Anthropolinguistic study of Àlà names in Igbo

Abstract

Ala names or anthroponyms used to be personal names given to male children.These names bear testimonies to the overwhelming influence of Ala over the various aspects of Igbo life.The Ala names in this study were collected from various parts of Igboland, within the south east of Nigeria.The Igbo world view is examined so as to place the study in proper perspective.The names are then categorized to reflect the various dispositions of the name givers.A de-sentential source is postulated for each name, while samples are selected for linguistic analysis.The analysis shows that the processes of simplification tend to obscure the meanings of some Ala names.The study notes that Ala names have ceased to be borne as forenames since the advent of Christianity.The names are now used as patronyms by those whose fore-bearers had Ala names as forenames.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.