TheCable

Kola Olatubosun, a linguist and Yoruba scholar who led a successful campaign to make Twitter available in Yoruba, has nine days left in his donation campaign to make multimedia dictionary of Yoruba names available online.

Flagged off on January 5, 2015, the campaign has yielded 89 percent of the needed $5,000, with just N110,000 ($559) left to be raised, as 97 funders raised N879,318 ($4,441) in less than 50 days.

The idea, currently funded on Indiegogo, a crowd-funding platform, is aimed at preserving the rich culture and heritage that comes with Yoruba names.

Explaining the emphasis on names and their use in the Yoruba culture, Olatubosun spoke on the power of names.

“To the Yorubas, a name is not just a name. Names have meanings. Names are powerful. Names are an embodiment of history, of a family, of a lineage,” he said.

“Sadly, today, our names are being washed away by ‘civilisation’; we are raising children who are ignorant of this power (or meaning) of their names.

“Soon, one child at a time, a Yoruba name will be lost. Soon, one name at a time, the significance of the naming tradition will disappear.”

In order to halt the gradual erosion of the Yoruba history and naming culture, the culture activist intends to set up an online multimedia dictionary that preserves the names, history and meaning.

Olatubosun, a Linguistics graduate of the University of Ibadan and 2002-2004 president of the institution’s Union of Campus Journalists, has an MA (Linguistics) from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

He taught both English and Yoruba, the latter at the tertiary level in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in 2009.

He is currently working to translate Twitter’s standard glossary of terms, which will make Yoruba the only other African language – asides Afrikaans (currently in beta) – to be supported by the social networking site.