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in reply to a message by Helena
Amandla! More a slogan than a name, but usable and sometimes used, it's a word in the Nguni languages (including Zulu and Xhosa, from South Africa) and means Power. As in Power To The People or To Us, lovely for getting a crowd going: main speaker shouts Amandla, crowd choruses Awethu! We heard it a lot, here in South Africa, when apartheid was finally crumbling.
The -dl- is an ordinary combination of the familiar d and l sounds, run together quickly so they sound something like the Welsh ll. And the -th- in awethu isn't the English sound, just a quieter, less voiced t.
A long time ago, a white man who was a member of the African National Congress, now the governing party but then a revolutionary movement, was imprisoned on charges of treason. His wife needed travel documents for herself and their children (I think, or perhaps child) and could get them from the British consulate. Their daughter, who was sometimes mentioned in the media, was known as Amandla ... but the consular authorities checked the records and found that her birth certificate was for a boring, non-revolutionary Amanda! The name had never been officially changed, but clearly the parents liked the message that the local version conveyed.
The -dl- is an ordinary combination of the familiar d and l sounds, run together quickly so they sound something like the Welsh ll. And the -th- in awethu isn't the English sound, just a quieter, less voiced t.
A long time ago, a white man who was a member of the African National Congress, now the governing party but then a revolutionary movement, was imprisoned on charges of treason. His wife needed travel documents for herself and their children (I think, or perhaps child) and could get them from the British consulate. Their daughter, who was sometimes mentioned in the media, was known as Amandla ... but the consular authorities checked the records and found that her birth certificate was for a boring, non-revolutionary Amanda! The name had never been officially changed, but clearly the parents liked the message that the local version conveyed.
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