2.3 TRENDS IN ANTHROPONOMASTICS
2.3.3 ANTHROPONOMASTIC TRENDS IN ZIMBABWE
31 commentary (Thipa, 1984) and names which record physical characteristics of the baby or emotions such as joy or gratitude. Herbert (1994) realized that the South African Tsoya people use personal names to keep their history, protest socio-political discriminatory practices like apartheid. These scholars’ observations were handy as this study sought to establish the relationship between naming and gender among the Shona in Zimbabwe.
Neethling (1995) has it that that name giving among Bantu cultures reflects the social- cultural circumstances of the group or clan. Moyo (1996) observed the Ngoni-Tumbuka speaking people of northern Malawi who prefers names with a historical importance that respectively comment on the family and clan condition. Koopman (1990) found out that in Zulu society name givers and recipients of the names are usually aware of the meaning of the name and the literal meaning of the name is always related to the context in which it is given. Mbiti (1970) says personal names in Africa execute multiple functions. For instance, to the Twi or Akan people in Ghana, a personal name is given as a way of finding out on evildoers while among the Nuer people of Sudan, personal names are used to define people’s relations with other members of the society. While the observations by various scholars looked at many other aspects which relate to personal naming in the African onomastics landscape they did not look at how personal names relate to gender hence this study seeks to establish the relationship between names given to Zezuru people and their gender status.
32 onomastics. The fist categorization of Shona personal names into four groups; namely, names derived from family quarrels, death related names, descriptive names and lastly new order names was done by Jackson in 1957. Kahari (1997) moved a step further from what Jackson had done and identified two broad categories which he subdivided into four groups of Shona names. In 1983, Pongweni looked at the linguistic structure of Shona personal names. Chitando in 1998 looked at Shona naming patterns. In 2007, Pfukwa wrote on Zimbabwean war names.
Makondo in 2010 wrote on Shona anthroponomastics.There are several papers which were presented during various conferences with regard to Zimbabwean anthroponomastics.These works gave direction to this study in various ways as they will form the bedrock on which this current study will be anchored on. To date a lot has been written on personal names dating back to the period in the 1930s to date but none has looked at the relationship between naming and gender which is at the core of the present study.
Makondo (2009:208) adds that there are phases in the naming patterns among the Shona. He came up with what he called the ‘decisive’ political phases that greatly impacted on the Shona first names. He was building on earlier works by Pfukwa (2003) and Chitando (1998) who identified two and four phases respectively. The propounded phases are as follows:
(a) Pre-1890 era – During this period, Zimbabweans had contact with the outside world through the Muslim, Arabs and Portuguese and Nguni groups that left South Africa during mfecane. During this period, names were predominantly in the local languages.
(b) 1890-1950s – This period saw outright moves at the ----erasure—Pfukwa (2007:105) of Shona naming patterns. The idea was to deny and degrade the Shona people of their Africanness through the popularization of Western oriented English and Christian names. Rennick (2005) in Makondo (2009) also talked about the effect of colonization on names. This period saw the mushrooming of names whose etymology suggests that they are of foreign origins. There was the modification and readaptation of Shona names as the namers battled to safeguard their legacy.
(c) 1950s-79 – This was the era of resistance to all western oriented nomen clature forms and the Zimbabwean war of liberation was a decisive factor. Zimbabweans went on a massive campaign to obliterate the western oriented naming patterns. Zimbabweans had realized that names were powerful barometers of social relations (Allen, 1983, Herbert 1994). This era saw the reinstatement and redefinition of Africanness as the parochial calculated western version was discarded. Through these names, a preferred vision was designed that rallied Zimbabweans around the liberation struggle. Some
33 people opted for Shona names suppressing their western names so that they match the popular trend of at least having a Shona name resulting in people having more than one name.
(d) 1980-90s – Makondo calls the euphoric period or era that was characterized by the declaration of independence. Names of conformity were popularized as almost everyone wanted to be associated with the ruling party. Shona, Christian names and English names proliferated within this era.
(e) 1990-to date – The fifth era is characterized by a lot of disillusionment due to economic and political meltdown in Zimbabwe. People resorted to the use of names that project their perspectives on the status quo.The study found out that people resorted to names which reflected their disgruntlement in their quest for a better life.
Pongweni (1983) says that the Shona nomenclature trends are closely related to the political history of the country. Before the coming of the Pioneer Column in the 19th century, the Shona were known of giving their children names derived from their culture just like in other cultures.
Pongweni (1983:2) says “the Christians missionaries associated such names with ‘heathenism’
and therefore insisted that converts to the new faith should abandon at the font and choose new ones from the bible.” During that time, Christian and other western names were viewed as outward signs of the convert’s acceptance of God’s grace. Moyo (2012) says that with the advent of Christianity and colonialism in Malawi and Southern Africa as a whole, it meant that the colonized had to be absorbed in the new establishment. He went on to say that employees renamed Black Africans with European names.The other reason for the change in names was that the Whites found African names rather difficult to pronounce. Machaba (2002) says that indigenous African names were also associated with sins, backwardness, darkness, etc. The adopted names, it would appear suited the prevailing socio-cultural and political environment.
In South Africa, among the Xhosa speakers, Neethling (2003:47) found out that with the introduction of Christianity and education in churches and schools respectively Xhosa speakers in the early 19th century there came a new development where people changed names. English names were bestowed upon Xhosa children by the missionaries (at baptism) as a sign of being born again in Christ and by teachers (at school). These names were referred to as ‘church’ and
‘school’ names respectively and these names became popular.
Moyo (2012) says “naming practices have been in contact with colonialism in Malawi and the rest of Southern Africa, with the result that this has affected the socio- cultural ideologies which were traditionally embedded with naming practices. The result was that names bestowed on
34 individuals or places changed with the historical times. At times they remained indigenous, were westernized or fused indigenous and other African names.” This study gets a lot of insights from Moyo’s ideas especially the idea that naming patterns underwent some changes.
The current study wants to establish gender connotations enshrined in the Zezuru names before and after western influence.
The coming of African nationalist movements which resisted colonial domination saw a paradigm shift in the naming pattern with many people rejecting names associated with colonialism. Pongweni (1983:2) says “Christian names were rejected in favour of Shona names”. Herbert (1994-99:224) suggests that there have been four stages in Southern African naming patterns namely, stage 1 were people had an African name only, stage 2 with African name + English name, stage 3 English name + English name and lastly stage 4 comprised of African name + African name. Neethling (2005:77) says that the bestowal of an English name came about with the introduction of Christianity as well as education to the Xhosa through the efforts of missionaries. The same scenario was also experienced among the Shona people.
Some Shona people included took the names voluntarily associating English names with civilization. Herbert (1994:6) says, “The ‘so called Christian names were never well- integrated into the indigenous systems of naming in Southern Africa’ because such names lack the meaningfulness criterion”. With reference to the Shona people, these names were accepted and integrated in their naming system in the early days but with the passage of time people reverted to their indigenous names. Although there has been a tendency to opt for indigenous names at the expense of the western names, whether integrated or not, the system of resorting to western names have become part of the name giving patterns in many parts of Africa with Zimbabwe included. While the above scholars looked at how western names influenced the naming patterns in Africa, without looking at whether the names had gender connotations, the present study however will be confined to Zezuru personal names in as far as they reflect the gender status of the name bearers.