How Dare You Sir?

It is shameful that in the year 2018, the head of the Birth and Death Registry is pushing to ban the registration of Ghanaian names such as Naa, Nii, Nana, Nene but same person has no problem registering names such as Prince, Lord, Earl, Queenly and the likes.

Sadly, the fully-grown adults at the Birth and Death Registry are paid with the tax payers’ money. If this is the level of their thinking in the 21^st century, then THE PUBLISHER is not sure they deserve to be paid by the taxpayer.

The Births and Deaths Registry boss has explained that the laws that formed his office, gives him the right to make policies to run the office. Fair deal.

He explains further that names such as Nii, Naa, Nana, Naana, Ohemaa are titles and therefore he is banning Ghanaians from giving such names to their wards. That is crap because in Ghana, names such as Nii, Nana or Nene, when they are titles, come with accompanying stool names. In the absence of such accompanied stool names, they cannot be regarded as traditional titles.

His office has gone ahead and refused to register such names although they have no problem registering names such a Prince, Earl, Lord, Majesty and other such English title names.  That is a clear deficiency of meticulous thinking.

His infantile argument is flawed. The supposed law on which he hopes to get his backing is nonexistent. The fact that you have the right to formulate policies to regulate the activities of the Birth and Death Registry does not mean you should formulate silly regulations that violates the rights of Ghanaians to maintain indigenous names.

As far as THE PUBLISHER is concerned, we would have applauded the Birth and Death Registry boss if he has said he was formulating a regulation to ban names that exposes the bearers to hate, ridicule, violence or scorn.  That would have been fair deal.

But we are at a complete loss who gave him powers to decide against the traditional name agreed upon by a whole family to give to a newly born member. A family of which, he, the Birth and Death Registry boss does not belong.

We are also at a loss which traditional authority in Ghana has complained to the Birth and Death Registry that their traditional titles are being abused and therefore should not be allowed to be registered as names for Ghanaians.

For the past few years, there has been a campaign for Ghanaians to pick indigenous names for their wards. That new culture is in vogue and the trend keeps rising.

We are Ghanaians and we are very particular about names. We do not just pick names for fun. Every name has a meaning and a reason. Our names tell a story of who we are. It is our unique identity that traces our genealogy and sometimes tell the story of our pre-birth.

Anyway, once in a while, we have such public officers raising some dust for no reason. The public agitation against his silly wish is in itself consolation to us.