The sociolinguistics of Edo personal name constructions

Naming a child is no trivial pursuit in Edo culture. Names are given to children depending on the circumstances before, during or even after the birth. The choice of names to be given to a child is determined by various events both within the immediate and extended families. They therefore tend to give names that portend posterity, success, long-life, good luck, etc and not the ones that have any negative connotations. Their belief is hinged on the fact that whatever names that are given will have a great effect on him or her for the rest of the life. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that motivate the various types of names that are given to children in Edo culture. We also showed in the paper that Edo personal names are indeed single words and not phrases which are productively derived out of noun phrases and or sentences. The evidence is provided within the model of morphology and syntax interaction. Finally, the work showed clearly that Edo names are abridged version of syntactic structures, which lexicalize the people’s folk-psychology and their language morphological structures as previously observed by Yoruba speakers.