What Three Yoruba Names Show About Identity as a Story

Identity is anchored in stories, the argument goes: we are shaped by the stories we live in and live by. Writing in The Conversation Canada, the author points to her own three names — Olabisi, Abike and Oluwaremilekun — which, as a child, communicated deep cultural and emotional significance. Her Yoruba heritage and her grandmother's teachings, she writes, laid the foundation for her formal education and her career as a teacher. The claim is not simply that stories describe a self, but that they help constitute one — which makes what you are told about yourself early, and who tells it, more than decoration.