Tokens of Metaphoric Expressions in Yorùbá Anthroponyms Wole Soyinka's Poetry and the Dialectic of Liberal Humanism

Abstract

Non-conventional meanings associated with some forms used in a class of anthroponyms (Yorùbá personal-names, henceforth Y P N s) can only be understood in the context of a metaphoric system. This claim is based on the fact that the corpus involved is wholly mono-morphemic and thus belong to the semantic category of connotative meaning. But YPNs also maintain a system of lexico-semantic idiosyncracy on the morphological and semantic levels (i.e. lexical formation and interpretation), and it is only through the interpretations adduced from them that they can be relevant as anthroponyms. This study, therefore, not only reports the strange sense-relation of form and meaning as attested to in a set of YPNs, it also illustrates a number of sociocultural indices which underlie their formulations and usages. The study concludes by positing that the semantic values of YPNs transcend mere identification labels and are found to communicate arrays of information about Yorùbá folk-psychology and sociocultural realities.