RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 2 sourcesGREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 23: Zach Tom #50 of the Green Bay Packers takes the field prior to an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings at Lambeau Field on November 23, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The Packers have a new right tackle, same as the old right tackle. Zach Tom is gone. Hello Zach Bako-Bewele.
The fourth-year Bako-Bewele formalized a name change over the weekend, combining his grandparents’ surnames to create a new, hyphenated last name with the intent of one day passing it on to his kids.
“I want to have a name I can pass down where it represents where they came from, where I came from,” he said. “I just feel like people will see that name and have a good understanding of who I am, where I come from.”
Tom’s grandparents are Nigerian immigrants and the new name represents that heritage. And frankly, it rules.
First, it’s an awesome name. It’s satisfying to say, and it’ll eventually look great on a jersey. It’s going to take some time to get used to typing, I’ll say that, but considering Bako-Bewele himself still has to go through the process of changing his social security card and driver license, that feels like a pretty small hurdle. The wheels of local government bureaucracy turn slowly, and having helped my wife through the process of getting her name changed (including getting a new passport in the middle of the pandemic), I can sympathize with the impending headache.
But the name itself is cool, and lends itself to a bunch of nicknames. Here are a few: Z-Bak, ZBB, Zeebs, Double B, Killer Bs, and so on. Take your pick or grow your own. I’m sure we’ll land on something for him organically.
But second, and more importantly, I love it on the grounds of self-determination. I don’t think it’s an overtly political statement to say there’s a lot that could be improved about our immigration process in America, and historically it wasn’t much better. Look into the history of how many names were changed (or erased entirely) at Ellis Island, or forgotten due to (ahem) other forms of immigration, at least one of which particularly affected people of Bako-Bewele’s heritage. As a human being, I can’t help but root for a guy planting a flag and saying “This is what I’m about. This is who I am. This is the history I’m choosing to honor, and this is the future I want to build.”
Yes, it some senses, it’s just a name. Zach Bako-Bewele is still the same person as Zach Tom. But names matter, too. There’s power in a name, and history.
Case in point: I’m from a small town in Wisconsin called Cedar Grove, about an hour south of Green Bay. My ancestors moved there in the back half of the 1800s, around 1864 if my memory serves. The first of my family in the area, a man named Gerrit Hendrik Meerdink, built a house on farmland he cleared himself. And on the front of that house he put his initials in giant iron letters: GHM.
You can still go to the house and see those letters today. The history is still there, and it’s still going. I’m living proof, and my children will carry the name their many-times-great grandfather brought to America with little else more than 150 years ago.
Now, Zach Bako-Bewele gets to start a similar legacy. He’s getting to decide a little bit of what his future is going to look like right now, and we get to root for him as his story begins to play out. How can you not love that?
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