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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Notes on Zande proper names |
Author: | Evans-Pritchard, E.E. |
Year: | 1972 |
Periodical: | Sudan Notes and Records |
Volume: | 53 |
Pages: | 187-191 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Sudan Congo (Democratic Republic of) Central African Republic |
Subject: | personal names |
Abstract: | These notes on the meanings of some Zande proper names have some ethnographical and linguistic interest. Numbers 1 to 19 are those of members of the ruling aristocracy, the Avongara, for the most part those of Kings at one time or another and never, or very rarely, given to commoners. The author gives a Zande comment on all the names in the vernacular. Some of the explanations put forward for the meaning of names may be a sort of popular etymology (guessing from the sounds - the Azande are great at playing with words), but the author can only record what he was told. Since one is unable to know what are the particular, and peculiar, circumstances in which a father (or kinsman) names a child, one can (as the author's informants have done) only make an etymological assessment based on the sense the word means, or might mean. The list of 40 proper names is followed by Arabic words in Zande proper names Some observations accompany this sort of words the Sudan Azande had (by 1926 to 1930) borrowed from Arabic for use as personal names. |