What's In a Name?

I hated my name growing up, Shakira Wood!

Before Shakira Shakira (hips don’t lie) came along, no one had heard of the name so could never pronounce it correctly and my first school wasn’t the most diverse - I was one of only a handful of kids from a multicultural background. Not only was I always the last to be called on the register (my son has my husband’s surname Cliff – so I’ve escalated him to the front of the line), but I used to get so embarrassed having to tell people my name. I would always get a funny look, or comment. I remember wanting to change my name and on the odd occasion, I would tell people I had a different name entirely. I’m not sure if it was the difficulty people had pronouncing it that embarrassed me more or the connotation of where my name and therefore I originated from. Whilst I don’t like to think about which it was, it’s definitely telling of the times.

My response to people who upon hearing my name and perplexingly asking that vile question “what are you?”, would be to say “I’m half cast”. It was only after that comment was met with one too many astonished gasps that I realised it wasn’t a very pc thing to say, unbeknown to me I was only repeating the term that my school friends had branded me with. How at the age of six with a foreign sounding name and a face that doesn’t quite fit by other people’s standards, do you find the words to explain that your parents are from different ethnic backgrounds. As a child the last thing you want to be seen as is different and when the first conversation you have with anyone new is about your race, it can be tough.

My name is actually a Muslim name meaning “thankful”. However, my mum’s family are Hindu. There’s a long standing and difficult history between Hindus and Muslims and so my grandad has never called me by my name, rather a muffled version which makes me laugh! Mum grew up in Kenya until she was fifteen and when the political situation became so fraught, her family decided to move to London. She was expected to stay at home and look after her dad and siblings, but instead decided to go to Art college which is where she met my dad; a middle class white British man. As you can imagine her parents were shocked. Mum was the first woman to marry outside of her immediate community, but also to marry outside of the Asian community. My grandad was well respected, he was regarded as a panchayati raj, one of 5 wise elders chosen by the community to settle disputes, hold assemblies and offer advice. So when mum announced that she wouldn’t be having an arranged marriage and had in fact decided to marry my dad, they found it really hard to accept and could not give their blessing. Mum didn’t hear from them again for five years. They didn’t attend her wedding and it wasn’t until she had my sister that they were slowly able to rebuild a relationship. Mum has always said that she completely understands why they reacted in the way that they did, they had never known any other way and that was how they had been brought up.

The funny thing is you would never know it to look at us now, in fact I was never aware of any of the history until recently. My mum’s family are in my view the most open minded, kind and close knit family I am lucky enough to be a part of. Knowing what I know now, I’m sure my mum’s choice to follow her heart and not what tradition dictated has a lot to do with that. She always jokes and says that she set the bar high, so her three siblings got away with everything!

My dad’s parents were equally traditional and came from an extremely formal English cultural background and whilst surprisingly they welcomed Mum into the family, it wasn’t a relationship without its difficulties. The night before her wedding, Mum had painted mehendi on her hands. Mehendi is a beautiful form of temporary body art and the ritual symbolises joy, beauty and spiritual awakening. Traditionally the bride’s family hold a mehendi ceremony and an artist or relative will paint henna onto the bride’s hands and feet, but Mum in this instance had to do it herself since none of her family attended the wedding which always makes me so sad. When my dad’s mum saw it, she flipped! It was a completely alien concept to her and despite Dad’s explanations about it being an Indian tradition which was important to my mum and not a tattoo as we know it, she couldn’t get over it and caused a huge drama on the day.

Mum ended up working in education, teaching people from other countries to teach children in English and the onus was put on her to teach the curriculum as it stood. However, the people that Mum taught would tell her stories of how they would bring up their children in their own countries - games they would play, instruments they would learn, life lessons they would teach. She started to think what a shame it would be to lose these traditions and heritage – who are we to put a restriction on which cultures our children should learn about? If we teach them about a diverse range of cultures then surely they will grow up to be more open and understanding of people from other backgrounds, not angry and frightened, just as her family had been.

