The present Luo generation has never heard of miderma or mawigwa — two Luo words for a unique child, the only boy or girl born to its parents.
In the Luo version of the New Testament, Jesus is called wuoyi ma miderma in his theological position as the “only Son of God”.
Wuoyi ma miderma is a direct translation of the Only Begotten Son”, which is how Tyndale and other 15th Century English translators rendered the original Syriac, Greek and Latin originals.
The Luo word wuoyi refers to a boychild. If Jesus had been a girl, the Bible in Dholuo would now say “nyako ma miderma”.
Yet wuoyi ma miderma (“the only son”), nyako ma miderma (“the only daughter”) and nyathi ma miderma (“the only child”) are clearly tautological terms.
For miderma already contains the fact that you can “beget” nothing but young ones. Miderma has synonyms. The Acholi, a Ugandan Luo community, speak of Jok Kene.
In Dholuo – the language of the Luo of Kenya and Tanzania – this is rendered as Juok Kende or Nyasaye Achiel.
Juok, Jok, Jog and Joghi are various versions of the term for “God” among all the Luo speaking peoples of the Central African Republic, Democratic Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Kenyan Luo have other alternatives for “God”. Nyakalaga (“the ubiquitous one”) is, literally, he who crawls everywhere.
Were is the inimitable gift from “on high”. Nyasaye comes from the verb “sayo” — to beseech, to beg, to supplicate — and refers to the one before whom you kneel to pray.
But we pegged our story on “uniqueness”. Achiel (acel in Acholi) is the word for the numerical “one”. The Acholi kene (Dholuo kende) means the only one of its kind.
Take also the time when, in their historic southward journey, the Luo moved from Tekidi to Pakwach (“home of the leopard”) near Nam Onekbonyo (“Lake Albert”).
Because they had to leave their ailing father back at Tekidi, they called themselves Lwak Bongowon. Lwak refers to a multitude or nation.
Bongo is the Acholi for what Dholuo calls onge, meaning “absent” or “nonexistent”. Won (Dholuo wuon) refers to “father” and, by extension, “owner”.
That was why the new settlement near Onekbonyo (“Locust Killer”) was called Pabongo or Pubongo (“home of the fatherless ones”), the word which later became Pubungu.
I was thus wrong when, in my younger years, I thought that the historic word Pubungu referred to a forest or thicket. For the word bungu means any luxuriant vegetation, the bush.
The Acholi Lwak bongowon thus means “a people without a father”. Similarly, the Acholi bongomin means “the brotherless one” and refers to any boy (wuoyi) whose mother (min) has no other son.
For omin, Dholuo for “brother”, literally means “son of (my) mother”. Bongo (onge) is what has given rise to the Luo name Obong’o (feminine Abong’o), which also means the only begotten child.
That is why Luo Christians refer to Jesus also as “Obong’o wuod Mariam” (“Mary’s only son”).
Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist
