Binyam Sisay Mendisu & Janne Bondi Johannessen (eds.) Multilingual Ethiopia: Linguistic Chal- lenges and Capacity Building Efforts, Oslo Studies in Language 8(1), 2016. 243–272. (ISSN 1890- 9639) http://www.journals.uio.no/osla what is in a name? personal names in hadiyya Zelealem Leyew abstract The aim of this paper is to describe the system behind personal names in Hadiyya. The bulk of the paper analyses the semantics of personal names. Hadiyya personal names express social, economic and political circum- stances accompanying the birth of a child. Name givers express their wishes, desires and emotions through personal names. The close examina- tion of names over generations indicates a gradual shift from typical Had- iyya names to modified Amharic-based names. Since the advent of Christi- anity in the region, Biblical names have also become common. The histori- cal underpinnings for the shift to Amharic-based and Biblical names are language and cultural contact. All Hadiyya personal names display vowel endings that mark case and gender. Like other nouns in the language, per- sonal names can have simple, derived or compound form. Interestingly, most Hadiyya personal names can be translated freely with relative or agentive readings. Personal names can have a perfective reading describ- ing past experience or an imperfective reading expressing wishes for the future. Though Hadiyya is a morphologically complex language and hence all the above grammatical notions are overtly marked, they are omitted in the morphology of personal names. The use of inflectional and derivation- al morphemes is minimal. Hadiyya personal names are therefore special word classes that tend to display a simplified morphosyntactic structure and free translation. [1] introduction: the people and the language The Hadiyya people live mainly in the Hadiyya zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia. The zone is divided into eleven Weredas (districts) with Hosaa’na as its capital. Its neighbouring zones are Silt’i and Gurage to the north, Kambaata and T’ambaaro to the southeast and Wolaitta to the south. The Omo River to the west and southwest separates the Hadiyya zone from the Oromia region and Yem special Wereda (Taddese 2015, Samuel 2009). Hosaa’na is one of the developing cities in SNNPR hosting a number of ethnic groups: Hadiyya, Amhara, Kambaata, Silt’i and Soddo Gurage (Taddese 2015). The population size of the Hadiyya ethnic group is 1.35 million [244] zelealem (2007 National Census). The Haddiyya people are largely agro-pastoralists who make their income mainly from agriculture and animal husbandry. Enset (false banana) and its products are the most common sources of food. Wheat, maize, t’eff and other crops are also widely grown. The Hadiyya are largely followers of Christianity, while a very insignificant minority neighbouring the Silt’i ethnic group are followers of Islam (Samuel 2009). The Hadiyya call their language Hadiyy-is-a deriving it from the ethnonym through suffixing the glottonym formative -is-a. It is also known as Hadiyy-i- suum-e (‘Mouth of Hadiyya’) or Hadiyy-i-sagar-a (‘voice of Hadiyya’) (Taddese 2015). Based on the 2007 census, 95% of the Hadiyya people speak Hadiyya as their mother tongue. Hadiyya is therefore one of the major Ethiopian languages with more than a million speakers. It is a language spoken by thousands of monolinguals and also spoken by the Kambaata, Wolaitta, Gurage and Alaaba ethnic groups as their second language (Taddese 2015). Amharic is spoken as a second language by most Hadiyya speakers in towns and also serves as a vehic- ular language among speakers of different languages. Hadiyya was transcribed into writing for the first time during the Literacy Campaign in the 1970s using the Ethiopic script. As from 1994, however, the writing system is based on the Latin script. The Latin-based orthography is more phonetic and hence what is pronounced is written. Hadiyya is a medium of instruction for primary educa- tion and is taught as a subject at high school and college levels. Genetically, Hadiyya is a member of the Highland East Cushitic language family together with Sidaama, Kambaata, Gedeo and Burji. Grammatical and sociolinguistic descriptions of the language have been written by Hudson (1976), Haileyesus (1984) (BA senior paper), Moges (1984) (BA senior paper), Getahun (1980) (BA senior essay), Sim (1989), Samuel (2009) and Taddese (2007, 2015). Hadiyya is known to have four variants -- Leemo, Baadawwaacho, Shaashoogo and Sooro – although these have not yet been extensively studied (Tadesse, 2015). Hadiyya is a language with five short and five long vowels. As a Cushitic language, vowel length is phonemic in Hadiyya, as in mar-a (‘pus’) vs. maar-a (‘meat’), kor-a (‘flee’) vs. koor-a (‘saddle’), ʔagg-a (‘drink’) vs. ʔaag-a (‘en- trance’), etc. The consonant inventory has twenty-three