Popular Nollywood actress, Amandla (formerly Amanda) Ebeye, says she changed her first name because she wanted something closer to her African roots.
The newly married movie star also added that she has no business bearing a white man’s name, Amanda, and that’s part of reasons she opted for Amandla Ebeye.
In a recent interview, she said, “I’ll attribute it (change of name) to knowledge of self. Amanda is a Latin name that means ‘loveable’. Obviously, I am not Latin; my dad is from Agbor in Delta State, while my mum is a Yoruba woman. I truly had no business bearing Amanda, but for colonial reasons. There is no reason for me to bear a white man’s name. How many of them bear our names? I badly wanted to change to something close to my birth name, so it would be easy for people to adapt. Then, I found Amandla, which is a Xhosa and Zulu (South African tribes) name, meaning ‘power’. It was a popular chant used during Nelson Mandela’s fight against apartheid.”
The actress also stated that the name change would not affect her past productions.
Speaking on how married life is treating her, Amandla Ebeye said, “Marriage is good. We have been sailing the boat for close to two years, and I am loving it completely.”
On her new projects, she said, “For about a year, we had been in the process of editing the new series I just released, titled, ‘30s, Single and Bored’.”
Amandla Ebeye also maintained that relocating abroad had not affected her career. She said, “I won’t say I have relocated here completely but in a way you are correct. Being more away has helped me make better choices of not being in every movie. I love acting passionately but I love being a mom and a wife too. When I am present for my family then I’ll be excited to be on set. So being here has given me the freedom to choose things I want to be part of. I won’t say it impacted it in any sort of way cause whatever happened, I allowed it happen.”
The mother of one also spoke on dealing with racism over there in Canada.
“To be honest in the country I’m in I will say because we are more immigrants, the nicest people I have met have been from here. I honestly have never personally experienced racism here. And that’s the truth. I will say the only time I was racially profiled was in the Uk in a shop , the attendant was so rude and condescending. I just called her out on it and walked away. I think Europe is racist to Africans naturally, it’s always subtly imbedded somewhere.”
