I was talking to someone and didn't believe her when she told me her name.
— Andre Golo (@AndreGoLow) April 9, 2017
Dear Internet, please don't break. pic.twitter.com/vxsTZwwvZg
When you name a child, you put a lot of effort into making sure it is pleasant, meaningful, and won't cause problems down the road. But you can't predict the future, or what names may become famous due to events that you cannot foresee. And so it was when Mr. and Mrs. Spjut named their daughter Isis Harambe some years ago. Isis Harambe Spjut came by her name honestly.
“I’m not the type of person to do something for attention,” Spjut insists, shooting down accusations that she may have faked her own name. “I don’t know if they believe me, but who changes their name? People who go through that much effort just to get attention, I’m not down with that.”
When Spjut was born in 1998, a name like Isis Harambe—obscure as it may be—wouldn’t make anyone think twice. And her parents had reasons for choosing it.
“My parents, when I was born, they were both Rastafarians,” she said, saying why the defied convention. “So my mom kinda picked my first name, and ‘Isis’ was a Bob Dylan song, along with the Egyptian goddess, and then Harambe means ‘Harmony’ in Swahili, and my Dad picked my middle name.”
It was only in high school that her first name was connected to the terrorist group, and then last year the gorilla named Harambe became an internet meme when he was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into the gorilla enclosure. If her name is that prescient, we might want to keep an eye on anyone named Spjut. Hear more from Isis Harambe at The Daily Dot.