consonants: six stops, five fricatives, two affricates, four ejectives, two nasals, two liquids and two glides. Consonant gemination is a phonemic feature as in t’aat’-a (‘cover’) vs. t’aat’t’-a (‘ready’), das-a (‘slow’) vs. dass-a (‘crash’), etc. (Taddese, 2015:23). Mor- phologically, Hadiyya is an inflectional language with a relatively complex ver- bal inflection. It is a head final language with an SOV word order. This paper attempts to describe Hadiyya personal names and the practices underlying them. It gives an insight into the formal and semantic-pragmatic OSLa volume 8(1), 2016 WHAT IS IN A NAME? [245] descriptions of these names. The most relevant previous works are Getahun’s (1980) senior essay and Abraham’s (2014) MA thesis. The senior essay is written in Amharic and all the data are presented in the Ethiopic orthography, which makes it difficult to understand clearly the internal phonological and morpho- logical structures of personal names. As it lacks a linguistic transcription, it is difficult to pronounce the names as they are uttered in the language. The pre- sent work differs from the MA thesis by Abraham in its broader data and in- depth semantic, sociolinguistic and morphological analyses as well categoriza- tion of names. The raw data and information were collected mainly from Hoommachcho and Hosaa'na during successive fieldtrips that took place in 2015 and recently in March 2016 as part of the linguistic capacity building research. Native speak- ers of Hadiyya known as being knowledgeable about their language and culture were consulted. The qualitative data consists of seven hundred full names (one hundred taken from Hoommachcho elementary school and six hundred taken from Hosaa’na high school, representing the urban and rural settings, respec- tively). These names all followed the CHILD + FATHER + GRAND FATHER pat- tern, which has helped to analyse Hadiyya names chronologically. Note that since each of the seven hundred children had three names, the total number of names to investigate was two thousand one hundred. During later verification of the authenticity of data in the field, a variety of valuable information was added. Names were both translated literally and also phonetically transcribed by strictly following the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Note the follow- ing correspondence between the Latin-based Hadiyya orthography and the IPA symbols used in this paper. Hadiyya Orthography IPA symbols used in this paper X t’ Q k’ C ʧ’ Ph p’ Sh ʃ Ch ʧ J ʤ ‘ ʔ The fricative ʒ, the ejective s’ and the nasal ɲ that appear in loanwords are rep- resented as zh, ts and ny, respectively in the Hadiyya orthography (for details on the orthography, see Shimelis – this volume). OSLa volume 8(1), 2016 [246] zelealem [2] types of hadiyya personal names The study of personal names, or anthroponomy, has attracted the attention of sociolinguistic and anthropological linguistic researchers for the multifaceted information it offers not only about name bearers and name givers, but also about the socio-economic, political and cultural circumstances surrounding the birth of a child (see Bean 1980, Carroll 1985, Essien 2000, Herbert 1995, Hough, 2000). Like most of the African naming practices (see Akinnaso 1980, Crane 1982, Koopman, 1979, Madubuike, 1994, Zelealem 2005), Hadiyya names serve as more than mere tags. Behind Hadiyya names, there are the Hadiyya people, their environment, their language and their way of life. They express their past, present and future through personal names. A Hadiyya name can denote one’s clan or ethnic identity. According to Getahun (1980:40), the name Hadiyya means ‘too tolerant' or 'too responsible’ and can serve as a personal name. Name bestowal is mainly a family affair. In few cases, neighbours or elderly people may give names to newborn babies. As a patrilineal society, during the birth of a child, three ululations herald the birth of a female child whereas four ululations herald the birth of a male child. Another patrilineal practice com- mon until recently among the Hadiyya has been the wife’s use of her husband’s name as a family name; this was stopped in the 1970s following the adoption of women’s rights. Elderly informants remember that, until the advent of modern education and administration in the 1930s, naming in Hadiyya followed a FATHER + CHILD order, which was latter replaced by a CHILD + FATHER order. As described in the following sections, male names end with the case and gender marker -o, and when such a male name appears with a father’s name that also end in -o, a rhyme is formed, as in erʤaab-o danbaal-o, suulit-o leereb-o and ʔawaan-o biirem-o. A person can have two or more names in a family but the official name should be one, i.e. mononymous. As a prototypical Ethiopian feature, Hadiyya does not include any family names or surnames.