Name-the-chimp contest finds perfect fit

4-month-old now Kendi,African word meaning ‘loved one’

Mahale holds her unnamed baby chimp, born on August 28th, around her enclosure Wednesday morning at the Little Rock Zoo.
Mahale holds her unnamed baby chimp, born on August 28th, around her enclosure Wednesday morning at the Little Rock Zoo.

— Naming a baby requires patience and careful consideration. Lists have to be made, then culled, and suggestions from family or friends have to be properly filed, perhaps in the trash.

If all goes well, the infant has a name when he’s born, but in the case of little Kendi, it took nearly four months. His mother, Mahale, just couldn’t pick a name.

That’s because she’s a chimpanzee.

Kendi - an African name meaning “loved one” - is the newest addition to the Little Rock Zoo’s family of seven chimps. He was born Aug. 29, and soon after, zoo officials started a contest to name him.

The apes’ keepers culled about 500 submissions from the public and settled on four names, then allowed people to vote online. Kendi, submitted by Vicki Pennington of Junction City, received 65 percent of about 1,000 votes, said Susan Altrui, a spokesman for the zoo.

Pennington said she was surprised to learn that the name she chose with her 12-year-old daughter, Tiffany, had won the contest.

“I home-school my daughter, she’s in seventh grade. After I heard about the chimp naming contest, I thought it would be a cool assignment to research African baby boy names. It’s kind of funny that we won because I never win much and I didn’t expect to win. We just did it to see whatwe’d come up with.”

The contest required that names be of African origin since chimpanzees are native to the continent and that any submission include its meaning.

The other choices, with their meanings were:

Sukuma - A tribe from northern Tanzania, meaning “north.”

Kibale - A national park in Uganda where chimpanzees live and are studied. Mahale is also named for a national park.

Kidogo - Swahili for “little.” Swahili is a language that is spoken throughout east Africa where chimpanzees live.

Ann Rademacher, a greatape keeper, said it took her and four colleagues about two days to go through the long list of submissions. From there, she said, they each chose their top four favorites and then whittled those down to a final four.

The keepers didn’t have a problem with any of the names, but there was a pretty clear favorite, Rademacher said.

“Kibale is another place name, but we thought Kibale and Mahale might have been too confusing,” she said, also noting that Mahale, Kendi’s 15-year-old mother, is named for her birthplace in Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania.

“Kidogo means ‘small’ and that fits now, but it won’t in 10 years when he grows up,” she said. “Kendi was just so easy to say and had a great meaning. A lot of African names are easy for the public to mispronounce, and Kendi just sounded perfect.”

Rademacher said that when picking a name for a new animal, it’s helpful to avoid duplicating those at other zoos.

The chimps are part of a species-survival plan and may be moved to other facilities for mating.

“A lot of the entries were such good names, but we knew a lot of other chimps with those names in the zoo world,” Rademacher said. “We have a registry with the chimp names. If you get six male chimps all with the same name, it can get confusing.”

Arkansas, Pages 13 on 12/23/2009

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