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Author: Tendai Mangena
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443899232
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
The Postcolonial Condition of Names and Naming Practices in Southern Africa represents a milestone in southern African onomastic studies. The contributors here are all members of, and speakers of, the cultures and languages they write about, and, together, they speak with an authentic African voice on naming issues in the southern part of the African continent. The volume’s overarching thesis is that names are important yet often underestimated socio-politico-cultural sites on which some of the most significant events and processes in the post-colony can be read. The onomastic topics covered in the book range from the names of traditional healers and male aphrodisiacs to urban landscapes and street naming, from the interface between Chinese and African naming practices to the names of bands of musicians and mini-bus taxis. There is a strong section on literary onomastics which explores how names have been variously deployed by southern African fiction writers for certain semantic, aesthetic and ideological effects. The cultures and languages covered in this volume are equally wide-ranging, and, while some authors focus on single languages and cultures (for example Thembu, Xhosa, Shona), others look at inter-cultural influences such as the influence of the Portuguese and Chinese languages on Shona naming. Written by Professor Adrian Koopman Emeritus Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Author: Tendai Mangena
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443899232
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410
Get Book
Book Description
The Postcolonial Condition of Names and Naming Practices in Southern Africa represents a milestone in southern African onomastic studies. The contributors here are all members of, and speakers of, the cultures and languages they write about, and, together, they speak with an authentic African voice on naming issues in the southern part of the African continent. The volume’s overarching thesis is that names are important yet often underestimated socio-politico-cultural sites on which some of the most significant events and processes in the post-colony can be read. The onomastic topics covered in the book range from the names of traditional healers and male aphrodisiacs to urban landscapes and street naming, from the interface between Chinese and African naming practices to the names of bands of musicians and mini-bus taxis. There is a strong section on literary onomastics which explores how names have been variously deployed by southern African fiction writers for certain semantic, aesthetic and ideological effects. The cultures and languages covered in this volume are equally wide-ranging, and, while some authors focus on single languages and cultures (for example Thembu, Xhosa, Shona), others look at inter-cultural influences such as the influence of the Portuguese and Chinese languages on Shona naming. Written by Professor Adrian Koopman Emeritus Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Author: Thenjiwe Meyiwa
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100381283X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Names are very powerful and significant, especially in the African context. Across societies, there is a universal, albeit taken-for-granted fact that all human beings have names. Names Fashioned by Gender is a collection of essays on onomastics—a linguistics field of study focusing on the origin, form, history and use of proper names. The study of naming potentially provides significant evidence about the role of gender in the assimilation and/or enculturation processes as personal names evoke insight into the construction of gender and personhood in African societies. The book takes intellectual course from the idea that how names are viewed and used is heavily context-dependent and gendered. It demonstrates that personal names are narratives derived from different contexts within various cultures and circumstances subsequently imposing different identities on name bearers. Through persuasive essays, this book elucidates that naming is an activity that needs to be conducted cautiously because names tend to determine the destiny and character of an individual. Print editions not for sale in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Author: Gerry O’Reilly
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031215109
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 656
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Book Description
This book presents research on geographical naming on land and sea from a wide range of standpoints on: theory and concepts, case studies and education. Space and place naming or toponymy has a long tradition in the sciences and a renewed critical interest in geography and allied disciplines including the humanities. Place: location and cartographical aspects, etymology and geo-histories so salient in past studies, are now being enhanced from a range of radical perspectives, especially in a globalizing, standardizing world with Googlization and the consequent ‘normalization’ of place names, perceptions and images worldwide including those for marketing purposes. Nonetheless, there are conflicting and contesting voices. The interdisciplinary research is enhanced with authors from regional, national and international toponymy-related institutions and organizations including the UNGEGN, IGU, ICA and so forth.
Author: Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031134753
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Focusing on the epistemic value of African names, this edited collection is based on the premise that personal names constitute valuable sources of historical and ethnographic information and help to unveil endogenous forms of knowledge. The chapters assembled here document and analyze personal names and naming practices in a slew of African societies on the geographically vast and ethnically diverse continent, including contributions on the naming practices in Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. The contributors to this anthology are scholars from different African language communities who investigate names and naming practices diachronically. Taken together, their work offers a comparative focus that juxtaposes different African cultures and reveals the historical and epistemic significance of given names.
Author: Sambulo Ndlovu
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110759292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
This book fills a gap in the literature as it uniquely approaches onomastics from the perspective of both anthropology and linguistics. It addresses names and cultures from 16 countries and five continents, thus offering readers an opportunity to comprehend and compare names and naming practices across cultures. The chapters presented in this book explore the cultural significance of personal names, naming ceremonies, conventions and practices. They illustrate how these names and practices perform certain culture-specific functions, such as religion, identity and social activity. Some chapters address the socio-political significance of personal names and their expression of self and otherness. The book also links the linguistic structure of personal names to culture by looking at their morphology, syntax and semantics. It is divided into four sections: Section 1 demonstrates how personal names perform human culture, Section 2 focuses on how personal names index socio-political transitioning, Section 3 demonstrates religious values in personal names and naming, and Section 4 links linguistic structure and analysis of personal names to culture and heritage.
