The Social cultural Values and Changing Trend of the Hehe Personal Names

Fahamu Kasavaga

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i02.41049

The Social cultural Values and Changing Trend of the Hehe Personal Names

Author(s)	Fahamu Kasavaga
Country	Tanzania
Abstract	Investigation on personal names appears to offer the most insightful view of the languages and cultural values of any community. This is because apart from acting as labels for distinguishing persons, the names given to children by parents largely reflect the cultural knowledge and circumstances of their community. This paper examines the social cultural values and changing trend of Hehe personal names by shading lights on their topology and cultural values. It is based on data collected through documentary review and focus group discussion in Ifwagi and Mtili villages in Iringa region, Tanzania. The analysis of the collected names show that the naming of persons in the Hehe community is currently guided by traditional system alongside non-traditional one. Normally, clan, appellative and first names are given to persons according to the traditional system. Names related to body parts, life and death, love and marriage, leadership and war affairs, and thanks-giving are connected to traditional norms. These names coexist with non-traditional personal names adopted from foreign religions (i.e. Christianity and Islam), Swahili language, and English language. The Christian and Islam personal names are meaningless inside the Hehe naming norms. The Swahili personal names depict circumstances surrounding the birth of the children and the nation’s political atmosphere while the English names carry certain messages regarding the circumstances that took place when a person was born. This implies if researches on changes which occur in the languages due to coming into contacts with speakers of different languages do not involve cultural matters, the influence will be on preservation of speakers’ knowledge related to mankind, ethnicity, history, and ecology embedded in languages. To enrich the existing literature, the study appeals for the further research on the influence of introduction of the non-traditional personal names on the age-based addressing terminologies in Hehe in order to enrich the existing literature.
Keywords	personal names, naming system, traditional norms, appellative names, nontraditional norms
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 2, March-April 2025
Published On	2025-04-30
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i02.41049
Short DOI	https://doi.org/g9g74g

View / Download PDF File

E-ISSN 2582-2160

doi

CrossRef DOI is assigned to each research paper published in our journal.

IJFMR DOI prefix is
10.36948/ijfmr

Downloads

Research Paper Format Copyright Permission Form and Undertaking Form Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 3 Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 2 Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 1

All research papers published on this website are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, and all rights belong to their respective authors/researchers.

CC-BY-SA

About IJFMR Fees & Payment Current Issue Publication Archive	Submit Research Paper Track Submission Status Publication Guidelines Publication Ethics Peer Review & Plagiarism	Join as a Reviewer Editors & Reviewers Reviewer Referral Program Get Reviewer Membership Certi.	Website/Journal Policies Usage Policy Content Policies Privacy Policy

Contact Us		+91-9687-828-838	editor@ijfmr.com

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

The Social cultural Values and Changing Trend of the Hehe Personal Names

Share this