A DISCOURSE - ONOMASTICS OF CONTEMPORARY YORUBA AND ENGLISH CHRISTIAN NAMES
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The study examines the ideologies that motivate the giving of Yoruba and English names to children at these contemporary times. The one hundred (100) names used as data for this study were harvested from the admission registers of nursery school pupils of the Federal Polytechnic Staff School, Ilaro (Yewa South Local Government) and Kingdom Heritage School, Canaanland, Ota, (Ado-Odo Ota Local Government) both in Ogun State, southwest Nigeria where Yoruba is the main language of communication between the 6th and 10th of November
2017. The study shows that proper names are used by parents to express their religious beliefs which used to bear allegiance to the traditional deities. However, this is no longer the case as names are now bestowed on children to express their present worldview which are Pentecostal and modern. These contemporary names are sometimes sentential as parents try to express
themselves in every possible way. The study used van Dijk’s Socio- cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis as its theoretical framework. The findings revealed that Contemporary Yoruba and English Christian names are categorized thematically based on the
ideologies they expressed and these are: positivism, gratitude to God, expression of their life
experiences, dedication to God, expression of expectations and supremacy of God. These thematic categorisation are as a result of Pentecostalism and modernisation. The study concludes that names not only give unique identities to the personality of the bearers but are also linked to the totality of the bearers. Among others, the study recommends that parents should endeavour to give names that their origins and meanings are known to them
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H Social Sciences (General)