Actress Stella Damasus on Tuesday shared a video of herself teaching Nigerians how to pronounce her surname.
The mother of two uploaded the video on Instagram.
“A lot has happened recently with my surname, first of all, I am not here to destroy anybody’s childhood but some people have asked me for the right pronunciation since I said my name is not Damascus, my name is really not Damascus, there is no C in my name. My name is Stella Damasus, that is the name, it’s not Damascus,” she said.
Stella has been tutoring social media users on the correct spelling of her surname.
Tired of people calling her Damascus, which is the capital city of Syria and the oldest capital in the world, the 43-year-old attempted to set the record straight in a tweet on Sunday.
“My name is Stella Damasus, not Damascus,” she wrote.
What many do not now know, however, is that her family’s original name was Ojukwu.
The mother of two disclosed the reason behind the change of name in an interview with BBC Igbo last year.
Speaking in the Igbo language the actress explained that during the civil war, Nigerian soldiers thought her family was related to the late Odumegwu Ojukwu who led the Biafran Army, which prompted the change of name.
“My surname is Ojukwu but during the Biafran war, Nigerian soldiers thought that we are related to the family of Odumegwu Ojukwu. That is the reason for the change,” she said.
She explained that Nigerian soldiers killed many of her father’s kin in Asaba because they shared the same surname with Ojukwu.
Due to the crisis, her grandfather decided that the family should adopt his first name Damasus (a Greek name) to keep them safe.
