as well as the Russian born Jew Kirk Douglas did. After chosing a movie career he shed his name of Issur Danielovitch because he felt that it was too foreign and much too Jewish to be of use in his career as a movie star.

Someone who wouldn't have agreed to changing one's name for something that "flimsy" is the American woman Assata Olugbala Shakur who was born Joanne Chesimard. I find it hard to bend my tongue to her new name as it's difficult to pronounce. Actually, that goes for many new African names that sort of have pushed the good old names of e.g. Ellen, Julie, Elizabeth, etc., etc. out of business. However, that's not in the least a legit objection to these new names which I suppose often were chosen because of their symbolic value, either of strength, hope or protest. 

 

She is a controversial figure, to FBI she is a murderer and terrorist whom they have tried to capture for 40 years, but to others she is a brave and strong woman fighting for the black community and the rights of black people. Something she wants to give expression to by choosing her new name and "Assata" translates nicely into something like "She who struggles" which is what she has been doing ever since she became a so-called "Black Panther". "Olugbala" means "savior", and "Shakur" stands for "thanks" or "thankful" which turns her name from a non-descriptive entity not chosen by herself into a statement. Actually, that's the point: Her new self chosen name depicts her as she feels she is, body and soul, and not as her parents chose to decribe her from an understanding of what a nice, American girl ought to be. There is no rebellion in "Joanne Chesimard", but there is a lot in "Assata Olugbala Shakur".

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/fbis-most-wanted-terrorist-tupacs-20164553 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/assata-shakur-convicted-killing-police-officer-wanted-fbi/story?id=63076257 

 

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Name-giving 

 

https://progressive.org/magazine/impact-of-assata-shakur-tarala/ 

 

Wikipedia