Friday, 27 January 2017

Abiodun Ogunwale (2016), Naming in Yorùbá: A Sociolinguistic Exposition. Ile-fe, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University Press.


This is a 269 page book written on Yorùbá names. The book has fifteen chapters. It starts with a general introduction and goes to discuss word coinage processes in Yorùbá names, the linguistic features of Yorùbá name-words, assignment of discourse roles to Yorùbá personal names, a pragmatic study of Yrùbá proverbial names, Yorùbá name-words as metaphors, vestige of diachrony in Yorùbá personal name-words, a critical discourse analysis on Yorùbá reincarnated children’s (àbíkú) names, name dropping and change as sociolinguistic features in Yorùbá, impact of bilingualism on Yorùbá naming praxes, lexical structures of Yorùbá names, pragmatics and the use of pets-naming in Yorùbá language, genderization in the plant naming system, configuration of the Yorùbá disease name-words and sundry non-human names: reptiles, vertebrates, birds and insects.

As could be seen above, the author discusses socio-cultural and morpho-phonological issues relating to the Yorùbá naming system within the contexts of Applied Linguistics, Yorùbá Anthropology and Sociolinguistics. Apart from a few formatting errors and the analysis of names such as ‘Adégún’ as a noun phrase rather than a sentence name, I agree with Professor Ajiboye that the book is ‘a must read’ for every individual who is interested in Yorùbá language.

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