Not the first day
The ceremony is ịgụ aha, giving the name. At Nri and across much of Anambra it’s ịgụ afa or iba nwa afa, afa being their word for a name. When it happens has changed. Today it’s the eighth day in most communities, and the twelfth at Nri and Ihiala.
The older practice was later. The name was given on the twenty-eighth day, at the end of ọmụgwọ, the mother's twenty-eight days of seclusion after the birth. The eighth day and the twenty-eighth are two practices, not a disagreement about one.
The wait was practical as much as ceremonial. It gave the family time to see that the child was well, and time for the child to show its intention to remain.
Who says the name
The paternal grandmother carries the child out and puts the baby in the father's hands. Who then speaks the name differs by community. At Nri the father presents the child and names it. Elsewhere the eldest man of the lineage lifts the child and prays over it first, and only then is the father asked what the child is to be called, with the officiants saying the name together.
Among the Ngwa the senior titled man of the ụmụnna presides, and a hoe and a matchet are put into the child's hands, the tools of a farmer's life, to the answer eha, so let it be.
That staging is the point. One generation names the next in front of everyone who will be responsible for the child.
Kola, palm wine and the ancestors
Kola comes first in every account. An elder of the father's line blesses and breaks kola nut, and palm wine is poured as a libation inviting the ancestors to attend as witnesses. Only after the kola does the naming proper begin.
In some places a lobe of that kola is kept back: the father places it on the child's chest and gives his name, and the mother's father follows with the same lobe and his. Afterwards there’s food: palm wine, pounded yam and meat.
The child gets a tree. When the cord drops off it’s buried beside a young palm, pear or udara tree, which belongs to the child from then on. It’s expected to bear in proportion to what the child goes on to do.
The name is an argument, not a label
Igbo names carry a statement: a circumstance of the birth, a hope, a thanksgiving, sometimes a reply to something that happened in the family that year. Names are chosen so that what happened is kept in remembrance.
A child usually gets more than one. The first is the market day the child was born on: Nweke for a boy born on Eke, Nwafọ for Afọ, Nwankwọ for Nkwọ, and Mgbeke for a girl born on Eke. The chosen name comes after that.
Some names answer grief. Nọnyelum, stay with me, and Ọzọemena, may it not happen again, are given by families who have buried children. Onwubiko is a plea to death itself. Names beginning with chi speak about the spirit the child was given.