The Origin Of ‘Mankind’ As my Adopted Name(nickname)

Names can be very powerful depending on their origin and effect they have on the individual carrying the name.

The famous American, Martin Luther King Junior, was born Michael King Jr. He travelled from America to Germany in the company of his father, Michael King Senior. When they returned to America, the senior King changed the family name to Martin Luther, in honour of the German reformist, Martin Luther, who was widely known for challenging the Pope for having too much powers in the Catholic Church. And the rest is history.

It was somewhere in mid 1999, at Hohoe, in the Volta region of Ghana, during one of my secondary school holidays, in the company of five other brothers of mine, in my father’s farm plantation where ‘Mankind’ as my adopted name(nickname) was born. A farm plantation which consists of yam, water yam, cassava, maize and a lot of palm trees. The farm was so big that i never knew its full size then and now. My late father fed his large family with the foodstuffs. There was never shortage of food at home. A very big house indeed with more than ten bedrooms.

Whiles working in the hot afternoon of that fateful day in the yam farm, jokes, stories, and teasing were part of the work to ease tiredness. It was that day i told my brothers that, “you never know the importance of the buttocks until you have a boil on it.” They laughed uncontrollably and told me the statement was true. As the work continued, i told my brothers that, “human beings would be the cause of most of the problems in the world. And that the attitude and character of humans would affect their fellow humans so negatively that people would say humans are not good.” It was this statement that propelled my brothers to nickname me, ‘Amegbetor’, literally meaning, ‘Mankind’.
They said i was very passionate about the conscious and subconcious human behaviour hence the name. So they began calling me ‘Mankind’ ever since, which i accepted. I have since posited, postulated and promulgated many theories and philosophies about the human nature.

Names can be very powerful and propel an individual to greatness depending on that individual’s foresight.

~Lawson Ametorwoyorna.
A.k.a. Mankind.
(30th December, 2016)