A Linguistic Appraisal of Igbo Anthroponyms

Abstract

Naming has many times been relegated to the background whenever a linguistic study is involved. It is assumed that names are mere referent, therefore, are not useful in linguistic analysis. But, in actual sense, names are significant as they reflect on the social aspect of the society. Wakumelo, Mwanza & Mkandawire (2016:270) noted that “…names or odonyms are not just mere signposts, they reflect the social, political, and cultural ideologies maintained by the name givers”. In other words, names form a major part of the culture of any society and the Igbo people in particular in terms of their values, ideas, reflections, meanings and thoughts. Names identify, motivate and aspire the bearers. This paper discusses personal names among the Igbos of Nigeria and considers naming as an important aspect of the Igbo society. The paper looked at Igbo names within the purview of the grammatical categories. It was noted that Igbo names, like most names in Africa are mostly lexical, phrasal or compound with sentential underlying structures which make them unique and distinct from European personal names

God is Life: A Sociolinguistic and Ethnopragmatic Conceptualization of Chi in Igbo Naming Practices

“…For instance, Maduagwu, 2010; Ubahakwe, 1981) argue that Igbo personal names are aspects of the structural and semantic components of the Igbo language. Also, Uwalaka (1993) and Udoye (2020) maintain that this category of Igbo personal names also show innovations in emerging spelling system, clipped forms, compounding (with non-Igbo names), morpho-syntactic forms, and others that indicate meaning shift at the lexical and sentential levels. Similarly, Oluchukwu and Azuanke (2014) argue that some other emerging Igbo personal names are tailored toward possible translation that produce unambiguous English meaning equivalents that show some form of Anglicization arising from Igbo contact with English language.…”