Why Names Like Livingstone Still Matter

By William Kiptoo

Names are never just labels. They carry history, identity, and memory. In Sergoit, the name Livingstone has outlived generations, shifting its meaning with each new era.

To the Dutch Reformed Church missionaries in the 1940s, naming their outpost Livingstone was an act of continuity, a way of linking their new mission in Kenya with their previous work in Southern Africa. To the Boer farmers, it was a symbol of faith and familiarity on foreign soil. For the African community that inherited the land after independence, the name was a reminder of a complicated past; a name they accepted but eventually replaced with Simatwet, drawn from the land itself and its heritage.

Yet, decades later, Livingstone returned as the name of the local secondary school. Its revival is not so much about honoring colonial memory as it is about the way history stubbornly weaves itself into the present. A name once borrowed from another land has now become rooted in Moiben’s own story.

What this shows is that names matter because they are vessels of memory. They can preserve foreign legacies, but they can also be reinterpreted by communities to tell their own story. In Sergoit, Livingstone no longer belongs to missionaries or settlers, it belongs to the students, teachers, and families who use it every day.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson: we do not always choose the names we inherit, but we can choose how to live with them, redefine them, and make them our own.