Naming Africans - On the Epistemic Value of Names

Focusing on the epistemic value of African names, this edited collection is based on the premise that personal names constitute valuable sources of historical and ethnographic information and help to unveil endogenous forms of knowledge.  The chapters assembled here document and analyze personal names and naming practices in a slew of African societies on the geographically vast and ethnically diverse continent, including contributions on the naming practices in Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. The contributors to this anthology are scholars from different African language communities who investigate names and naming practices diachronically. Taken together, their work offers a comparative focus that juxtaposes different African cultures and reveals the historical and epistemic significance of given names.




Oyeronke Oyewumi is Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, New York and the winner of the African Studies Association's 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award. A renowned gender scholar, Oyewumi is the author of several books, including the award-winning The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, and What Gender is Motherhood: Changing Yoruba Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity. She is the editor of a number of books, including African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood, and Gender Epistemologies: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities, and was the founding editor of the Palgrave book series Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora.

Hewan Girma received her Ph.D. in Sociology and a Certificate in Women's Studies from Stony Brook University, New York. She is currently Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the African American and African Diaspora Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Ethiopian, East African and Indian Ocean Research Network. Her work has been published in Social Problems, Sociology Compass, the Journal of Black Studies, and the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies.