The Poetry of Weeping Brides: The Role and Impact of Marriage Residence in The Making of Praise Names

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I mentioned the profound historical changes that were under way in Ọyọ Yoruba society in the wake of the demise of the empire and the rise of new polities such as Ibadan and Abeokuta. My interest in these developments has to do with the emergence of not only new towns and new practices, but most especially new names such as the personal or iki. My objective in this chapter is to determine whether or iki, unlike other Yoruba name types, is truly gender-specific and in so doing, interrogate what this search can tell us about the evolution of gender as a social division in Yoruba society. In examining the meanings of praise names, I joined debates with a group of scholars, most notably linguists, who had written about the nature of or iki names and the question of gender division in usage. The driving question in the present chapter is: What are the origins of both male and female personal or iki?