Do you know a place with the weirdest name in your neighborhood like ‘Kiangoma’

There are odd names everywhere in the world. Even here in Kenya, we have them.

In Nyeri, a school called Kiangoma High School did not always present itself as a model learning institution due to the students’ general recklessness over a prolonged period of time.

Kiangoma, in the local dialect, means “the devil’s”, or “of the devil”. An alternative description could be “belonging to madness”, but this is not the first interpretation that will come into the mind of a local. Or anyone who knows the dialect, as well.

An increasingly rowdy crop of students convinced the school administration, and other interested stakeholders, that the name might be, after all, haunting the school.

A series of strikes and other disciplinary concerns stirred further the already troubled waters and the school’s name changed to Mukurweini Boys in 2007, after 43 years.

Some names, innocently coined in the past by well-meaning ancestors, have come to haunt places for years.

In Nandi County, a village was named Kamakas, to mean “stubborn”. This was because the area was home to Makasta, the local name for the hippopotamus.

The arrogance of the enormous water mammal motivated the name, but the name Kamakas could be construed to mean “does not hear”, or, simply, “deaf”, because the hippopotamus did not ‘listen’ as people tried to shoo it away.

As such, now the village’s name, to someone unfamiliar with the area, means “the deaf village”.

In the same county, there is a place called Kaptildil. Kaptildil is a black ant species, and the name was motivated by the insect’s obsession with nibbling.

But now Kaptildil is taken to mean “backbiting”, which could mean to anyone that the village is packed with people who do nothing but badmouth others.

“That name makes people think that this village is made up of people that talk ill of visitors. It paints us in a very bad light, quite unfairly,” says area resident Jeptoo, who gave only one name.

In Laikipia, there is a series of names that create suspicion. These places are located within short distances of one another.

First is, Kona Mbaya, where a local says that being outside in the night could be dangerous; you could get mugged by ghostly apparitions that hover in the dark.