You answer to it. Now know it.

An African name is rarely just a label. It is a sentence: a prayer, a circumstance of birth, a hope spoken over a child, or the whole history of a clan folded into a word.

Meaning comes first. Where a tradition carries more, a surname’s totem, a clan’s praise lines, the day-soul you were born with, that layer is added on top.

Every entry is a hypothesis awaiting its people. Tones, dialects, and family stories vary; if your name is told differently where you come from, that difference is exactly what we want.