Call Food By Their Given Names

Food is such a beautiful thing. It allows for various interpretations. It is the one thing that connects us all and it has the ability to create and invoke memories. It is also tied to our culture, identity, and history. The name of a dish being mentioned can send you back to a time and a place that reminds you of specific events or perhaps a specific person. Specific dishes come with specific memories for a lot of people. No matter where you are in the world you are bound to pause and reflect if you hear the name of a dish you know from back home. This is one of the few reasons why keeping the name of dishes as they are is so important. It not only tells you where the dish is from, it also gives you a brief history of the people who created it. Because no matter how you look at it, someone, somewhere, a long time ago decided that this was going to be the name of this dish or ingredient. Now we might not know what was happening in their lives at that moment, they might have had a bad day or were just plain drunk and thought of that name. All we know is that everyone else agreed to go with the name and called it that.

So many parts come together in naming a dish and depending on where you come from each dish will a specific history attached to it. Across Africa alone there are several variations of bofrot, puff puff, mandazi, magwinya and it will be kind of arrogant to want all of them to be called the same name because they share similar ingredients. It’s expecting sushi to be called sashimi or maki or poke bowl. They share similar ingredients but they are also so different form each other preparation wise and even in technique. That is what makes food so special and why calling foods just as they are named is important. Instead of changing the name entirely you can say, “it sort of tastes/looks like this (insert a meal they know).” This way you explain what it is without changing anything.

Over the years there has been pressure to Anglicize the name of dishes so it’s easier to pronounce and also make it sound ‘appealing’ to a group of people. This external pressure I’ve noticed only exists when it comes to African foods and the cuisines of other minorities. If we can learn to pronounce dishes from other cultures then everyone else should learn ours.