English-Based Names In The Shona Culture Of Zimbabwe

Abstract

The corpus of “Zimbabwean” names has a characteristic philological misnomer – the English-based name. Shona anthroponymy is replete with ‘strange’ names, names whose core is English yet whose constitution is a flagrant disregard of English naming practice. The descriptor ‘English-based name’ does not even do justice to the significance of this characteristic in Shona culture anthroponymy. This study sought to investigate the English-based names given to children in the Shona culture of Zimbabwe. The study sought answers to address the following questions: a) what word-formation processes are employed in the giving of the English-based names?; b) what grammatical categories are involved in the composition of these English-based names?; c) what are the parents’ and name givers’ motivations for giving these names?; and d) what are the historical and cultural factors that influence the giving of the names under study? The names were gathered from six schools and St Mary’s Catholic Mission baptism register. A total of 120 name givers were interviewed. The results show that the names gathered are a product of several word-formation processes: compounding, used at the rate of 46.4 %; suffixation, at a rate of 25%; derivation, at a rate of 19.6%; and backformation, at a rate of 9%. The study also established that 37 (i.e. 40.2%) of the 92 names gathered fall under the noun category; the grammatical category of adjectives had the second highest number at the rate of 17.4%; 17.4% of the names belonged to the verb category, 2.2% belonged to adverb class and lastly the preposition class had only 1 name (1.1%). Names formed of more than one grammatical category were assigned to a “special category”; they represent 29.3% of the total. The name givers’ motivations for giving those “strange”, English-based anthroponyms were found to be related to religion, family problems, gender issues, names given for the love of them, direct message to the name bearer, name inheritance and the position of the child in the family. The study recommends a widening of the ambit of the research of English-based names to the geographical areas of Zimbabwe not covered by the present study, for instance, to the Ndebele culture, whose people constitute the second largest ethnic community in Zimbabwe.