Author: Tsitsi Chataika
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003854710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
This book centres and explores postcolonial theory, which looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South. The book is divided into eight sections i Setting the Scene ii Decolonising Disability Studies iii Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development iv Postcolonial Disability Studies and Disability Activism v Postcolonial Disability and Childhood Studies vi Postcolonial Disability Studies and Education vii Postcolonial Disability Studies, Gender, Race and Religion viii Conclusion And comprised of 27 newly written chapters, this book leads with postcolonial perspectives – closely followed by an engagement with critical disability studies – with the explicit aim of foregrounding these contributions; pulling them in from the edges of empirical and theoretical work where they often reside in mainstream academic literature. The book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies and postcolonial studies as well as those working in sociology, literature and development studies.
Author: Emma Umana Clasberry
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1469138069
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
INTRODUCTION Personal name is a vital aspect of cultural identity. As a child, you may have loved or hated your name. But you were rarely indifferent to it. “What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, he explained. Perhaps in England or somewhere else in Europe, but not in Africa. Personal names in African have meanings, can affect personality, hinder or enhance life initiatives. They serve to establish a connection between name and cultural background, and thus, provide some information about cultural affinity and more, such as express one’s spirituality, philosophy of life, political or socio-economic status as defined by a given ethnic cleavage. African names tell stories, convert abstract ideas to stories, and tell story of the story about different aspects of one’s life. They commemorate any unusual circumstance the family or community once experienced, or world event that took place around the time of a child’s birth. Outside a given cultural environment, names boost and nurture cultural pride and identity, showcase a people’s appreciation of their culture and their readiness to defend and live their culture with pride and dignity. Naming practices that tell histories behind the names were the norms in Nigeria-Ibibio, and in fact, in Africa, until the encroachment of two historical forces in Africans’ affairs. Christianization and colonization, more than any other forces in history, shattered the connection between personal name and cultural affinity, and have ever-since contributed to the gradual erosion of African culture of names. On the continent, the combined efforts of their human agents - the missionaries and British colonial personnel, directly and indirectly, through their policies and practices, caused African- Nigerians to give up their culture relevant names in favor of foreign ones. Apart from direct erosion of culture of names, ‘colonial administration’ (a term I use mostly to refer to the combined efforts of the missionaries and British colonial personnel) in Nigeria abrogated many religious, socio-economic and political traditions which were intimately intertwined with the people’s naming practices. Their attempt to replace African traditions with European ones through coercing Africans to accept Western values and beliefs consequently disabled many desirable African traditional structures, including authentic African naming practices, and caused some to fall into disuse. A third force was early European-African trade. Although the impact of the presence of European merchants in Nigeria was minimal in this regard, some of their activities have also left a dent on African naming practices by introducing foreign bodies into the people’s names database. Even though these alien forces invaded and injected foreign values into Africa over a century ago, their impact on naming practices continues to be felt by Africans. European intrusion in relation to African naming practices did not end on the continent. The Trans- Atlantic Trade on human cargo was another major historical event that did not only forcefully disconnect many Africans from their cultural root and natural habitat, but also mutilated authentic African naming practices among them. Consequently, Africans in Diaspora had European names imposed upon them by their slave masters. Today, many Africans on the continent and in Diaspora continue to carry names which are foreign, names whose meanings they do not know, names the bearers can not even pronounce correctly in some ethnic contexts, and names which have no relevance to nor any form of link with the bearers’ cultural background. In effect, culture of names, as many other African customary practices, has lost its savor. Some peoples of African descent still cherish these colonized names. Some do not, and are making practical efforts to reclaim authentic African cul
Author: S. J. Neethling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive monograph on naming in the Xhosa speaking community in South Africa. This work brings together all available scholarly research on Xhosa naming as well as recent research by the author. Onomastics (the study of names, naming, and naming systems) is relatively young in Southern Africa. While the discipline of onomastics was already well established in northern Europe in the late nineteenth century, the study of names and naming only really started to take root in Southern Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. And if onomastics itself is relatively young in Southern Africa, the study of names and naming among the Bantu speaking societies and cultures is younger still. Prior to 1976 one might have found the odd reference to personal names in ethnographic literature, but one would have looked in vain for academic studies on naming patterns among the Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, Tswana, or any of the other 'indigenous' language groupings of Southern Africa. papers being read at the congresses of the Names Society of Southern Africa (NSA), articles being published in the NSA journal Nomina Africana, and