By Johnny Coomansingh
It’s a bit funny, but sometimes I don’t know what to call myself. There is a dichotomy about knowing who I am, who I am not, and what I am supposed to be. What a life! So I was born and was given a name.
Everyone knew me as ‘Johnny,’ and I answered only to that name except for when Rolland my father, and my Uncle Ralph called me ‘Bulldog.’ They labelled me with this name because of my loquacious nature as a child. To them, I was a small version of Sir Winston Churchill, ‘The Bulldog of England.’ I had a proclivity to field an answer for everything because I asked many questions and learnt to read quite early.
I was there at my mother’s dress tail with innumerable questions. What is that word? How do I spell and pronounce this or that written on every tin can or box in the cupboard? My mother literally taught me to read, but there was someone else who factored in the exercises.
Early in the morning before anyone was out of bed I harassed my eldest brother to spell and pronounce certain words. Raising the wick of the ‘Home Sweet Home’ kerosene lamp just a tad, I sat in the sunken space on the bureau (dressing table) between the two rows of drawers. I rose up to read and it meant harassing my sleeping sibling for assistance. He called me a ‘Pest.’ Another one of my names.
Without fail, I accepted all my names and monikers, even some most derogatory ones. Two of my brothers plastered me with the titles: ‘Bighead’ and ‘Saddle Head.’ And O how they laughed at me. Apparently, my head was too big for my shoulders hence the name Bighead. Maybe I looked alien to them. Who knows? Saddle Head came about because they saw that my head was a bit sunken in the middle. It still is, but not as pronounced. I guess my cranial fontanelles closed up early enough to save the day.
Never leaving me alone, I received from my second cousins, the name ‘Flat Top’ due to the shape or misshape of my nose. My nose was not the enviable ‘straight’ nose.’ One of my forebears was Chinese. Even my beloved godmother referred to me as Flat Top.
Her husband looked at me one day and just called me ‘Parrot Head’ because of the quantity of hair on my head. He immediately gave me a haircut with a multitude of zuggs without a ‘mark,’ making me look like a prisoner from some Mexican jail.
There was no end of teasing. I really felt less of a person. My self-esteem dwindled by the day. I sat in the ‘shadows’ planning how to escape from all the trials and taunting. What was a little child supposed to do? Now I could laugh at all this, but it does not stop there.
Making it to primary school was a step in my life that I relished. I wanted to go to school. Never expecting it, I was called ‘Johnny Coomansingh.’ At the Sangre Grande Seventh Day Adventist Primary School, my name was entered and established on the roll book. Once more, I accepted my name. The name given to me at school suggested that my father and mother were married. They weren’t. Born out of wedlock, and as recorded on my birth paper, I was the illegitimate child of Adolphine Carmino. On the said document, Rolland Coomansingh, my ‘father,’ was just entered as ‘Informant.’
The principal, a devout Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) thought that my name was what he assumed it to be. My father, although backslidden, was known as a member of the Adventist church. Who would think that I was not a legitimate child? In those days, only the birth paper obtained from the registrar of births and deaths was accepted to show that a person was born and that a name was given.
Although my name on the birth paper from the Registrar of Births and Deaths, indicated that I was named ‘John,’ it was clear that people preferred to call me Johnny because it probably sounded nice or cute. Who knows? I carried the name Johnny Coomansingh until I sat the Common Entrance Exams (CE).
While a pupil of the said SDA school, Michael, my classmate, tacked a name on me. This label has remained with me until this day! I used to carry around a big fat mataburro banana in the schoolyard. I bought the banana for one cent at the Baksh grocery that was adjacent to the school. One day, Michael looked at me and asked: “So yuh like bananas eh?” I replied: “I love all kinds of bananas.” There and then, Michael tagged me with the moniker, ‘Nanaba,’ the reversed pronunciation of banana. Some of my school friends and my brothers and sisters started referring to me as Nanaba. Up to this day the name stuck on me like baby poo to a blanket. I accepted the name and used it as part of my email address.
The night came when all the names of scholars who passed the CE were voiced on the radio. I was in that lot. Northeastern College (NEC) was the high school chosen. Registration day came around. My mother and I walked up to the school and there we met a fellow we referred to as ‘JP Blackbird.’
He took my birth certificate, looked carefully at it and then said: “You are not Johnny Coomansingh.” “What?” my mother retorted. “His name is ‘John Carmino,’ his birth certificate is quite clear on this.” There wasn’t a worry, just a small inconvenience. We went to the Commissioner of Affidavits just opposite the Sangre Grande Hospital and fixed an affidavit. My name is now legally Johnny Coomansingh. What a relief. But wait!
Immediately after receiving the affidavit, we walked back and registered at NEC. At NEC, more names fell on me. I couldn’t understand why this most interesting moniker ‘Gobar Head’ came upon me. Not long after, some people shortened it to ‘Gobes.’ It seemed that I was a magnet for labels. I never complained. Sad to say, some of the people (quite a few) who tacked names on me and teased me, are now pushing up daisies. I hear them no more, but there is more to hear.
About two years ago on a trip to Cumana, Toco, my older cousin, Ralph Amann (Ralphie), told me that I am a real ‘Amann’ and that my correct name should have been ‘John Amann.’ “How come?” I asked in astonishment. He explained that my mother should have been named ‘Adolphine Amann’ because her mother Mabel was not married to Cito Carmino.
As far as Ralph recalled, it is likely that Mabel wanted to eliminate the ‘Amann’ name because her father Peter William Amann, of Chinese extract, was a seasoned gambler…and he lost everything he owned. Perhaps the family wanted to eradicate the gambling stigma by abolishing the name. Nevertheless, my ‘name’ keeps changing.
You would think that with all the technological advances implemented in the registration process in Trinidad and Tobago that everything would be correct on every document. You would envisage that all would be justifiably right on each and every birth certificate produced by government offices; not so with mine. With my affidavit in hand and my old birth certificate, I went for a renewal of the digital type recorded on mylar paper given these days.
I received a copy of the digital version but there was an issue. Although just an informant, my father’s name was misspelt on the new document I received. ‘Coomansingh’ changed to ‘Moonansingh.’ I queried the issuance of the name on the birth certificate only to be told that it could not be changed because that is how the cursive ‘C’ looked. It looked like an ‘M.’
I saw the validation of myself on the computer at the registration office. I couldn’t be bothered. Life happens! My father never signed off on my birth registration certificate as ‘father.’ Should I care? According to the movie Spectre, the 2015 James Bond film, it stands to reason that ‘M’ is better than ‘C.’ There you have it. So wuh is yuh name again? Today I tell people that I personally like the name ‘Relakhsingh.’
