A STUDY OF GHANAIAN HAUSA PERSONAL NAMES

Mohammed Murtalah

Abstract


This study attempts at undertaking a comprehensive study of personal names among Ghanaian Hausa. It particularly looks at the socio-pragmatic usage of the Hausa names. This paper argues that the Hausa give names to their children by considering the social, cultural, and religious philosophy of the Hausa speech community. The philosophy behind these Hausa naming practices goes a long way to help in the peculiar identity of the Ghanaian Hausa. This, to a very large extent, hints that there is a link between names and personal identity as far as naming practices among the Hausa in particular, and Africans in general are concerned. The study, using interview, observation and the researcher’s introspection as a data collection method and Linguistic Relativity as a theoretical framework, reveals three categories of names used by the Ghanaian Hausa. These are Judeo-Islamo-Christian names, Hausa names of Arabic origin and Hausa traditional names.

 

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Keywords


identity, naming practice, Judeo-Islamo-Christian names, Hausa, onomastic

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v6i2.438

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