What’s in a clan name?

Knowing one’s past is the key to understanding your present, so it is said, and in isiXhosa culture clan names are the crux of understanding oneself.

Knowing one’s past is the key to understanding your present, so it is said, and in isiXhosa culture clan names are the crux of understanding oneself.

Xhosa clan names, called isiduko (singular), iziduko (plural), are family names which are of more importance than one’s surname.

A clan name is not necessarily a surname and serves a different purpose to that of a surname.

Surnames are passed down from the father’s side of the family while the clan name system is commemorative in nature, with names being shared across a certain clan within the culture.

Grocott’s Mail citizen journalist and poet Thembani Onceya boasts a long line of his clan names and in introducing himself would say 'Ndzabe uMalatsi uGasa Kwisizukulwana sika Nkosiyamntu, kumhlaba wakwa Tuku’. 

He considers it important to know your isiduko as it “keeps [the memory]of the people who prepared the way for you,” he said. “Ancestors aren’t just dead people.”

They have more to do with cultural identification. Clan names also commemorate ancestors and keep their memory alive.

They serve as a link between a person and their identity within the amaXhosa nation as a whole.

Mentioning the clan name of someone you wish to thank is considered the highest form of respect, and it is thought to be polite to enquire after someone’s clan name when you meet them.

When a woman marries she may take her husband’s surname, but she always keeps her own clan name.

A man and a woman who have the same clan name may not marry, as they are considered to be related.

The choice of name for a child is very important in isiXhosa culture, especially in very traditional homes.

When a child is born, a ceremony called imbeleko is held to introduce the child to the ancestors as well as the community. A child is regarded as not only belonging to his or her immediate family but also to the extended family and eventually to the community.

It’s not unusual for parents not to name a newborn, as grandparents are known to have great influence in naming a child.

This is always based on some motivation from the name giver. Naming is a deliberate record of experiences, indicating values, attitudes, beliefs and ideas of communities of a certain period of social development.

This means naming has a history-keeping function too, as names have meaning and relate to conditions or events surrounding a person’s time of birth.

For example a girl called Nomalinge Myalo (meaning ‘effort’) said her parents desperately wanted a baby girl after having four boys.

After numerous attempts her parents finally succeeded when she was born, and hence gave her that name.