As well as ethnic, regional, or familial identity, modern-day naming customs reflect significant historical changes under Belgian colonial rule and the Mobutu regime as well as the post-Mobutu restoration.
There were also names of joke, sublimation, social position (from the old aristocratic register) or even accomplishment (acquired a posteriori as a result of the child's peculiarities).
Although spreading to Kongo Central in the 15th century through contact with Portuguese colonists and missionaries, the practice became widespread only under the Congo Free State (1885–1908) and Belgian colonial rule (1908–1960).
[9] "They [the whites] imposed on us their foreign names/like Désiré-Joseph [sic] and/Marie-Antoinette./Since his advent, Mobutu/has rescued us from this/mental alienation/prohibiting these Jewish names/intended for the trees of Europe./Let us take again the names/of our ancestors/like Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku/Ngbendu Wa Za Banga."
He gradually created a centralised one-party state under the auspices of the ruling Popular Movement of the Revolution (Mouvement populaire de la révolution, or MPR).
He became a staunch advocate of what he termed a "return to authenticity" which sought to mobilise an indigenous national identity as a means to overcome regionalism and tribalism while reconciling those claims with the exigencies of modernization.
The MPR announced in October 1971 that the Congo would be renamed Zaire and that various other colonial-era place names and monuments would be removed before the end of the year.
[8] Shortly afterwards, the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique published a critical editorial in which it suggested that the logical extreme of the new reforms would be for Mobutu to rename himself since Joseph-Désiré was clearly a name of European origin.
He subsequently added Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Waza Banga after his existing surname as what were termed "post-surnames" (postnoms).
Laurent-Désiré Kabila who, as a rebel commander had never assumed a post-surname or stopped using his first-name, replaced Mobutu in 1997 and allowed Christian names to be used in official documentation for the first time.