Should we keep or change the name of "Cameroon"?

The names of our countries have been created randomly by European colonists and explorers as per their own convenience. These names cut across African states in America, Asia and Oceania.

The name "Cameroon" comes for example from "Rio dos Camarões", which means "River of prawns". Portuguese navigators who approached the Wouri River, found lots of shrimp which they named "camaroes" giving rise to the name Cameroon. The name of our country is linked to the reality of a crustacean, whose image shines in the background, wherever the name Cameroon is written and pronounced.

Geography, history, and self-identify of the peoples of Cameroon is linked to the Wouri River or shrimp. Cameroonians should therefore not be referred to as shrimp found on the extent of its territory. The shrimp is not the iconic image of our country.

If Portuguese navigators had found many crocodiles or snails in the Wouri, we would have been called exactly that today? "Crocodilians" or "escargotais" no doubt! This leads me to ask myself the question of whether the name of a people, must be played on such contingencies?

In our African Customs, the right to assign a name to a child or a village does not depend on a traveler or a foreigner. Keeping the names of the States selected by the explorers and settlers, designations which are similar to those the slave captors gave the Negroes that they captured and sold in America. We base our destiny on the arbitration and do not write our history ourselves.

We marry the enviable culture of these men who have names they do not know understand or have knowledge of their meaning. Dupont Delarue, Duval fourrière, Rigaud Vasseur, Le nôtre, Le vôtre etc.

These strange names were probably content that have eroded over time. The choosing of names from films one watches has robbed us of the choice of picking names equivalent to visionaries or Patriarchs; but to the actors of the films and series they watch on television.

Our towns, villages, neighborhoods, intersections or football teams have strange names, and grown men approve these, without weighing the enormous influence that the name carries or what it means. Look at physical traits and behaviors of those who bear the names of elephant, warthog, Leopard, Thunder, or dog. They resemble these animals in many respects because the mould of the name gradually turns the spirit.

This truth makes us fear the impact of shrimp on our country because it is quite possible that we are molded in the form of crustacean and its techniques of life. Locked up probably in animal logic, our football teams, the emblems of our political parties and the images of heads are always wild beasts.

The man was made a smarter, stronger and glorious being.Yet some decision-makers remain very attached to the attributes of these creatures over whom God mandates us to dominate and rule which tend to hinder their frequency, ascribing to them bizzare qualities and skills forgetting the fact that God created him in his own image and likeness. It is time for man to stand up and resume its rights on nature and civilisation.

It is time to change the names of countries, cities, villages, neighborhoods, carrefours blooming in our cities.

It is noteworthy that before one assigns a name to a child, he must know its meaning and make sure that it is suitable for a pleasant or worthy inherent and outward nature, otherwise this name can become for them, a factor of suffering and backwardness.