The Representation of People in the Ibibio Anthroponymic System: A Socio-Onomastic Investigation

Names and naming practices convey various nuances of meaning in the Bette sociocultural setting. Against this significant backdrop, this study examines proverbial names as figurative and overt communicative strategies among the Bette people of northern Cross River State in south-eastern Nigeria. The qualitative data were elicited through semi-structured interviews and informal interactions from purposively selected twenty name-givers and ten name-bearers of Bette proverbial names. Data were analysed using the ethnopragmatic theory, an approach to language study that sees culture as playing a central explanatory role in meaning-making. Besides functioning as discursive strategies through which people’s worldview is embedded, proverbial names serve as sociocultural sites through which interpersonal relationships are performatively constructed and maintained. This study enriches our understanding of how the Bette people use proverbial names as tools of social control to perform gender, strengthen communal bonds, enhance peaceful coexistence, and enact Indigenous worldview among themselves.

They Do Not Eat a Wife’s Beauty: The Ethnopragmatics of Bette Proverbial Personal Names

Aboh,

Ajimase,

Inyabri

2024

Shift in Igbo Personal Naming Patterns

Ukaegbu,

Okon

2024

Some African societies use personal names as a means of conveying their cultural values, traditions, and experiences. Personal names are therefore an important means of identifying their bearers. However, in recent times, it has been observed that the practice of identity construction does not seem to apply in the naming patterns of some African societies. Among the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, there has been a shift in the contemporary naming of children as a result of greater media access, global communication, creativity, and the rising profile of Pentecostal Christianity. This study investigates the new trends in naming among the Igbo, as well as the motivations, semantic implications, and the general perception of these names by the Igbo people. Using the causal theory of names, this study adopts a qualitative design approach, and data were elicited from 100 participants who were mainly name-givers, bearers, and users. This study reveals a decline in the observance of the traditional naming patterns or practices of the Igbo, as it was noted that the new naming trend is related to favorableness toward Western culture, religion, and influence, which is seen as a form of style that connects name-bearers with prestige and modernity.

This Is the Sacrifice: Language, Ideology and Religious Identity Performance in Erei Personal Names

Uwen,

Ukam

2024

This paper examines personal names derived from traditional religious beliefs and practices among the Erei people in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State in South-South, Nigeria while utilising insights from the multidisciplinary inferences of socio-onomastic theory to account for the cultural, social and situational contexts that create the religious content of the names. Data were obtained by means of participant observation and semi-structured interviews during six months of fieldwork involving 40 participants who were the name-givers, name-bearers and name-users. Our findings highlight the socio-onomastic tradition of Erei people in which personal names are bestowed through a conscious application of symbolic linguistic resources to express and perform ideologies and identities that are rooted in the traditional religion’s foundations and sociocultural practices that represent Erei people’s indigenous beliefs system and spiritual worldview. Focused on the ideals of African traditional religion, religious identities are constructed through the use of personal names related to idol worship, the mysteries of death, reincarnation and commemoration, cultural festivals and performances, symbolic objects, familial rankings and other aspects derived from their environment that also bear traditional religious significance. And because this set of personal names is now predominant among the ageing population and is losing contemporaneity due to an increasing subpopulation with a new (Christian) beliefs system, this study serves to preserve a transiting and endangered Erei socio-onomastic practice that represents the people’s traditional cosmology.