Some nice feedback on my writing about Prince Harry and his wife Markel, our daughter, the Duchess of Sussex, and Ada Mazi of Nigeria! I had used “Umu Ada” and “Umu-ada” to mean different things.
Under Igbo Izugbe (General Igbo) and Prof FC Ogbalu’s 1978 Igbo convention on harmonization of Igbo alphabets, hyphen “-” brings new meanings in Igbo. My Igbo teachers, Madam Odumuko (junior secondary) and Papa Iyke (senior secondary), would literally tear your paper, if you use hyphen to indicate the division of a word at the end of a line, because in Igbo, that will mean a different thing even though that is allowed in English.
“Umu-Ada” is “daughters” and is typically used for married daughters.
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“Umu Ada” means “daughters’ children or daughter’s children”.
Here “Ada” is not a name or the first daughter in a family, but “any daughter” in the collective form. The daughter’s children are “Umu Ada”, and arguably the most important visitors when they visit their mother’s birthplace. This is because in ancestral Igbo, if your kingdom falls, the last refuge is to run to that daughter’s married place; those Umu Ada are possibly the ones who will welcome and accept you while you are in exile.
Interestingly, Umu Ada have unusual power in Igbo culture; they are the ones called to address difficult crises in their places of birth. Why not? If everything fails, they will place hosts to those kindreds in their husbands’ lands. That is why tilll today, every Igbo community shows reverence to Umu-Ada and Umu Ada!
Igbos name their daughters “Nneka” which means “mother is supreme”. When a kingdom fails and men are to go into exile, where do they go? Mother’s place. So, in the ancestral Igbo culture, everyone was reminded that you can do garagara in your home but when wahala comes, Umu Ada and Umu-Ada hold the ace.
So, Prince Harry’s kids are Umu Ada, and Markel can join the Umu-Ada League of Ovim in the Americas!
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