My mom picked my brother Gaidi’s name out of a book of African names. It was a thin book I remember, thin and worn with a blue cover. As a girl, I would take it out to flip through every so often and find my brothers listed among a column of male names. Gaidi is an East African name that means Guerilla fighter. The name in the book was underlined I imagined by my mom. I would always look for my name but I knew it wasn’t there. My name was not chosen from this book of names. It was chosen from the back of the album cover of one of my mother’s favorite artists, Jon Lucien a singer songwriter born in the British Virgin Islands. The song entitled “Zenzile” was off the album “Rashida.”
Over the years, my mom came up with several definitions for my name, some she made up, like “to pierce through” because she felt I had very piercing eyes, and some like “hard worker” which we found somewhere vague or heard from someone who heard from someone else that said this was it’s meaning. I started doing internet searches years ago looking for the meaning and all I found, in addition to a French band, the popular book “Zenzele” (everyone who’s read it says I should too) and general dead ends are a couple of women who, having given the name to new born babies, also wanted to know what it meant. All we ever new for sure about the name was that it was South African.
I met a student with the same name over the phone at my job while I was taking down her contact information only last year. It knocked me out when she started spelling it and I was like, she’s spelling my name! But that was pretty much the extent of our conversation. Long before that I had resigned myself to being satisfied with having a name I love but whose meaning I have never really been sure of.
Tonight at a birthday gathering for my friend and academic mentor, who share my birthday as well, I met a woman from South Africa who asked me how I got the name Zenzile. She said that it is a very common name in South Africa and a very beautiful name meaning “We have done it” in Zulu. I feel like this one of several wonderful birthday gifts I have received today. I have never known the true meaning of my name before and tonight after completed my 36th revolution around the sun, I now know. And I love it even more.
