My parents spent my first name as phonetically as possible, but pronouncing it still seems to cause most people. THE False most common pronunciations are when people add syllables and additional letters to my name, so Sheeka becomes Sheneka, Shereka or Shakeeya.
I do my best to let it roll on my back, correcting it several times in the way it is intended to ring: Shee-Kuh. I like my name, even if it is always badly pronounced. This is because I know the origin of my name and it would lead me into an adventure in another part of the world.
When my mother was pregnant with me, my parents watched a foreign film in their small independent cinema Tucson, Arizona. The film, originally from Brazil, was a historic comic drama called Xica da Silva. My parents loved the representation by Zezé Motta of the main character so much that they decided that they would give me the name of his character.
My parents Americanized spelling To help people pronounce it properly – if only they had known at the time that it would be futile!
The search for my name brought wild revelations
As an adult, I became more curious about the origin of my name. While I was looking for the film, I learned that a popular telenovela of the same name had been made in the 1990s and unionized across Latin America. Then, I learned that the filmography of Xica Da Silva was inspired by a real woman named Chica (same pronunciation) who lived in 18th century Brazil.
This made me deeper in the rabbit burrow. According to its biography, the original Chica da Silva was born enslaved at the beginning of the 18th century in Milho Verde, Brazil. As a young adult, a Portuguese diamond entrepreneur bought it, then handled it in a few weeks or months, which was very unusual for Brazilian colonial times. Chica Da Silva continued to have several children with the diamond entrepreneur. Chica has accessed power, wealth and large society for the rest of her life thanks to her connection with her manumitter.
When I discovered that his 18th century house in Diamantina, Brazil, had been transformed into a museum interpreting her life, I knew I had to see her in person.
Visit the house of my namesake
It was a just trip to go to Chica da Silva Diamantina’s hometown, Brazil. I stole from Atlanta to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, then I driven a rental car for four hours in the mountains of Chapada Diamantina. The road trip took my son and I through magnificent Highlands landscapes, but when we arrived in Diamantina, I was exhausted to drive a manual car in a foreign country for hours.
The Chica Museum was to close for the weekend in an hour, and as we would only be in Diamantina for a few days, it was my only opportunity to go before it closed. We rushed along the stone street to the entrance to the museum. I praised the staff and I said to all those who would listen to that I had named the woman who lived in the house almost 300 years ago.
I met a man named John Lennon
After crossing the first and second floors of the museum, taking my time to study the exhibitions of the history of the city’s diamond exploitation and the folk impact of Chica Da Silva in Brazil, I went out to the backyard. I was delighted that I had reached my namesake. It was then that I met a staff gardener who offered to show me something about the typical tour: the garden of Chica da Silva.
My son and I followed him along a stone path, stopping to try an orange sheet, a mint sheet and a sugar cane cut fresh from the stem. Inasmuch as fascinating plant loverThis spontaneous visit to the garden looked like a dream, as if my namesake rewards me personally for having made the trip in tribute to it.
The gardener told me that his name is John Lennon – his mother was a big fan of the Beatles. My jaw fell in shock. I was here, four thousand kilometers from my home, to find out more about the Brazilian woman I am named, and the person who makes me run also bears the name of an international luminaire, in fact, one of the most famous British musicians in history.
While I was standing in the garden of Chica, in the disbelief of my good fortune, I could not help but wish the same fate to my new friend. Hopefully that one day, the Brazilian John Lennon will be able to visit Liverpool and walk in the footsteps of the artist who inspired his name. I know from experience that it will be a journey that changes life.
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