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Where did the Sa in your surname come from?
I once had an
interesting exchange with my then Form 1 Agriculture Teacher, whom we called
Fungi because of the way he used to pronounce fungi (the plural of fungus).
“Inini murume mukuru they still call
me by my first name yet iwewe just a small boy wakutonzi Sa...”, he chastised
me in a lighthearted manner. We laughed, the whole class joined. But he had a
point. Sa..., a prefix of respect common in Manicaland, particularly in Honde
Valley, is prefixed on my surname. Whilst others have to earn it, I earned it
at birth. It's something I would take for granted. But then later on I started
quizzing where this came from. Where did this Sa come from? This might have
bothered many people with similar names.
One popular explanation
was presented: it's a bastardisation of Sir. They said back in the day, most
people from Manicaland worked in hotels and as gardeners where the use of the
title Sir was prevalent as a sign of respect to their bosses. Wasu, someone
from Manicaland, was intrigued by the noble title and the Queen's language in
general that he took both home. In addition to constructing Shona-English
hybrid sentences – like ndingoku cutter nge razor blade – he started using the
Sir (Sa) title on his name to be even more sophisticated. This reminds me of
the days I was at the University of Cape Town. After busy day which ended very
late, two of my classmates took me to the train station where I was to board
the evening train from Rondebosch to Simon’s Town. Whilst in the car, seated
comfortably though a bit worried about the time that I was travelling given the
stories we have heard in the Metro trains, my phone rang. I immediately
answered. The caller was speaking in Shona, and I thought I was speaking in
Shona too. When I terminated the call, after a few minutes, one friend asked;
“What language where you speaking Phenias?” “My mother tongue, Shona”, I
responded. The other one, a Brit, chipped in, “That’s a very interesting
language because it sounded like 80% English to me”. “Well, I am from the
Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, so…”, I then explained what it meant. We all
laughed. Sorry, I digressed a bit. So when Wasu found that Sir can be adopted,
he did exactly that. An ordinary Gambe became SaGambe (Sagambe). Maringa
fancied himself as Samaringa. A Humani decided to go with Sir Humani
(Sahumani), something that Manga and Humbe and Mbawa and Mbona and Dondo
copied. The list is endless. So exciting was the new normal that even the
registrar's office started documenting it as such. The prefix became part of
the legal name. Just like Sir Ferguson or Sir Elton John, an ordinary Wasu
became knighted, albeit without the Queen's blessings. But is this how Sa
became part of our names? I tried searching a bit deeper. The hotels and Sir
theory is widely accepted.
However, I found
something interesting. They say in the Chimanyika dialect the prefix
"SA" refers to "the guardian of" or "the keeper
of" or someone particularly associated with a certain thing. For example,
Sadondo is the custodian of the Dondo (bush or forest).
