Post by Abiodun AKINSIKU (@abiodunakinsiku)

My father didn’t name me Yoruba.
He named me for a river with many mouths,
for Ọ̀yọ́’s cavalry raising dust like scripture,
for Ifẹ̀ where the first light did not flinch,
for Ìjẹ̀bù counting cowries no census ever matched,
for Ẹ̀gbá behind forest walls thick as memory.
Kétu, Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Òwu, Òndó, Ẹ̀gbádò, Àkúré, Èkìtì,
each a kingdom with its own crown.

We were the children of Kòtù Òjìírè
long before a straight line on a colonial map
folded a hundred thrones into one convenient word.
Tell me,
what forest gave birth to “Yoruba”?
It came sideways through a Hausa tongue,
sharpened in a missionary’s alphabet,
pressed flat into one column of someone else’s ledger.

A name with no root in Ifẹ̀’s red soil,
no echo in the Odù Ọ̀rúnmìlà first recited.
But I was not spoken into being by a census.
I could have been named for Èlà
the hush inside Ifá,
older than any border drawn by another’s pen.

I could have been Ṣàngó’s thunder, Ògún’s ore before the blade,
Yemọja’s undertow, Ọ̀ṣun’s brass mirror,
Obàtálá’s white cloth, patient before the first mistake.
So when you call me Yoruba, I answer,
but I am not answered by it.

I am kingdoms that never asked each other’s permission to be great.
I am older than the convenience that named me,
deeper than the label stitched on for someone else’s ease.

My father didn’t name me Yoruba.
He named me heir
to Ifẹ̀’s first light, Ọ̀yọ́’s bronze horses,
Kétu’s stubborn gods, Kòtù Òjìírè’s long memory,
every kingdom that stood alone
before it was folded, without asking,
into a single borrowed word.
I carry the word.
I am not contained by it.

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