The socio-cultural and linguistic implications of Zulu names
Names and naming practices reflect the socio-cultural background of any particular society. Names are terms that can refer to any concept or object and naming practices concern the ‘how’ of naming. This article looks into the socio-cultural and linguistic implications of isiZulu names amongst the Zulu people. Socio-cultural implications are the large scale forces within cultures and societies that affect the thoughts and behaviours of individuals in naming practices. These factors are mainly influenced by ethnic values, identity, and family and kinship structures of that particular individual. In this regard, the concept of a name will be interrogated to showcase complexity of meanings in the African context. It will explain and define the term ‘onomastics’ as the science of naming in relation to the African society and naming practices. The article also defines the concept ‘implication’, and examines the cultural and linguistic (inter alia morphological) formations in naming practices and their significance in naming. The arguments about Zulu naming practices which the article raises emanate from a study carried out on naming practices in KwaZulu-Natal in 2000. The significance of the year 2000 is that it was the beginning of the 21st century and hence a strategic time in history to investigate changes in naming practices.
Names and Naming Practices of the Telugu in Malaysia
Names and naming practices reflect the socio-cultural background of a community. The giving of names is therefore not merely an act of labelling but represents constructs of identity that reflect the collective self-representation of a community and its worldviews. This study examines the naming practices of the Telugu in Malaysia and investigates the morphological structure and the semantic properties of Telugu names. To accomplish those research goals, survey interviews were conducted with 288 respondents in four different Malaysian states. Using descriptive statistics, a narrative analysis of the survey responses was used. Six experts in the Telugu culture were then invited for a focus group discussion. Before the results of this analysis are presented, detailed information about the Telugu and their naming traditions are provided. As will be shown here, among the Telugu, name-giving is a sacred act that is performed during a traditional naming ceremony called the Barasala. During this ancient oral onomastic tradition, names are passed on from one generation to the next and ancestral blessings are bestowed. As this study reveals, the structure of the patronymic names given during this ceremony reflect the religious beliefs and cultural identity of the Telugu.
Speech-melody and Primitive Music
375 into anklets for the king, again with the purpose of strengthening the king's powers. From West Africa Seligman gives an example of the Wuba in Northern Nigeria (p. 56): two years after the appointment of a new chief it was customary to slay an enemy, whose head was deposited in the skull-hut which stood outside the chief's compound. To these illustrations the following features from other parts of West Africa may be added: (1) in some of the Ewe tribes the newly elected king is carried about publicly in his royal palanquin, holding his ceremonial sword in his hand and pointing it to the four quarters of the globe, ' thereby expressing the desire that other tribes may also come to serve him '. (2) In the current volume of Africa (pp. 218-22) a report by R. W. Macklin on the kings of Niumi in the Gambia has been published. Here it is said that the new king, after his confinement in a hut, had to seize a sword and to chase a slave in an endeavour to cut him down before he could reach a hut and dash through it into safety, for beyond the hut the king might not follow. (3) The king of the Glidyi Ewe in Togoland is not allowed to enter the grave-hut of' Asiogbo Redsnake ', the famous warrior ancestor of the tribe, before he has killed an adversary and has his skull deposited in the grave-hut. The skull may also be provided by one of his warriors. In spite of the amazing resemblances of the Egyptian rites with those of Negro Africa, Seligman is of opinion that chronological reasons forbid us to believe that the divine kings of the Sudan and of West Africa are directly due to Egyptian influence, rather must we regard them as examples of an old and widespread belief of the Hamites. The proto-Egyptians belong to the Hamitic stock, and Hamitic groups or their influences have permeated almost the whole of Africa. On the other hand, according to Frobenius (Erythraa, pp. 325 ff.) the divine king and his self-sacrifice is an institution which is also found in almost all the Asiatic coastlands of the Indian Ocean and which he thinks has come from there to Africa in connexion with what he calls the Erythrean culture-circle. The two assumptions would not necessarily contradict each other, for it is generally accepted that the Hamites in Africa are Asiatic immigrants, but the term Hamites itself is somewhat vague and has not been clearly defined by anthropologists.