MY NAME

WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE OR SIMILARITY BETWEEN LETTER A &O?.

                               Reginald Anderson posing for a short recess after a long work marathon.    

                         

When I was in primary three (P3) my father used to experiment my reading ability by giving me assignments. Among of them was to read for him some parts of his favorite newspapers. One day morning I was much surprised by his call early like that. Our family had a tendency of fearing the strict “Dingi” as he could be odd for sometimes. Dingi is the jargon used by the youth to mean a strict dad. I thought of what mistake I made, and also the fluttering words to be used to ask for his pardon.
His second plea I had already reached at the bacon of the house, the place where he could sit when typing his office documents and perusing newspapers. Perhaps my heart started to beat like a drum, the tone and facial expression couldn't tell whether I was in total panic or fear.

With bewildering smile, he said, “do you know this man in the paper?”. I focused on the image of a powerful businessman in Tanzania Mr. Reginald Mengi. He said to me his name is like yours but the difference comes in that my spellings name is Reginold while his is Reginald. ‘A’ and ‘O’ makes the difference. He ended up by commanding me to read the news towards this famous Tanzanian businessman.
I thought there was no difference because of the interesting story I read of this man whose name sounds like mine. Eventually, I decided to follow up the feet steps of the rich man from that very year 1994. I chose to write on every book and document a new name of ‘Reginald’ nevertheless my class teacher had registered ‘Reginold’.

Four years later at primary seven p7 fall outs release the name was written ‘Reginald’ without letter O between ‘N’ and ‘L’. It was a green light for me to launch officially the admirable name of ‘Reginald’ and bury the other ‘Reginold’ with ‘O’ between letter ‘N’ and ‘L’. Back in my previous age of senior one up to four the name awarded me with fame before my fellow students. I was known allover the school boundaries by the nick name ‘Mengi’ because of sharing the name with this famous business man.

Two years later at advanced level I faced a predicament when the headmaster asked me how to pronounce ‘Reginald’ I said /REG: NALD/ as the Swahili speakers say ‘REGINA’ then finish by ‘LD’. Amazingly, he burst into a louder laughter at me and said that it is /REG: NOLD/ as my next of kin and siblings use to pronounce it ‘REGINO’ finally finish by ‘LD’. The talkative old man added that he had adopted the English pronunciation at his school days in Leeds London.
Nowadays, my colleagues at the university escape the mawkish name for the reason that it is difficult to be pronounced. They call me ANDERSON the second name. While others shorten it by calling me ‘ANDE’.

I recall my brother Ruben had ever gave me a Webster’s dictionary and told me that it is the secret book used by our parents while they were naming us. I saw his name Ruben, our elder brothers name Royson, Sister Rachel also ‘Reginald’. The masculine name REGINALD originated from west London meaning strong. Apparently, I made own research and found that, its also a  Latin name means a "ruler", adviser to the ruler "kings adviser".  From other peoples views and comments toward the name; "people with such a name are always strong, sophisticated, sexy, smart, friendly, creative, name it.

 There fore, I'm Reginald because documents such as confirmation, baptizing and academic certificates had been registered by the name spells REGINALD.

By Reginald A. Mtui.
BA Languages.