@sitakikujulikana mburi ya hako was given to wazee by a man for his son to be accepted in the council when he is ready to give his mbuzi. During the ceremony his "maringa" are declared by giving ruchuthe and rua to known members of the council of elders who are not related to him but maybe of the same rika.

A good thread worth spending time on. I learn a lot.

Fred K Kago did us a good one and left us out in the wilderness. I don't blame him much, he did his best, but his works are a major reason written Gikuyu is so misleading, and seriously flawed. Sounds like Nj, Mb, Nd, Ng don't even exist in the spoken word. It is Jeri, not Njeri; Wajiku, not Wanjiku; Joroge, not Njoroge; Ding'uri, not Nding'uri; Wabura not Wambura; Wajiru not Wanjiru etc. Let me not even start with the 'b' for 'f', 'ch' for 'c/s'.....For instance, there's no name like 'Chege', or even 'Kabogo', or 'Kabiru'.....kutututipanisha kabisa. It's no wonder the Gikuyu have serious matamuchi issues to date, they cant even pronounce their 'written' versions of their names properly when expressing themselves in other languages, as the written names suddenly change to other pronounciations.

I don't think there's an African language whose written form was as mutilated and massacred as the Gikuyu in the written form. Many names hence have two pronunciations, the Gikuyu version and the Swahili/English version.

In fact, the urban youth in my opinion write gikuyu better than our academic versions. They write the sounds exactly as they hear them. Problem is that the flawed names have been normalized and there might be no going back. I have however seen bold ones spelling their names as they should sound.