Purposeful naming: The case of beer halls named during both the colonial Rhodesia era and present day Zimbabwe

Nyota, Shumirai; Mapara, N; Mutasa, DE

doi:10.4314/jsda.v24i1.54268

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…(Re)naming of schools and institutions in Zimbabwe is not a new thing (Nyoni, Nyoni & Mabuto 2014). Land and country categories were renamed (Mashiri & Chabata 2010), such as buildings and streets (Chabata 2007), beer halls (Nyota, Mapara & Mutasa 2009), mountains and rivers (Mapara, Nyota & Mutasa 2011). Shona (Jackson 1957;Kahari 1990;Pongweni 1983) and Ndebele (Hlazo 1934) people are concerned about naming and nomenclature, because names are short telegraphic texts used to signify something (Koopman 1992:9).…”

Section: Realities Of Naming and Renaming In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a postmissionary review of mission station names in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe

Masengwe

Dube

2023

Theologia Viatorum

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Christian missions are historically captured in the construction of mission stations that facilitated religious instruction to advance the gospel with unintended consequences, such as an extension of missionary-colonial ideologies and attitudes. This article discusses how these were captured in mission station naming, inclusive of erroneous or misspelt names. This makes it necessary for the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe’s (COCZ) rural membership, commonly around mission stations, to rename these centres. The distortion of history on mission stations like Dadaya calls for the renaming of the station so as to recover lost values and culture, and the significance of the ecology to Africans. Our discovery of Dadaya macrops, an Asiatic marine species of water flea found in freshwater in this study, denies the assumption that Dadaya was a misspelling of Dayataya. This makes us assume that Dadaya was an idolatrous symbol for missionaries that rhymed with local isotopes to mentally drawn local communities. Norming the mission station, missionaries named Dadaya to transmit images, symbols and meanings known to New Zealand supporting churches. Dayataya Hills has been used as a scapegoat to validate their Dadaya macrops symbol. This study probes into the need to correct and guide people in renaming the mission station. Renaming transforms Dadaya into an African mission station. The article used critical discourse analysis (CDA) from purposive snowball interview results and a hermeneutic of suspicion to probe into naming the mission station.Contribution: The article is interdisciplinary involving missionary history, humanity, socialisation, missiology, literature and education. it contributes to knowledge through decentering on African discourses, contextualisation, christianisation and decolonised church of christ positioned for healing and transformation where church names are not used for perpetuate Westernisation in African context.

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Section: Realities Of Naming and Renaming In Zimbabwementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a postmissionary review of mission station names in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe

Masengwe

Dube

2023

Theologia Viatorum

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“…In some cultures the naming act is a huge ceremony. In Shona culture for instance, there are different names like "regombwa" where relatives gather for naming, "remudumba", the one the mother is asked to give soon after delivery, for the pain she goes through during the pregnancy and in labour, finally "rejemedzwa", the one from the ancestor who causes the baby to cry until their name or that of a relative they choose is given to the child (Gombe, 1998).Such is the importance of naming that even dog names (Mukusha and Masaka 2010), beerhall names (Nyota et al, 2009) and school names (Pfukwa and Barnes ,2009) have not escaped the radar of many intellectuals interested in onomastics. Names have also been found to be a form of political dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed as well (Mutami et al, 2011).…”

Section: Significance Of Namingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2014

GJAH

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This paper, which falls in the onomastic paradigm, looks at purposively selected school mottoes in terms of their place in the life, not only of the pupils who pass through the institutions but also in terms, of their national significance. A huge chunk of our lives is spent literary on the school bench learning hence the motivation to study these small value-laden linguistic capsules,so small yet having so much say in shaping who we later become. We argue that these reflect a certain value system which in some cases may be seen as retrogressive and 'islandic' or reflecting a lager mentality in an 'independent' country-residual elements of the colonial hegemony. Since Zimbabwe has many such institutions, this study, which is by no means exhaustive, will only look at a few purposively selected institutions-institutions many ordinary Zimbabweans would choose for their children. Naming can be seen as primary and the ascribing of a motto as secondary and a furtherance of the 'cause' of the former. Because of this obvious link between the two, a brief discussion of the significance of naming is inevitable.

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