It was just like yesterday in 2015 when the idea came to start an online dictionary of Yorùbá names. Four years on, with over 6500 names in the database, 2286 followers on Twitter, 3380 likes on Facebook and 959 followers on Instagram, we have come some way.

In this post, we want to highlight some of our milestones from the last four years of YorubaName.com

1. Indiegogo fundraising drive. We raised over $5,445 to begin work on the YorubaName site. (January to March 2015).
2. Free Yorùbá tonemarking keyboards for Windows and Macbook released (August 7, 2015)
3. We added names from Francophone West Africa. (October 15, 2015)
4. We picked name for a baby (December 25, 2015)
5. We went Open Source (May 30, 2016)
6. Yoruba Names on the Road: Ìbàdàn (July 8, 2016)
7. We updated the tonemarking keyboard to include Igbo capabilities (July 29, 2016)
8. We added Lukumi (a Yorùbá language variant from Brazil) (August 31, 2016)
9. We raised funding to create a text to speech application for the dictionary. We raised $1,672. (March 14, 2017)
10. We launched the audio element. Names on the dictionary can now be pronounced. (October 21, 2017)
11. We launched a multilingual interface. You can now use the site in Yorùbá (November 18, 2017) http://blog.yorubaname.com/2017/11/18/achieving-multilingual-user-interface/
12. We collaborated with OrishaImage to create the free Yorùbá Melody Audio Course (December 15, 2017)
13. We had the first tonemarking Workshop in Lagos (March 12, 2018)
14. On April 8, 2018, we had our first hackathon in Lagos. Here’s a recap.
15. We poposed Yorùbá Word Dictionary at YorubaWord.com (April 15, 2018)
16. We raised $1,050 to begin work on IgboName.com (December 2018)

Thank you for coming along with us so far. There’s plenty more we hope to share with you in the coming months.