This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

About five months ago, producer Kim Chakanetsa opened up a file that was sent to her by her uncle Manu.

It was an Excel spreadsheet of Kim's family tree, a project her uncle had been working on for the last several years.

So far, there are about 300 names on there, tracing our family's history deep into pre-colonial

Zimbabwe, the country where I was born.

Ours is a typically large Zimbabwean family. My great-grandfather had two wives and 15 children,

and all of them went on to have a minimum

of three kids each. Soon I'll be adding a new name to the spreadsheet and upping our family's

grand tally because I'll be having my first child. So I've been thinking a lot about names.

My family tree seemed like a good reference point. My family is predominantly

Shona, which is the biggest ethnic group in Zimbabwe. And as I went through it, I was seeing

all of the greatest hits, the classics when it comes to Shona names. Tapua, which means we've

been given, Rorimbo, which translates to faith or trust, and Mnirazi, which means to console.

There were also English names, common ones like Ruth, Gladys, and Lewis.

But then Kim started to notice a whole other set of Western names.

Actually, to English speakers outside Zimbabwe, they aren't so

much names as they are just words. She saw one family member who was named Suffer, another named

Medicine. One of her many uncles was named Beer. Outside of the country, these kinds of names

are rather unusual. But to me and millions of other Zimbabians,

these are fairly standard. What might surprise me is if I were to come across a boy called

No Matter or memory or privilege, because these are typically regarded as girls' names.

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