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I am SS African, so WHY is my middle name Chinese, and last name in Hebrew?
I had never even thought about it until today. My family is Cameroonian. They're from deep in the country, and in a city that did not contribute to the slave trade (thank god), according to one of my grandmothers. When I go home for college, for Christmas break I will have SO many questions, though, because of what I've learned in the past couple days from totally geeking out on the internet.
Because of privacy, I'm not going to reveal my name here, but I had ALWAYS wondered what exactly our names meant (as in, people of my ethnicity/culture), and where our people came from. Around the Nigeria and Cameroon area was the beginning of the Bantu expansion, but I couldn't find precise information of what happened earlier, or even during this migration, much to my frustration, because I know that's not the only major migration that's ever happened in Africa. If people could leave Africa and travel all the way to Australia or South America, I'm pretty sure the ones left behind aren't just going to sit in one place. Especially when you consider that people move from place to place to find better animals to hunt, and more arable lands.
So anyways, I ended up googling my middle name, which I had always thought sounded asian, but never really thought about it, you know? So it turns out I just needed to add a "-" to it, and it's a chinese name. On google translate, I first typed it without the hyphen, and translated from english to chinese and the communicator couldn't read it. Then I did it again, with the hyphen, which I had originally found when googling my middle name the first time (others had my name, but with the hyphen), and my name translated to actual chinese characters!! I was like.. holy sh**. And turns out I've been pronouncing my middle name wrong this whole time! And apparently my name has roots in the Han dynasty, which really freaked me out. I have the same middle name as my grandmother by the way, and idk how long people have done that!
Then I googled my last name, and that was harder to suss out, because of the different spellings and what not. But I ended up finding that others had my last name from countries like Albania, Germany, and Austria. I found this out a couple months ago, actually, but at the time just assumed that maybe somehow someone from Germany (Cameroon used to be under German rule) must have come to my town and "made his way" with one of my ancestors. Except, now I realize that would make no sense at all, because he would have had to marry one of my ancestors (for me to have my last name), and since Cameroon only became a colony in 1884, I'm pretty sure my grandparents would be aware of that. And it still makes less sense because my dad knew his grandparents, and they were certainly alive in 1884, and so my dad would have known if one wasn't black. It's not something he would keep secret, as my parents aren't racist at all.
My skin is also about as dark as the Nigerian model Oluchi, in the following link. But it's kind of hard to describe my skin tone, cause it depends on how much sun light I've had in a period of time, and lighting. But Oluchi in this photograph is the closest celebrity I can think of, right now. [Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
So, then I looked more into things and found an alternate spelling of my last name that linked to glassmakers in the 19th century, and also a word from a Slavic language, that means "black", and is often used in a derogatory way nowadays. Just when I thought it couldn't get any crazier, I decided to split my last name into two and google the terms, since those others were only variants of my last name. Turns out the prefix of my last name is a good Hebrew/Arabic AND Hindi adjective (again, for privacy, I'm not disclosing), and the suffix is of english origin. But then again, the same suffix, with a very similar sound makes up ANOTHER word which is Hebrew/Arabic for "brother" and also is described somewhere else (some canadian site) as something to do with organic matter being dark.
So I'm pretty freaked out right now. No way this is a coincidence. Like I said before, in more of the Slavic countries there are variants of my last name still existing. And when I put it in google translate, Asian languages couldn't pronounce it, but slavic languages, hindi, and languages like French and English could. The Asian countries just spelled out my last name (lol) since it couldn't be translated in that language.
Did my people just move to Cameroon from East Africa, so many thousands of years ago, and not do anything? And just magically got these names that happened to also be in other nations/kingdoms/civilizations far away? Or could I have had ancestors that played a hand in ancient China, India, eastern Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, etc? To add more freakiness into the mix, I even googled some of my relatives other names, and their so called "african" names were actually of chinese origin! This is really long, but I'm just shocked right now. I actually shed tears earlier, once everything came together in my mind. People say it's "afrocentrist" to say North Africa and Europe were first black, and that Indo-Aryans weren't the original Europeans, but what else does my situation convey but that my ancestors traveled the world, to some degree? There were African empires other than the Egyptian one that I still have to figure out, and who knows, maybe my ancestors played a hand in those too? I mean, I have no idea when they came to Cameroon or anything. It's especially strange because people act like Sub-Saharan africans haven't developed at all, but if what I have found out is actually true (unless you can give me another plausible explanation??) then it says a lot, doesn't it? The people of the city my family is from in Cameroon are hardworking (or I wouldn't be in america right now, as well as many other people I know from the area, who mostly got advanced degrees and what not), and there's plenty of harvestable food and good will, so even though it's in Africa (going by the poor African stereotype), a lot of people actually live better there than in Western countries where we're stressed all the time, eat modified foods, etc.
I'm definitely going to research more into this, this is just what I have put together right now. I do know I'm somehow related to the so-called "chief" (aka african king) of the area where my family is from, but that is as far as I know. I wonder what they think of our origins. And same situation with my mom's side of my family, too. I feel like I've just discovered something huge, like my world has been turned upside down. and btw, all my family members are black, and either as dark, or darker! Well, I have one aunt on my mom's side, as well as my grandmother, who are lighter (like Gabrielle Union), but that's it.
Someone with knowledge about this please help me out and I'll be extremely thankful! Not going to lie, I feel really weird asking this question, almost like I know something I'm not supposed to know? Oh, and I didn't mention before, but my family is Christian, with roots in mystical, animism type things. Idk if anyone was Muslim, or if people once were Christian but then changed, or what. I have more questions than I first started out with!
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This is a really long question deary! this seems like a question that you may want to have answered by one of your family members.. none of us will know the ultimate truth and you it seems like you already have a good understanding of everything and are fairly knowledgeable! you may get a better answer the other way, maybe you could even print out this question and show it to one of your family members if you really want, that way you don't have to explain everything all over again.
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