Call Me By My Name

For years Danai Gurira, star of the new film Black Panther, saw her name as “weird,” “too much.” She changed her mind—and it changed her life.

I didn’t know my name was Danai until I was five years old. Born in Grinnell, Iowa, to Zimbabwean academic parents, I was given a nickname, Dede, that stuck before I was cognizant enough to have a choice in the matter. I remember the day my mom decided to tell me I had another name, one folks in our tiny college town struggled to pronounce. She walked into the den, where I was playing with my favorite toys. She leaned in close and told me that in Shona, her native tongue, my real name meant “to be in love” or “to love one another”—an appropriate moniker for a girl born on Valentine’s Day.

As a typical little girl with cool cred to uphold, I wasn’t too into this other name. It sounded weird the way my mom pronounced it, her African cadences freely flowing, her tongue pulled to the back roof of her mouth as she said the first syllable like ad, but not really, her mouth wide as she pronounced the a and i at the end of this strange new designation. Everyone called me Dede. My teachers, my friends, my siblings, me. What was I to do with this new knowledge she imposed on me? I chose to do nothing. I retained Dede; it sounded close enough to a Western name and made me feel like I fit in, to some extent at least. Though I had a pretty joyous childhood in Iowa, we were one of only two black families in town, and Mom and Dad already talked differently from everyone else. A strong African name? Too much.