Names, Origins, Names of Origin and Origin of Names

We get asked about our names,  about where we come from and the origins of our names.

In some places with my skin colour, when people ask me my name, they expect me to say, "Abdulali" "Katamanagulukaranaki" or maybe "Wanagoforawok".

So when I answer that my name is simply Martin Maden, they say: "Oh really?".

Back in Papua New Guinea, in the days of the analogue telephone, when people would kindly ask me my name, I would say "Martin" and then they would ask my second name and I would say "Maden" and then we would start all over again. So I would have to stop them, and one at a time I would make sure they got both names written correctly.

Even people very close to me
spell my name wrong

At other occasions, someone perhaps wanted to write down my name and address. I would say my first name, "Martin". Then, when I would spell my second name, M-A-D-E-N, they would cross out "Martin" and write "Maden" in its place. Then they would ask me for my second name, to which I would say: "That's it you just wrote it down". And then they would ask again: "And so, what's your first name?" - "Martin" the one you just crossed it out.

- Okay, so... Do both your names have "r"s? 

- No only the first one. 

- Which one?

- Martin - M-A-R-T-I.N

- Not Marden?

So why do I have these names?

Let's start with my sir name, "Maden".

Maden is the name of a tree in the Kuanua language of Rabaul. My father was born at a place called Vunamadeni which in Kuanua means at that place by the base of the maden tree. His family had settled in a camp there, to build an ocean going canoe in the early 1900s. His name which I still carry, marks a calendar event and is an indicator towards a small part of my people's forgotten heritage. That of such a tree and that of the way people organised themselves to build their "Ogo na vatu" - canoes that required a ballast of rocks at the bottom of the boat to maintain their equilibrium as the waves would throw them about. 

Ogo - from canoe (oaga)

Vatu - Rock, stone or pebble (pebble is also "likai")

My father was the last of his line, of his particular genetic pool, according to our own system of matrilineal system of organising clan lines. We call him the "maruru na pulaka" - a rainforest plant that grows no off spring, but sinks back into the bowels of the earth. He had a sister who fell in love. But the man she fell in love with lost one of his legs during the second world war, through minor injuries and gangerine. My Aunt's people did not want her to marry the man of her choice. In my naiive way, I asked my father why the marriage was not allowed. "Was it because he only had one leg?" - "No, the elders said that the two were too close together on a family tree". So my father's sister became a catholic nun to avoid any arranged marriage that would be against her own love and will.

So with that my father could not have nieces and nephews to carry his own family line into the future. But he came into my family and gave my mother children including myself. I was the sixth of 8 children that he fathered. When he died of cancer, my family line continued and all that is left from the memory of his family line and history is my sir name To Maden. 

I would also have lost his name for him too, had the teachers in school not kept insisting on my writing down my father's name after my own. That they said was the proper way to be known. After four or five years of confusing school records, I decided to settle for the name order I still use today. 

One of many figures which Tolai children drew in the wet sand. 

The designs are part of a game called 'Where did I begin?' 

in which people had to guess where the drawing was begun. 

Such a game is typical with the Tolai cultural concern with origins. 

From the book "Tolai Myths of Origin" 

- Edited by H. Jansen, M.Mennis and B. Skinner.

My christening name "Martin" was chosen by my mother, who was a devout Catholic unlike myself. St. Martin was admired for his generosity and a man who never uttered a curse in his life. Again very unlike myself. A Roman soldier during their occupation of France, he was kind and is known for cutting his clothes in half so that he could give half of his clothing to a poor and cold beggar on a street. In a Roman soldiers life, half of your property belonged to Rome including your clothes. So when Saint Martin used his sword to cut the cape in half to give part of it to the beggar, he had given away his own part of the cape (Latin "Cappa"). It would have been against the law for him to give away what was not his to give away. 

Later when people thought of him as a saint, they kept his cape inside tents where they would worship. It was that cape (cappa) that gave us the word "capella" the latin word for Chapel.

So as I struggle and often protest today, aginst the hypocrisy and the cruelty of the religion I was born into, Christianity, I am struggling against some of the very virtues that I also admire. But I know only too well that these beliefs have been used so often as instruments of discrimination and for the denial of human rights and eventually to cause harm to countless men, women and children.

My middle name "Tiuta" as it appears on my passport, is the name of a great grandfather of my father. A spiritual man and a great magician, he was born mute and deaf. So it was not known to anyone else where he acquired and learnt his magic and craft except that it was not through anyones formal teaching.

I'm caught between three names who inspire me from different angles, and which constantly challenge me. 

My first name Martin, challenges me in that it is very hard for me to be like St. Martin. To be able to make the kind of sacrifices that he made in his life. To return his weapons of killing to Rome and to choose a life of a peaceful pursuit of justice. To never ever utter any coarse language, like my father could manage. In the time he was alive, I never heard my father swear. And when I tried swearing the first time, just to be cool, I felt really filthy. It was only much later, when I was really hurt by someone really close that I was able to swear and mean it. And now I'm trying again to give up swearing. And on on top of that my father also said that you should never destroy anything that cannot speak up or defend itself. How could these two men, many miles and centuries apart possess so similar a sense of personal dignity? 

The father's own name challenges me to look deep into my origins and demands my attention to my roots and to the rich heritage of my people of Rabaul and also the common and rich cultural heritage of Papua New Guinea. It is because of my father, that I am so certain that Melanesians are a naturally dignified people, such that I would do all in my own powers to uphold its heritage. 

My middle name makes me constantly aware that human perception strength and dignity is found inside oneself and does not require any artificial assurance that it is there. Because of that, I am able walk into any situation without wondering whether I would function once I got there. I just know that I will and that I would account for myself.