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.

I have spoken in many other places about how the idea of this work came about, so I won’t rehash it here. What needs to be told again and again is how the work and support of a whole lot of other people have got it to this stage of realization. Without the dedicated software designers, the graphic designers, user experience supervisor, social media/PR workers, donors, lexicographers and a host of other volunteers, this work would still have remained a wish waiting to happen.

Through this blog, we will share the progress of the work, our dreams and exasperation, our recent launches, news and reviews, and every other information we hope to pass across to the user of the dictionary that can’t be written in a short post on Facebook or in 140 characters on twitter. The blog posts will be about technical design rants, personal stories, lexicographic musings, short updates, ideas and feedback, and a lot more.They will be written either by members of the team in different departments or by guest bloggers who share the dream.

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Thank you and welcome.