Names Can Never Hurt Me

Generating a list of my students has been a tortuous hand-wringing affair. At SMMUCo the admissions department does not generate a list. The student appears and then one writes that student’s name down. At least, as far as I can figure out.

I decided that if I wanted to know who was in my class, I should assign something. I assigned a business letter. Without any instruction on my part, 90 percent of those business letters came with a cover sheet, complete with my name and the student’s name, the college name, the major, the class, the date, and anything else the student thought appropriate.

As I entered student names on a spreadsheet, I made assumptions. For example, if the last name written in a series was “Njivaine,” I assumed it was the surname. If “Ayubu” was written as the first name, I assumed it was the name given to the individual and not the family.

But after the second writing assignment, I began to discover some mysteries. In many cases, students left off one name and decided to include their middle name on the cover sheet. It was as though students believed they were given a whole wardrobe of names, and they could select any names on that day depending on their mood and whatever was in the wardrobe. Pesambili Pesambili decided he was now Pesambili George for the second assignment. Ayubu Hamisi felt he should be Hamisi Ayubu.

Then there were shifts in spelling. The letters in the name “Gerald” morphed into “Jerad.” “Matthew” became “Mathew” in later assignments, and “Innocent” lost an “n” and found it again in January.

On the last day of class, students reviewed my spreadsheet with their semester grades on it. One of them appeared and said, “I think I should tell you my name isn’t John Fadhili but Fadhili Salumi.” I said yes, that would be good for me to know and even better for his grade point average. Four other students announced similar name changes that day.

And when it came time to reckon my list of students with the college list, it took four of us to solve many identity mysteries over the course of three days.