Ethnicity and Matriarchal Protest: A Case of Dialoguing Shona Personal Names

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Zimbabwean (Shona) women in the naming of children in the patriarchal Shona society. The corpus of two thousand Shona personal/given names under review was gathered from Zimbabwe's seven predominantly Shona-speaking provinces. The discussion closely examines fifty-two personal names. It emerges that Zimbabwean (Shona) women are innovative as they manage to devise personal names that denotatively and connotatively put across their wishes, grievances, experiences, and preferences in acceptable and non-confrontational ways. The use of value-laden, palimpsest and emblematic-dialoguing personal names is a restrained strategy that ensures tranquility in the society. As a result, the name bearers become moving emblems of the frozen experiences and hopes of their mothers who might have directly or indirectly given the resultant name. In addition, a deconstructionist theory is promulgated as one of the means to get at the deeper meanings of the given names.

Shona personal names of spiritual significance

“…The bulk of the data was obtained from name lists found in onomastics articles (i.e. Chitando 1998a;1998b;Mashiri 2003;Makondo 2008) and books which include Pongweni (1983), Kahari (1991), and Makondo (2010). In this study, we hold that these scholars have both linguistic and cultural understanding of the Shona language and the concomitant cultural underpinnings much needed in the appreciation of Shona personal names.…”

Sokalikwenda – ‘Calamity That Moves’: Some Social Aspects of Tumbuka Personal Names

“…Just like any other category of proper names, personal names are oral records. An investigation into African names and naming practices is paramount because it helps in the recovery and/ or reconstruction of the African heritage as these are closely linked to a people's culture (Makondo, 2008).…”

Naming, Re-Naming and Self-Naming Among Hmong-Americans

“…Whether personal names are truly connotative or only non-connotative (Mill, 1973: 33) continues to be arguable, as attested to by studies of names in non-European cultures such Exner (2007), Makondo (2008) and Zuercher (2007). As the Nilsens observe (Nilsen and Nilsen, 2008: 3), personal names seem to encode the social semantics of both gender and ethnicity.…”