For YVI — filed under things I was not supposed to think about at nine and twenty and am now thinking about at thirty-two because the body has its own calendar and does not consult you before a software update.
I said I did not want children.
I said it clearly.
I said it repeatedly.
I said it in the same breath as unbothered and unmarried and all the other un-words I collected in my third decade like a woman building a very specific kind of wardrobe. I said it to Mvua and Sharon and to the extended family members doing the maths at funerals and to the men who thought an oops baby was a retirement plan and to the Lord God himself on several occasions when I felt he was not listening which was most of the time.
I said it and I meant it and I still mean it on most days… maybe not. I dreamnt I had twins. One was very very dark another very light. Black and white.
But then there are the other days.
The days when I am in my father’s house and the sun is doing the thing it does over the hills and someone’s child walks past the window and I think — not I want one exactly, not that, not yet, maybe never — I think if one arrived. If one simply arrived the way the good things have always arrived in my life, uninvited, unexpected, already named by the time I found them.
An oops baby… not one but three.
Not H.’s definition — that vile retirement plan he suggested with the casual cruelty of a man who has never once considered the cost of anything he has not personally had to pay for. Not that.
Mine.
An oops baby in the Yvi sense. Which means something that was not in the plan and turned out to be the plan. Which means something that arrived from the underground already full of story. Which means a life that did not ask your permission before beginning.
If one arrived. Here is what I would call it.
For a Girl
Because she would be a child full of stories before she drew her first breath and I would not lie to her about what she was coming into. Every name is a prophecy. This one is honest. The clan exists. The land exists. She would know where she came from before she knew where she was going and that is the only head start worth giving.
Rain. The name of the woman who studied me long enough in the comfort of her home to disagree with every easy diagnosis. To name a daughter Mvua is to tell her she is the thing that makes things grow without asking the ground for permission. She falls. The ground receives her. Something grows. Nobody owns the rain.
From the Library. From the idea that every book that could ever be written already exists somewhere in an infinite hexagon waiting to be found. A girl named Babel would grow up knowing the stories are not hers to invent — they are hers to locate. To walk toward. To pull down from the high shelf where they are almost falling. She would be a librarian of herself before she was anything else.
Where the elephant vanished. Where the highrise stood. Where the sky met the ground in that particular East African way that makes you feel like God is showing off. Tsavo is not a soft name. It is not a name you give a girl you expect to stay small. It is a name you give a girl you know will one day disappear into something magnificent and you want the geography in her name so she can always find her way back.
The mountain. The origin. The slopes where the Atori clan settled when the world was still deciding what shape it wanted to take. To be named after a mountain is to be told from birth that you are not going anywhere. That the ground beneath you has been ground for longer than anyone standing on it can remember. Elgon girls do not leave. They let everything else orbit.
Not the bad kind. Not the African jini from the dark water. The other kind. The genie of the genes. The one who arrives with three wishes already granted before you rub anything. A girl named Jini would grow up understanding that she is not here to serve anyone’s desires — she is here because desire itself summoned her. There is a difference. She would know the difference early.
Shortened from Nakhumicha. The part of Victoria’s name that sounded more Ugandan than Kenyan to people who needed everything to fit. A daughter named Nakhu would be the part that does not fit and is right about it. The remainder after everyone else has taken what they came for. The part that stays.
Because it means quiet and I am not quiet and I have always wanted to understand what that feels like from the inside. A daughter named Zola would teach me. The underground also needs its silences. The spaces between the notes. The pauses in the long story. Zola would be the pause.
My cat. Who died while he was busy talking to someone else about coming to an understanding. Who I named Grey and who was gone before I could explain to her what she meant. A daughter named Grey would be the continuation of that particular grief into something living. She would have green eyes if I had any say in it. I would not have any say in it. That is the oops of it.
For a Boy
The same. The name works for both. A child full of stories does not belong to a single gender. The clan does not either. He would carry it differently — more like a weight he chose, the way men carry names, like a decision rather than a gift. But it would be the same name. Same origin. Same prophecy.
Also the same. The mountain does not distinguish. You can be a boy named after a mountain and it means what it means — you are the ground. You are what everything else is built on. You do not move but everything moves because of you.
My late uncle. Whose name suggested his nature. Who was described to me as someone whose doom was a life without success or anything to be proud of, which is what people say about the ones they cannot contain. A son named Rampard would carry the rehabilitation of that story. He would live the life Uncle Rampard was not permitted to finish. He would be full of stories and he would be proud of every one of them. May his soul rest in peace and may his name outlive the judgement.
The saint. The soldier uncle who has never been to war. Who plays Scrabble with his troupe and tells East African wild stories and once had to explain why he chose the extra pennies. A son named Emmanuel would grow up believing that survival is its own kind of victory. That you do not have to be injured to prove you were present. That the stories you tell around the fire count as much as the battle.
The god of war who visited the underground looking for Hades and found Yvi instead. Who was reading her notes and could not stop. Who marched on the third day. A son named Aries would be born knowing he is going to fight — not against the world, not yet, not unless necessary — but for the things worth keeping. He would have his mother’s temper and his father’s patience and together they would produce something that looked like courage.
This one also works for a boy. A boy who grows up in the Library. Who learns early that the infinite exists and is not frightening. Who reads everything and says nothing until he has read everything and then says only the necessary thing once. Babel boys grow up to be the kind of men who make you feel heard not because they say much but because what they say lands.
Who would have been at the wedding if there was one. A name already in the story. Already waiting. Juma means Friday and Friday means the week is almost over and the rest is coming and you made it through. A son named Juma would always be the almost-weekend energy. The light before the break.
Shortened from Kaye. The godmother in the name. The Canadian in the African child. The proof that family is a decision more than a bloodline. A son named Kayo would grow up knowing that the people who chose you are as real as the people who made you. Sometimes more real. He would have stories about a great-godmother from across the ocean who came every year and smelled like somewhere else and told him he was exactly right.
The Names I Would Not Give
I would not name any child of mine after a man who stored my portrait in a cabinet.
I would not name any child of mine after a diagnosis.
I would not name any child of mine after a fear.
I would not name any child of mine something that requires explanation at every border, every school gate, every extended family gathering where people are already doing the maths about who they are and how we came to be.
They will do the maths about the child too. The name will not help with that. Nothing helps with that. So the name might as well be true.
The Note on All of This
I am thirty-two today.
The oops baby has not arrived. Has not been planned. Has not been discussed with anyone including the Lord God who I am in an ongoing negotiation with about several outstanding matters of which this is only one.
But I have been thinking about names since I was a child because I was given a name that was a whole argument — Ivy Kaye Nakhumicha, later Ivy Kaye Musebe, then to Victoria Ivykaye Musebe , later Atoto Atori — and I understood early that the name is the first story anyone tells about you, before you can tell it yourself.
I would not give my child a story I was not willing to live inside.
Every name on this list is a story I have already lived.
That is the only qualification I have for the naming.
That and thirty-two years of data.
Atoto & Atori.
A child full of stories, considering the names of the twins she has not yet had.
March 24th, 2026.
Part of the YVI world.
Drawn from The Yvix.
Filed under: unbothered, unmarried, thirty-two, and thinking about it anyway.