Names

Sorry no real time to blog so far this week again. I'm not on strike just extraordinarily busy with both work and Caribana preparation. I man a turn pseudo pan man aka shadow master so look fa me pun the road! Thanks for the love and the comments though I'm a get back to you guys but just letting you know its appreciated and I'll visit everyone's blog as soon as possible.

So quick thing. I was trying to support my sistren Kami and I was doing a quick read on her blog (sorry Kam didn't have time to comment will comment later) and she did a blog about weird celebrity children's names. Its right here.

Anyway it reminded me of something that happened to me the other day. Was chatting to some sistren about how the calypsonians remaking a lot of old soca tunes these days and I said I was going to get into the business and remake a few tunes and just add a little dancehall chant and a few scoobays and it would be a surefire hit! For those who don't know scoobay is like One of Elephant Man's catch phrases. No idea what it means if it means anything.

Well guess what happen the next day? Cant remember exactly where I was but it was some mall in some store and this young lady out of the blue shout out something like Scoobay or J'ouvert! So I'm thinking boy she must be singing an Elephant man song in her head either that or she in Caribana spirit early. For those not in the know J'ouvert - a contraction of the French "jour ouvert", or "day open" - is a large wild frenzy of a street party during Trinidad carnival (night-time event).

Turn round now to see what's going on and I hear her shout out Scoobay (yea was able to hear it properly this time) and this young child comes running up to her. So I'm like no this woman didn't name her child scoobay fa true. No, cant be.

So I'm dying to ask her wait Elephant man is his father or what but I refrain myself as she berated young Scoobay about running off. What a name!

Now we had this old joke in Barbados. Heard it was a true story too. Way way way back in the day before electricity and moto-cars or so a mother takes her baby to christen at the church. Now the mother was illiterate so she got someone to write the name of the child down on a piece of paper and using a safety pin she stuck the name to the child's chest so that she could give it to the priest at the church for the ceremony.

So the ceremony starts and the officiating Priest, as mother and child stand before him, asks 'What is the name of the child.? So the mother looks at the priest and says "it Pin pun she". In bajan that means the name is pinned on the baby. Now certain bajans talk really fast and you cant understand them properly or more likely the priest was an Englishman so he aint really understand the bajan dialect the lady was telling him so he said 'pardon me what did you say the name of the baby was?' The lady turns her head to gesture at the baby's chest where the paper is stuck and replied 'it Pinpunshe'. Well the priest didn't get the gesture cause ya aint know that the man christen the woman chile 'Pinpunshe' fa true!

So apparently poor child had to grow up with the name 'Pinpunshe' because the priest didn't realize that the mother was trying to tell him to look at the paper pinned to the child to see the name.

Now to tell ya the truth if I had a choice between calling my child scoobay or Pinpunshe I think I would got go with Pinpunshe.

stay safe people!