Changing Names: The Roles of Christianity and Islam in Making Yorùbá Names Kosher for The Modern World

Abstract

According to anthropologist Niyi Akinnaso, Yoruba names fulfill a record-keeping purpose in that they “serve as an open diary by providing a system through which information is symbolically stored and retrieved.”1 One type of knowledge that Yoruba names betray is the extent to which the society has integrated the new religions of Islam and Christianity. We already got an inkling of that function in the last chapter when we considered the idea that some male praise names may have been influenced by marriage practices that are associated with Islam. In this chapter, I aim to investigate the role of Christianity and Islam on the emergence of new names and naming practices, and the impact of the world religions in the modification of, and proliferation of, different kinds of Yoruba -language names particularly in terms of gender divisions. The story that I have been telling in the last two chapters is about the development of praise names and the meaning of current gender-specific associations. The evolution of personal oriki name, however, is merely one part of the changes in name and naming practices that overtook Yoruba society in the nineteenth century. Other names and new practices also emerged during this period, and they influenced the usage of oriki constructing its gendered associations.