Shona Sentential Names: A Brief Overview

Preface

v Preface This book is about names, and not just any names, but human names or anthroponyms as well as how they are used by the Manyika of eastern Zimbabwe. The Manyika are found in both Mutasa and Nyanga districts of Manicaland. It is again not just about Manyika names, but how the Manyika have used a special category of names to convey their feelings, thoughts as well as belief systems. The book specifically focuses on sentential names and how the Manyika, like other Shona groups have used them to respond to their immediate environment, both social and political. This book grew out of the desire by the researcher to fill a gap that he saw as yawning in as far as research on the Manyika, especially in the area of language is concerned, and more, so in the area of onomastics where as far as the researcher is concerned very little has been done, the exception being Mapara, Nyota and Mutasa’s 2011 Shona Names as Communication and Description: A case of the Manyika, which is a publication on Manyika names. The focus of these three however was general in that they focused on both anthroponyms and toponyms. The book is as well a product of the realisation that since Fortune in the 1950s, there has been little active research in the area of linguistics in this Province. While it is true that the researcher focuses on the Manyika in his book, the other purpose of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge that exists in Zimbabwe on names. The other studies like Pongweni’s What’s in a Name? (1983) focus mostly on all types of names, yet this study has only vi zeroed in on names that are complete statements, and are therefore full communicative tools. This book is also as much of an anthropological one as it is linguistic. It will help readers to understand that among the Manyika, just like among the other Shona, and the other Bantu language groups at large, names do play a very significant communicative role in people’s lives. They function as a window through which outsiders can look through and hopefully have a better understanding of the Manyika in particular and the Shona in general. The very same names as well function as a podium on which the Manyika strut and showcase their heritage to the world at large. The other readers who are targeted by the book besides college and university students in various humanities and social sciences areas are academics and other interested parties in language and cultural industries. The other parties who will reap positive rewards from this book are linguists, sociologists, historians as well as some religious leaders from different religious backgrounds and persuasions. Linguists, especially sociolinguists and those in the field of pragmatics will benefit immensely given the fact that these names are speech events and acts, each in itself, and they need to be further unpacked linguistically. Since all these names are about social relations, and how people respond to the social environment, the sociologists and anthropologists also stand to benefit. Those in the field of history, especially those who are interested in resistance movements in Europe during the Second World War and liberation war movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America will as well learn something that may inform them on the activities as well as the names that the guerrillas in these vii different war arenas bore, and why. The names are also of great significance to those in the area of Religious Studies, not only with regards to the Christian religion, but also to other religions where there is need to find out how religious names have fared and have been deployed as confessions and conveyors of faith. Jacob Mapara Masvingo, Zimbabwe April 2013 viii ...