This title is significant for me because of a recent and indelible encounter with a donor to the dictionary project. I hadn’t told her about it, even though we live in the same compound, but she found out about it anyway, and found a way to contribute to the work in her own (but to me significant) way. The icing on that cake came in form of a text message she sent to me afterwards. It read “May your name always be remembered.”
To go for the most charitable interpretation of this prayer, may our work endure for as long as possible, and most importantly, may our names be remembered along with it. But “What is in a name?” as Shakespeare once asked? Won’t a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? To the Yoruba, a whole lot! And, a rose is only a rose because it is so called. In any case, roses don’t grow in Yorubaland so we won’t have to figure out that particular example.