Cultural contact and change in naming practices among the Aari of southwest Ethiopia
When people of different cultures interact, a degree of linguistic and/or cultural adaptation is expected. This paper examines the implication of the relationship between the Aari and the Gama for the naming practices of the former. The Aari people, who speak Araf, came into contact with Amharic-speaking migrants from central and northern Ethiopia (collectively called the Gama) during the southward expansion of Emperor Menelik in the late nineteenth century. Traditionally, the Aari people used names to express their collective history, shared life experiences, major events, and their environment. The incorporation of Aariland into the Ethiopian empire led to economic, political, and cultural domination as well as resistance on the part of the Aari. Personal names that characterize the period of struggle against the dominant migrants became common until the 1974 revolution that ended the Gama hegemony. Afterwards, however, the naming tradition suffered a setback as evidenced in the decline of Aari personal names in favour of Amhara names and the alteration of the spelling and pronunciation of Aari names. The new changes in naming practices compromised the role of the Aari language as an expression of culture and a marker of identity.
Personal names in language contact situations: A case of Cross River State, South-eastern Nigeria
In Cross River State, South-eastern Nigeria, languages incorporate a number of loanwords as personal names as a result of increasing contact with other languages and cultures. Such words are, therefore, borrowed wholesale or adapted phonologically into the onomasticon of the recipient languages, thus gaining wide-ranging acceptance, currency and usage. This paper examines the phenomenon of language contact and naming in three linguistic communities along the Cross River Basin - Agwagune, Ejagham and Lokaa - in relation to Efik, a dominant language and culture, which itself is in constant contact with English. The paper seeks to show the intricate interrelationship and direction of influence between personal names in the donor and recipient languages, taking into account ethnic hierarchies, and social formations that are found in the context where personal names are given and used. The study relied on Thomason and Kauffman's (1988) integrated theory of language contact as its theoretical plank, which maintains that there is a strong tendency for speakers of less powerful languages to borrow from the economically and politically powerful languages to enhance their internal resourcefulness. Since names are lexical items in a language, they are not immune to this contact influence. Audio-video data and text materials were elicited from sampled respondents who were contact names bearers and their community members through an ethnographic qualitative approach. The paper concludes with the claim that the interplay of forces like trade, religion and other socio-cultural factors are the main vectors of name borrowing, which are social praxis for negotiating cultural boundaries and relationships as well as indexing the notion of power, personhood and sociocentrism, given the effect of contact. The paper, therefore, sheds some light on ethnic mechanisms of shared social behaviour signalled by shared personal names, as it attempts to understand local settings in greater depth.
Evaluation of some Ensete ventricosum clones for food yield with emphasis on the effect of length of fermentation on carbohydrate and calcium content
The food yield potential and ecological adaptation of three clones of Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman were investigated and described. To determine the yield of the plant both the underground corm and aboveground pseudostem were extracted, pulverized, fermented, ground, and dried into flour in the form of 'Kocho '. After 40 months from planting, the average yields of the fermented product were 11950, 8868 and 7414 kg ha-1 year-1 for the 'Adow', 'Tuzuma' and 'Ferezae' clones, respectively.** This yield, however, is based on a five-year growth cycle following farmers' practice. The yield differences between clones were observed to be significant (P = 0.05). Compared with fresh weight the yield recovered as fermented product ranged from 24 to 30%. A study of the effect of length of fermentation time showed initial decrease of both carbohydrate and Ca content. Very little additional change in the amount of these nutrients was apparent when fermentation continued to 16 weeks. The multiple cropping pattern of the ensat farming complex, where the clones were collected and evaluated, is also documented.