Yoruba4 syllablesNigeria
Meaning: the brave one has come again — a name about somebody coming back.
Akintunde
| Origin | Yoruba, southwestern Nigeria; written Akíntúndé |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Akin (brave one, hero) + tún (again) + dé (to arrive) — "the brave one has come again", or "valour has returned" |
| Pronunciation | ah-keen-TOON-deh; the final syllable is "deh", and the short form Tunde is TOON-deh |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare there; common in Nigeria, where the clipped Tunde is heard constantly |
| Variants | Akíntúndé is the tone-marked form; the parallel returns are Babatunde for the father and, for girls, Yetunde and Iyabode |
| Nicknames | Tunde, Akin — Tunji is a separate name, not a short form of this one |
| Given when | Often after the death of a grandfather or another male elder, whose return the family reads in the birth |
History & meaning
Akintunde is built from three ordinary Yoruba words and one large idea. Akin is the brave one; tún means again; dé means to arrive. The brave one has come again. What makes the sentence more than a compliment is the family of names it belongs to. Yoruba naming has a whole set of -túndé formations, and they all report the same event: someone who left has come back into the lineage. Babatunde says the father has returned, and is given when a boy is born after the death of his grandfather. Akintunde says the brave one has returned. For a girl the equivalent is Yetunde, the mother come again.
The belief behind this is ancestral return within the lineage, not reincarnation in the wider sense — the ancestor comes back into his own family, and the resemblance a grandmother spots in a newborn's face is treated as evidence. It is worth being precise about the sequence, because English write-ups often garble it: the death comes first, the birth answers it, and the name records the answer. Many Nigerian families now use the name affectionately without holding to the belief in any strict form, in much the way European families keep a saint's name in the family long after they have stopped consulting the calendar.
Why parents choose it
Because it does two jobs at once. It honours a specific dead relative, which few names can do without simply repeating that relative's name, and it carries akin, the courage element, into the next generation. Diaspora families also like that Tunde survives the trip intact.
Middle names for Akintunde
Four rolling syllables ask for something plain afterwards: Akintunde James, Akintunde Cole, Akintunde Emmanuel, Akintunde Ray. There is more on balancing long first names in the middle names guide.
Famous Akintundes
Akintunde Akinwande, the Nigerian-born professor of electrical engineering at MIT, is the clearest bearer of the full name. The short form is better travelled: Tunde Adebimpe, the singer of TV on the Radio and an actor, was born Babatunde, and the British singer Tunde Baiyewu fronted the Lighthouse Family through the 1990s. The full form remains far commoner in Lagos than on any English-language marquee.
Consider instead
Babatunde is the same idea with the father named outright, and the more widely recognised of the two. Akinlabi keeps akin but celebrates the birth rather than a return. And Kehinde is another name fixed by the circumstances of the birth rather than chosen for its sentiment.