Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personal Names and Naming in Africa

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue aims to bring together empirical studies of personal names (anthroponyms) from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives within varied cultural contexts. It will engage new theories and methodologies that will advance interesting lines of inquiry in name studies. Personal names and naming are linguistic universals (Hough 2016; Mensah 2023) and every culture uses these symbolic linguistic tools to identify, classify and individuate its members. Alford (1988) confirms that all cultural groups use personal names as marks of identity and authenticity of community membership. Personal names are important aspects of culture that provide conceptual knowledge of history, social relations, gender, and religious ideologies among others. Personal names bear the mark of identity and ethnicity and confer a sense of how we relate with others, and how they perceive and classify the “significant other”. In other words, names demarcate otherness, inclusion and exclusion (Mensah and Rowan 2019). Names and naming are also linked to social structures and relations of power. These positions broadly justify the claim by Rymes (1999) that naming indexes an entire world of cultural and social relationships. In spite of its immense linguistic, pragmatic and indexical functions in historical and contemporary societies, research on personal names is sparse in the extant literature. The focus of this special issue, therefore, is to unpack and interrogate personal names as cultural signs embedded in social interactions with deep pragmatic resonances from cross-disciplinary accounts. The special issue intends to advance contemporary debates on names from cross-cultural and multidisciplinary applications that will be a valuable source of reference for all researchers interested in the field of name discourse.

The scope will cover new and emerging forms of significations associated with personal names as social and cultural texts, revealing how identity is constructed and shaped in different situations. The special issue will take into account specific thematic issues emerging from name data and explicate how complex subjectivities are formed through personal names in a bid to develop new research directions in name studies. The special issue will further explore temporal perspectives on names and naming, which could include variation and changing patterns over time, and on how names reflect temporal stances towards the past and/or the future. It aims to highlight novel areas of research within the broad spectrum of anthroponyms that will generate significant interest to scholars of interdisciplinary concerns.

The goal is to put together cutting-edge articles that will explore the intersecting and overlapping social significance and complex meanings of personal names in identity construction, reconstruction and deconstruction in contemporary times. It will contribute to expand the frontiers of knowledge and promote nuanced conversations around naming and identity. We will especially welcome submission of original research on potential topics which include but are not limited to the intersection of disciplinary impulses that will contribute to novel development in the field of anthroponyms.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors should initially submit a proposal title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative Completion Schedule

Abstract Submission Deadline: September 15, 2023

Notification of Abstract Acceptance: October 15, 2023

Full Manuscript Deadline: April 30, 2024

References

Alford, Richard. (1988). Naming and identity: A cross-cultural study of personal naming practices. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.

Hough, Carole ed. (2016). The Oxford handbook of names and naming. Oxford: OUP.

Mensah, Eyo. (2023). Husband is a priority: Gender roles, patriarchy and the naming of female children in Nigeria. Gender Issues 40(1), 44-64.

Mensah, Eyo and Kirsty Rowan. (2019). African anthroponyms: Sociolinguistic currents and anthropological reflections. Sociolinguistic Studies 13(2-4), 157-170.

Rymes, Besty. (1999). Names. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1&2), 163-166.

Hough, Carole ed. (2016). The Oxford handbook of names and naming. Oxford: OUP.

Prof. Dr. Eyo Mensah
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• personal names
• sociolinguistics
• pragmatics
• ethnography
• socio-onomastics
• identity
• culture
• environment
• person reference