What Is Your Name in Bariba?

For this post, let's play a game. Let's figure out what your name would be in Bariba.

Here are a few principles to help us figure out your name:

1. Your last name is your father's first name, even after marriage.

2. When stating your full name, you say your last name first and your first name last.

3. A child may be given a Muslim or Christian first name, like Mohammed or Thomas, if the family is religious. Otherwise, the parents will give the child a name based on his/her rank in the family (or, as you saw  in an earlier post, based on the child's twin status, if applicable). Even if the child has a Muslim or Christian name, he/she may still be called by his/her rank-based name.

The rank-based names are as follows:

Oldest son: Woru

Second son: Sabi

Third son: Bio

Fourth son: Gouda (yes, that's right, your child could be named Gouda!)

Fifth son: Sanni

Oldest daughter: Gnon

Second daughter: Bana

Third daughter: Bake

Fourth daughter: Bignon

So have you figured out your name? To give you an example, let's take Obama's oldest daughter, Malia. In the simplest sense, her full name would be Barack Malia because her father's first name is her last name and the last name goes first.

But if we want to make her more Bariba yet, we could call her Barack Gnon because she is the first daughter. Since Barack himself is his mother's oldest son, he would be Woru. If you want to take Malia's name a step further, we could pretend that Barack's parents never named him Barack and only called him Woru, in which case Malia's name would be Woru Gnon. Obama's second daughter, Sasha, would be Woru Bana.

And you? What would your name be?