Thread by @maazi_ogbonnaya

In original Igbo culture, women don't answer their husband names.

When I read some misinformed ladies on internet saying how patriarchy embedded in Igbo culture makes women change their names immediately they got married to their husbands names, I shake my head, laugh and...

My grandmother died in 2010 at age of 124. She was the oldest and the last surviving woman of her generation. Her name was Ọbaji Nwaigbo Ụnaegwu. It was her name until death. My grandfather's name— her husband was Ogudu Ogo Okoro Anaga.

My grandmother never bore the name of my grandfather and it wasn't a sin or an issue. My father was named after his grandfather—my great grandfather—Okoro Anaga who was the custodian of ụmụnna's ọfọ and a great man of honour. My father as a Christian was named Mark.

I was named after my father hence, Ogbonnaya. That's how I took Mark as my name too cos my father's name is my name.

My grandmother owned lands& properties. She owned yam barns. That reflects her name Ọbaji. She honoured my father by buying him a horse.

She called herself Ọkpụ Ịnyịnya Yaa Enyịm—She, Who Crosses the Ocean with Horse. If I want to make her smile and tell me stories and histories,I would call her this title. Her eyebrows would stair up, she would hang her shoulders,smiling, and begin to tell me about that day.

She said it was on Eke Market day. The whole community gathered, to welcome her and her horse. This incidence took place in the 1950s. Let me not digress.

There was another powerful woman who had taken numerous titles. She took the highest title of women called Okenajị.

Mgborie was her name. I was privileged to meet her. She owned lands, countless of lands and properties more than many men I can think of in the village. Even in her 80s year of age then, she could lend you any amount of money you want with your land as collateral.

She rented plates, spoon and kitchen utensils for festivals and ceremonies. She was answering Mgborie Eze Nwa Ọkpanụkpọ which was her father's name and not her husband's name.

Many women I can think of never bore their husbands' names but their maiden names.

Their husbands call them by their names, they call their husbands by their names. It doesn't mean disrespect. They owned their businesses, farmlands, cultivate crops just as their husbands. Aba Women who rioted in the 1920s should tell you much about Igbo women in the past.

You don't dare them. Are we talking of ụmụada or ụmụọkpụ? Igbo women had great powers. If they handle you, you will understand how far. No one was completely a house wife with nothing doing. As husband is cultivating yam, wife cultivates akụkụ ubi such as ọkwụrụ,

ede, ụgụ, ụgbọgụrụ, akịdị, etc. They collectively work with their husbands to arrange the yam tendrils (ome ji) in the farm.

Some were into business of buying and selling in the market. Some were labourers, working for others, getting paid and assisting the family.

They don't wait for their husbands to give them before they buy the jigida or other beautifying ornament they wished to have...

But...

When the missionaries arrived, things began to change. Early Igbo women Christian converts were taken to Missionary Vocational Centers,

got trained to become housewives to early male Christian converts who served also as missionaries to spread the gospel . I interviewed a woman 3 years ago who received the same training. She's in her late 80s when I met her.

She told me how she was taken to be trained for her husband who was a catechist then. The Anglican training center for women was located at Nachi in Udi almost close to Oji River. Young girls were taken there to learn how to live with their future missionary husbands.

The issue of housewife and wife not doing anything except child bearing became order of the day immediately the early missionaries arrived. These young girls grew up marrying missionary men, the same thing was passed on to the next generation. They're fed by the church members.

The issue of taking names after their husbands came for the first time. Women are trained as housewives, to be cooking food, sowing and doing other vocational activities for their missionary husbands. European culture now passed unto us..

Things began to change, that was how and why after marriage, women take away their maiden's names and bear their husbands names.

If I marry tomorrow and my wife decide not to answer my name, I have no issues with that. It's not part of my culture.

It is borrowed or rather an enforced culture that assimilated ours as a result of religion and colonialism.

Women changing their names to their husbands' is a European culturet and not Igbo culture. It is not an issue of Igbo patriarchal culture as some of you claim,

it is European culture brought to us by the early missionaries alongside colonization. Igbo had an organised system before it was destroyed. Some things we blame on culture today as subjugation of women should go to religion, not culture. We had a cultural balance for all gender.