Brilliant!

Are they doing this in America?

The whole "Share a Coke with______" campaign.  

I doubt it.  Because it just wouldn't work the same way.  You see, here in Ghana, and in many other parts of West Africa, people have many names.  One of them is always the day of the week on which they were born.   So, the bottle above is the name for a Friday-born male.  The other day, I got one that had the name Amma, which is a Saturday-born female.  So, with 14 names, you would cover almost the entire population of a city.  It's everywhere here.  On every bottle and on billboards all across town.  In my opinion it's brilliant.  

It reminded me of just one of the cultural things that has become normal to me.  I had a language tutor named Laraba, the Hausa word for Wednesday.  We have a gate guard named Kofi, the Twi word for Friday.  When we meet someone who has a name that we struggle to pronounce, they will sometimes say, "Just call me Monday" or whatever the English name is for the day of the week they were born on.  Not everyone goes by their day of the week name, but they all know it and consider it theirs.

   We have a friend who had a son a couple months ago.  I asked him recently if they were ready to reveal his full name yet.  He told me that they weren't.  His mother-in-law insists they wait a bit longer, until the baby is stronger.  They don't want to name him too soon.  I think it's considered a bad omen.  Seems strange to us, doesn't it?  For now, he remains Kofi, because he was born on a Friday and they will use his "day of the week" name until they do his naming ceremony.  Of course, not all tribes wait that long.  Some of them have their naming ceremonies at just a few days or weeks old.  

Really, the cultural differences are sometimes so subtle and so fascinating.  And sometimes, they seem really far out.  Until you hand someone a basket of colored eggs and try to come up with some intelligent explanation as to why you would dye eggs some bright color as a part of your Easter festivities.  Then you realize that it might be you who has some really far out traditions.