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ArchivesRe: daughters name
in reply to a message by fatimag
What country were you in in Africa when you heard this name? What were the circumstances where you heard it? And how do you pronounce it?
Having reread your post again, I guess I'm a bit confused. Having "heard it used in Africa" doesn't seem to be the same thing at all to me as "got the name off of an episode of _Living Single_". Was the episode set in Africa?
There are quite a few Swahili words which have become names in the African-American community but which are not used as names in the East African countries where Swahili is an everyday language. According to an online Swahili-English dictionary, "anana" is an adjective in Swahili meaning "soft, gentle, mild", but that doesn't mean it is used as a name in Africa -- or that the Swahili word is really the origin of the name your parents found. Do you know exactly where the found it?
http://africanlanguages.com/swahili/
Having reread your post again, I guess I'm a bit confused. Having "heard it used in Africa" doesn't seem to be the same thing at all to me as "got the name off of an episode of _Living Single_". Was the episode set in Africa?
There are quite a few Swahili words which have become names in the African-American community but which are not used as names in the East African countries where Swahili is an everyday language. According to an online Swahili-English dictionary, "anana" is an adjective in Swahili meaning "soft, gentle, mild", but that doesn't mean it is used as a name in Africa -- or that the Swahili word is really the origin of the name your parents found. Do you know exactly where the found it?
http://africanlanguages.com/swahili/
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