Sociolinguistic ISSN: 1750-8649 (print) Studies ISSN: 1750-8657 (online) Article Onomastics and translation: The case of Bette-English translation of death-related names Samson Nzuanke and Zana Akpagu Abstract ‘Líwhù’ (meaning ‘death’) as a morpheme in some Bette (Obudu) names has cultural, religious and social relevance. Generally used as variations of allusions to death, it encapsulates the Bette person’s very essence as a being deeply rooted in the existence of spirits and other supernatural forces. This belief is part of a Bette person’s daily life. This article seeks to translate Bette (Obudu) death-related or ‘Líwhù’ names into English with a view to providing acceptable alternative labels in English. Data were collected at random from a sampled population of 40 Obudu indigenes whose names bear a ‘Líwhù’ affix. Of these, nine recurrent ‘Líwhù’ names were retained and organized in five categories, depending on the cultural, religious or social roles they play in the life or lives of the bearer(s). In this study, we translated, analysed and explained the data from three main perspectives, that is, the linguistic, interpretative and semiotic approaches. The paper intends to add to the earlier voices of Asadu and Nzuanke (2014), which stated that most African proper names are translatable because, as symbols or signs, they have meanings that are founded on their particular psycho-spiritual functions in such societies. KEYWORDS: ANTHROPONYMS, FUNCTIONS, SEMIOTICS, SENSE, PSYCHO- SPIRITUALITY, BETTE (OBUDU)-ENGLISH TRANSLATION Affiliation University of Calabar, Nigeria email: [email protected]; [email protected] email: [email protected] SOLS VOL 13.2-4 2019 273–294 https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.37821 © 2020, EQUINOX PUBLISHING 274 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES 1 Introduction What are names? Or, like Bright (2003) asks, ‘what is a name?’ While the answer to this question may be as simple as ‘it is a word or group of words used in identi- fying someone or something’, many proper names, especially in the Western world, are considered as belonging to a functional rather than a lexical category (Colman, 2014:80). This is because a personal name, for instance, only gets ‘content’ by the addition of lexical secondary categories, with such secondary features as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ to distinguish a name of one gender from another; or the secondary ‘locative’ feature to distinguish a place name from other names (Colman, 2014:80). Evidently, Colman’s (2014:80) view about names tends to support Bright’s (2003:671) perception that names only represent a social convention for brief reference to a specific entity like ‘Brianna’, which may refer to a daughter ‘who is legally designated as Brianna Gabriel’. For her part, Himes (2016) holds that while a personal or first name goes beyond reflecting the wishes, hopes, aspirations and desires of parents, a surname reflects the tradition, heritage and lineage of the name-bearer or giver. This view tends to challenge the approach adopted by Bright (2003) and Colman (2014) in their definition of, and assignment of functions to Western names. At face value, Himes’s (2016) conclusions (which seem to draw essentially from her Lacanian approach) look like a revolution in onomastics, but a deeper enquiry into her approach shows that it negates the principles of uniformity and/or homogeneity that characterize naming in different African communities. These principles are generally founded on a shared history and ancestry. In other words, names in African contexts are culturally tied to a collective one-true self, which a people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common in terms of ‘historical experiences and shared cultural codes which provide us, as “one people”, with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meanings’ (Hall, 1990:223). Clearly, Himes’s (2016) position does not tie in with the above opinion, as indicated in her interview with Anderson (2018) where Himes highlighted the wishes, hopes, aspirations and desires of a parent in naming one of her patients: ‘My mother named me Marilyn because she wanted me to be as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe…’ Going by Himes’s (2016) approach, therefore, it would be difficult to assume that the meaning ascribed to the name ‘Marilyn’ as given by the parent mentioned above (perhaps a British Londoner) to her child in one part of London could have the same meaning that another British parent (a Londoner) may ascribe to the name ‘Marilyn’ given to his/her own girl child in another part ONOMASTICS AND TRANSLATION 275 of London. Would it then be safe to assume, in this circumstance, that all British (London) parents share identical wishes, hopes, aspirations and desires when naming their respective children? Unfortunately, in trying to assign meanings to first names, Himes (2016:66) apparently creates more confusion by relying on Lacanian analysis to deduce heterogeneous meanings of perhaps the same names, which, in each of the Canadian aboriginal cases used as examples, ‘would always come through a vision, a dream, or through the spirit of the person to be named…’. This means that no two persons within the same family or community with a shared history and ancestry would have identical names with universally acceptable meanings within that same family or community since the vision, dreams and spirit of every individual are particular to the individual. But in Africa, and especially in many North African and sub-Saharan African societies, which are still hugely steeped in local belief systems, a name will have a more profound cultural, social and/or political significance (Coates, 2005) because it is the product of a particular psycho-spiritual context and/or function within a family, a community or a society vis-à-vis the referent. Amongst Africans generally, names carry a message from the family to the rest of the community or society. They are never given in a void where they may express nothingness. So, it is also in Obudu, Cross River State, South-east Nigeria, where the Bette ethnic group is found (see Map below). The Bette are reported to have migrated from a supposedly easterly Bantu homeland around the 18th century (Ogar, 2003). Naming in Obudu or Bette cosmology is replete with notions of necrophobia like Àgwéyè (‘He/It didn’t kill him’) and Àgwūpúyè (‘He/It didn’t kill all’). This is mainly borne out of the Bette people’s perception of death or líwhù as an experience that has always left in them a sour taste of eerie, vengeful defeat and a painful sense of loss and self-resignation. This attitude is clearly expressed and reflected in the names some Obudu or Bette males are given. Obudu is one of the five local government areas that make up the Cross River North Senatorial Zone. Others are Bekwarra, Obanliku, Ogoja and Yala local government areas. Obudu is located at the foot of the Cameroon mountains (Ashipu, 2015), bordered by Bekwarra and Ogoja local government areas to the west, by Obanliku to the east, by Adikpo and Tsar (in Benue State) to the north and by Boki local government area to the south. As of the last population census in 2006, Obudu had 85,000 inhabitants (NBS, 2006). Though the Bette language is understood and spoken generally in Obudu and parts of Obanliku and Boki local government areas, the language is mainly spoken in the five Bette-speaking wards of Obudu, that is, Obudu Urban 1, Obudu 276 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES Urban 2, Ipong, Begiading and Angiaba/Begiaka. The five non-Bette-speaking wards of Obudu are: Utugwang North, Utugwang Central, Utugwang South, Ukpe and Alege/Ubang. Map of the study area. Source: Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Calabar, Nigeria. Bette is a Southern Bantoid language of the sub-Bendi family of Cross River Languages of the New Benue-Congo, and a member of the Niger-Congo Phylum (Ashipu, 2015; Ibli and Amechi, 2015). According to Emenanjo (1985, 1990 and 1999), Bette is a minority, underdeveloped language in terms of literary and linguistic scholarship. Nevertheless, the number of Bette speakers has continued to grow from a mere 36,800 speakers in Obudu and Obanliku in 1963, to 100,000 speakers (as at 2006), spanning across Obudu, and parts of Obanliku and Boki LGAs of Cross River State, Nigeria (Ethnologue, 2018). ONOMASTICS AND TRANSLATION 277 For this study, we gathered primary data from 40 respondents of Obudu origin who were observed and selected around Obudu and Calabar Metropolis of Cross River State, Nigeria, because of the líwhù affix in their names. We will translate these Bette líwhù or death-related names into the English language with a view to generating unique derivatives in English that could be used as acceptable labels to name or identify referents within the Obudu socio-cultural context of sub-Saharan Africa. This, it is hoped, will add to other voices intended to challenge the claim made by some Western scholars that proper names are not translatable because they are mere symbols or signs with no meaning beyond the concepts they represent. 2 Conceptual review Though much of the literature on onomastics, like the works of Dolnik (1995, 1998), Zouhar (2004), Gaher (2006), Blanár (2009) and Colman (2014), looks at proper names as mere denotative symbols or mental abstractions with no ascribable meanings except the mental picture(s) of the referent(s) for purposes of identification and categorization of the person(s), place(s) and/or other object(s), the works of Pavlonic (1987), Wamitila (1999) and Croft (2009) seem to go beyond this apparently limited perception by adding that proper names may also, directly or indirectly, connect the person or persons so named to a specific locality, community, family or nationality.