Mum used to bring all of these amazing multicultural objects and activities home from her group teaching sessions to test on me on my sister. As a result, we were able to experience and appreciate a multitude of cultures from a young age. When my husband and I got married, we decided to write the whole ceremony ourselves – we had a friend compare and read poems from Bob Marley and my husband and I recited some honest and slightly risqué vows, but we also decided to incorporate some of the Indian traditions into our wedding. The wedding started with everyone on their feet jeering as loudly as they could to welcome the groom into our family. My husband was blessed and then had to break a clay pot filled with grains with his foot to symbolise overcoming any obstacles which lay ahead of him. Aeki Beki, a game we played during the ceremony in which my husband and I had to try to find a gold ring in a bowl of milk and other objects whilst blindfolded, whoever won (me!) would rule the household. Finally we exchanged wedding rings and garlands to symbolise our mutual respect and consideration for one another. And whilst we didn’t necessarily believe in the meaning of the rituals, the rituals themselves brought the whole wedding party together, the day was filled with love and happiness and when tradition does that it can be so beautiful.

As a result of the difficulties Mum faced in marrying my dad because of her traditional upbringing, it would be fair to assume that as a family we have discounted the importance of tradition. However, it is actually quite the opposite. Whilst tradition was part of the reason my mum was effectively exiled from her community, it is also part of the reason she was able to return to it.

I have had many a debate as to why traditions are so important and in these difficult political times I’ve often questioned their benefit. But I have come to realise, it’s not the traditions themselves that are important but in fact it is the act of carrying out the tradition that brings people together and forms a community – this is fundamental to us as human beings. Communities are formed and sustained through acts of tradition be it rituals or celebrations and there is no denying that families are stronger within a community. Celebrating Diwali has been one of the longstanding celebrations within my mum’s family, which since my sister and I were born we have come together to celebrate, with food, candles and fireworks. The tradition has effectively brought us back to together.

We tend to take the best parts of our upbringings and continue them through with our own kids, forming our own traditions. When I look back at my childhood, some of my fondest memories are coming together to celebrate various festivals and holidays. A lot of us celebrate traditions that have been born from religions that we don’t all practice – Christmas, Halloween, Easter – the reason being because these traditions bring us together, even if just for a day. We want to feel that sense of familiarity and belonging and tradition allows us to do that.

When I had my son I wanted to ensure that he learns about my family and our traditions, but also about other cultures, just as my mum taught me. It is fundamental for me to help Rochford to understand where he came from in order to understand who he is and who he wants to be. Like it or not, your history and background has a huge impact on who you are as a person. I want Rochford to understand his heritage and continue our traditions through, but also to learn and be open to people from other backgrounds and become part of a bigger community whatever his beliefs.

Communities as they used to be are becoming fewer and far between – we no longer wave to the neighbour next door. If a stranger in the street dares to say “hello”, they are often met with a suspicious look. A lot of us find comfort in our closed houses and seek “community” in the soulless social media sites (me included), which claim to offer a social network to bring people together when in fact, more often than not, they have the opposite effect – creating comparison, envy and insecurity. I worry a lot about this new digital age my son is growing up in and how I can bring him back to reality and give him a real sense of community that I had growing up. One way of doing that is to celebrate the traditions that my family and others have been brought up with and ultimately show him that being part of a community makes us stronger, feel safer and gives you people you can rely on or just talk to. They say it takes a village to raise a child and never has a truer word has been spoken.

When choosing a name for our son we really wanted to have an individual name which had meaning to us, we settled on Rochford. Rochford is my family’s middle name on my dad’s side - my sister and father have it, his father had it and so on. It goes way back through the generations and since I took my husband’s surname it was important for me that Rochford had a name which linked him to my family. He also has Rochford as a middle name, Rochford Rochford Cliff, poor child! And whilst to a lot of people, a name is just a name – to me it is so much more.

Words and Photography by Shakira Wood