Naming the colonized and vanquished: archiving the successes of the imperial enterprise

Abstract

European colonialism was a well-thought-out enterprise aimed at exploiting the natural resources of the colonized. As this paper notes, it was also meant to exploit the human capital—the colonized themselves as a source of cheap and readily available labor. The paper further argues that to successfully exploit the colonized, they expropriated land and other resources under the guise and myth of the terra nullius. They also renamed the appropriated spaces and the colonized people themselves. Such naming, the paper posits, was meant not just for easy referencing but also as memories of home for the new settlers. It was also a seal and stamp of archived material, for through naming they were indicating their presence, indicating that they came, conquered and named. It is on the basis of renaming, the paper argues, that while in theory, they have left, from a records and archives perspective, these people’s presence is still very much alive and kicking because of the names they gave that most Black Zimbabweans still carry and take pride in. The paper laments that even some of the loudest exponents of what it means to decolonize, carry these colonial labels. What the paper concludes is that the names that the formerly colonized carry, and those given by colonialists in some of their places speak to the success of the colonial enterprise, at least as far as onomastics are concerned because, through them, archives of colonial memories are kept and sustained.

Keywords

• Anthroponyms
• onomastics
• toponyms
• theophoric names
• imperial enterprise
• colonial archival system