I Bear the Name, But Do I Bear the Language?

Aha m bụ Chioma.My name means God is good.But sometimes I wonder if I have been good to my language.Growing up, my family called me Gift, my English name and the one printed on my birth certificate. But I chose Chioma. I introduced myself as Chioma everywhere I went. So when I registered for my BVN, I wrote it boldly as my first name, unaware that my official records still placed Gift before it. I later had to swear an affidavit to make it official.It may seem small, but to me it was not.Choosing Chioma was choosing identity.And yet, here is my confession. I cannot confidently speak or write Igbo.I understand more than I speak. I recognize its rhythm and its tone, the way elders switch into it when something truly matters. I faintly remember my grandmother speaking it. She has passed away now and that memory feels blurred, like a language slipping through my fingers.One evening in my hostel, a friend said something in Igbo. When she learned I was Igbo, she repeated it to me. I froze. I could not respond. She laughed and said I was a “fake Igbo,” not original, just someone who bears the name.It was a joke.But it settled heavily in my chest.Because somewhere inside, I feared she was right.When I visit my village, I sit among my own people speaking fluently. I understand much of it, yet when it is time to contribute, I switch to English. I worry they think I am showing off. I worry I do not fully belong.I once asked someone I loved to teach me Igbo. He was from Anambra and I am from Abia. Even then, I learned that dialects differ. The language is layered, rooted, alive. And I am standing at its edge.This is why writing this feels uncomfortable.On International Mother Tongue Day, I am not celebrating fluency. I am confessing distance.I am afraid that if I do not reclaim it, my children may not know it at all. That in my nuclear family, the language may grow quieter. Not because I rejected it, but because I never fully held it.And yet, I chose the name Chioma.Not because it sounds beautiful, but because it feels like home.Maybe language does not disappear in one dramatic moment. Maybe it fades through silence. And maybe revival begins the same way, slowly and intentionally.I may not speak Igbo fluently today.But I care.And perhaps that care is where preservation begins.Aha m bụ Chioma.And maybe it is not too late to learn how to speak my own name in the language it was born from.

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