students in Departments of African Languages around Southern Africa producing postgraduate research into naming systems of the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, and the other indigenous language communities of Southern Africa. For monographs on the naming systems of the indigenous peoples, though, the serious names scholar had to wait until the twenty-first century. My own work, Zulu Names, appeared in 2002, published by the University of Natal Press in Pietermaritzburg, and Minna Saarelma-Maunumaa's Edhina Ekogidho - Names as Links, on the naming system of the Ambo people of Namibia and published by the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki, was released in 2003. This work by Bertie Neethling on the names of the Xhosa speaking people of South Africa thus completes the trio. Bertie Neethling is well placed to write a book on Xhosa names and naming. Cape, where he has been teaching Xhosa for many years, he has been one of Southern Africa's major contributors to the study of onomastics among the indigenous groups. His interest in Xhosa onomastics and in literary onomastics in both Xhosa and Afrikaans, goes hand-in-hand with his interest in oral literary productions, and he is as well known for his scholarly articles on Xhosa iintsomi (folktales) and Xhosa oral poetry in journals such as The South African Journal of African Languages as he is for his articles on Xhosa onomastics in Nomina Africana. A regular at the biennial congresses of the Names Society of Southern Africa, his face is also well known at the triennial congresses of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS). Naming patterns in all societies are subject to change, and in the turbulent and changing socio-political climate in South Africa since the early 1990s this has been particularly true for Xhosa society. established and traditional Xhosa naming system with developments of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. So for example we find the chapter on the Xhosa speaker's English name looking deeply into the question of whether the colonial name (as many scholars have described this type of name) is still a feature of Xhosa society, or whether it has become a discarded symbol of the old South Africa. The inclusion of chapters on the naming of informal settlements and of minibus taxis also gives this book the feel that it is tackling modern up-to-date onomastic issues, and not just repeating stale ethnographic descriptions of Xhosa naming patterns of yesteryear. The first section of the book and the most extensive one, deals with anthroponymy, and a wide range of different types of anthroponym is covered: the 'real' Xhosa name given at birth, the English name, the surname, nicknames, and names for married women. expecting to find the usual and traditional categories like the names of towns and villages, and other well known geographical names like those for rivers and mountains, may well be surprised. Neethling has decided to discuss place names mainly in an urbanised context and hence the section on toponyms in this book deals with the names of schools, businesses and informal settlements. The book ends with a chapter each on minibus taxi names, and the traditional names of the months of the year, where an intriguing comparison is made with the lunar nomenclature of the Sioux people of North America. I am sure that this book will very soon find a place on the bookshelf of every serious names scholar and student in South Africa and beyond, as well as proving fascinating to people generally interested in the customs and traditions of the Xhosa speaking people.
Author: Liora Bigon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000432416
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
This book is focused on the street-naming politics, policies and practices that have been shaping and reshaping the semantic, textual and visual environments of urban Africa and Israel. Its chapters expand on prominent issues, such as the importance of extra-formal processes, naming reception and unofficial toponymies, naming decolonisation, place attachment, place-making and the materiality of street signage. By this, the book directly contributes to the mainstreaming of Africa’s toponymic cultures in recent critical place-names studies. Unconventionally and experimentally, comparative glimpses are made throughout between toponymic experiences of African and Israeli cities, exploring pioneering issues in the overwhelmingly Eurocentric research tradition. The latter tends to be concentrated on Europe and North America, to focus on nationalistic ideologies and regime change and to over-rely on top-down ‘mere’ mapping and street indexing. This volume is also unique in incorporating a rich and stimulating variety of visual evidence from a wide range of African and Israeli cities. The materiality of street signage signifies the profound and powerful connections between structured politics, current mundane practices, historical traditions and subaltern cultures. Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel is an important contribution to urban studies, toponymic research and African studies for scholars and students. Chapters 1 and 2 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003173762
Author: Francesco Perono Cacciafoco
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108803032
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
What are place names? From where do they originate? How are they structured? What do they signify? How important are they in our life? This groundbreaking book explores these compelling questions and more by providing a thorough introduction to the assumptions, theories, terminology, and methods in toponymy and toponomastics – the studies of place names, or toponyms. It is the first comprehensive resource on the topic in a single volume, and explores the history and development of toponyms, focusing on the conceptual and methodological issues pertinent to the study of place names around the world. It presents a wide range of examples and case studies illustrating the structure, function, and importance of toponyms from ancient times to the present day. Wide ranging yet accessible, it is an indispensable source of knowledge for students and scholars in linguistics, toponymy and toponomastics, onomastics, etymology, and historical linguistics.
