This is a very fascinating topic and I am glad it has come up as part of cultural discourse on this forum. It is true that authentic Hausa names are disappearing, and being replaced with more "stylistic" modern ones, some based on Arabic (rather than Islamic) practices, while others are reflections of a new dyanmism of nomenclature. I argue, however, that such transformationsw are essentially urban; and even within urban settings, elitist. Somehow I don't see the daughter of a Dan Achaba (motor cyle taxi driver) calling him "Daddy", which is a common parental referent for the DSTV generation of parents; nor the ground-nut-selling-at-motor-park daughter of a village woman calling her mother "Mommy".
I am guilty of such stylized naming myself. My children are Ibtihal, Intissar, Munzir and Ifrah. The first two -- female -- are words (piety, victory) but used within an Islamic context. Munzir is Muhammad, while Ifrah is a straightforward word which means happiness. She was given name after we lost Mutahhar (another Muhammad) and we see her as a joybringer. Now imagine if we had called her "Madadi" or "Farin Ciki"! Ethnic psychology is at work here. For instance, a niece of mine is called Mahjubah -- veil/curtain. Imagine her being called "Labule" Mahjubah gives here a stylistic distinction -- being lost in meaning -- that somehow gives the impression of ultra-coolness, even though it has no spiritual connotation to Islam. Give a typical Hausa urbanite a choice between Yassar and Maikudi, he'd probably chose Yassar -- yet the mean the same thing! The traditional Hausa names, despite being unfashionable, ARE reflections of Hausa identity, for they are unique to the Hausa, no one else. Adopting the stylized names is not necessarily a reflection of being modern, it simply a denial of identity.
Grandparents often wish to be remembered after they had gone, and subsequently many children are named after them or other aunties and uncles held so dear. I think the fear that your own child might lose its identity is what makes modern parents shun the practice of perpetual renaming from a repertoire of dead grandparents. This is because Zainab easily becomes 'Hajiya'. I remember more than 30 years ago having asked by uncle to pick my cousin (his daughter) from school after they had closed for holidays. I really don't know her name, except the one at home (Hajiyayye). The school could not call her for me because they don't know her with that name! Luckily she had seen my car and came over. Subsequently she became horribly teased by teachers who started calling her Hajiyayye (which she hates!)(Up till now I still can't remember her actual name!).
So why do we shift away from the traditional Hausa names? I think the main answer is desire to cleanse our collective memory of the antecedent Maguzanci (Hausa paganistic totemism) and reaffirm either a more Islamic, or more neautral globalized identity, especially among urban elites.The Muslim Hausa of Nigeria are unique in this process by shifting away from the ancestral naming. Yoruba Muslims, for instance, often retain their totemistic traditional names (e.g. Abdulganiyyu Adekunle); not the Muslim Hausa. For the Hausa, "suna linzami" (your name leads you) and as Qur'an reveals the name is a critical referent to your own personality. The Ethnic Psychology I referred to gives modern Muslim Hausa a window of opportunity of adopting Arabic-sounding names that gives them a psychological affinity with Islam, even if the Arabic names themselves have no meaning superior to their Hausa equivalents -- for not all Arabs are Muslim (something which many Hausa find difficult to understand).Thus giving your child a more traditional name (whose meaning is often lost) might be seen as harking back to Maguzanci status -- as I said, it is really pschological, not cultural.
What names do the Hausa give themselves BEFORE the advent of Islam and that do not reflect Maguzanci? There are many of these, and I have compiled them from the most classic of Kano History -- Kano Chronicle (translated as Hausawa da Makwabtan su). I am sharing this with other researches on Hausa/African naming systems by other scholars and published in professional journals. The list of the names may help to explain why they are no longer in vogue. Nagudu, for instance, (still in vogue as there is a modern Hausa music studio in Kano with that name) refers to escape from slave raid -- a process no longer done, subsequently, the name might be considered redundant. The documents I have uploaded provide detailed background from 1917 on Hausa and African names and their etymology -- which will help to explain why they are no longer in use.
My compilation of non-Maguzanci pre-Islamic Hausa names contain beautiful sounding names, and I think if we want to preserve the Hausa naming systems, we might start considering using them, even as nicknames; that way, we keep true to our African roots, while retaining our Islamic identity. All the the documents are freely available for download from my box.net account. The link is:
http://www.box.net/shared/v8sshmzutb.The full list of the resources is as follows:
Adamu, Abdalla Uba. "Unique Hausa Medieval Names." Taken from Adamu, Muhammadu Uba. "Confluences and Influences - The Emergence of Kano as a City State". Kano: Munawwar Books Foundation, 1999.
Harris, Percy G. "Some Conventional Hausa Names." Man, Vol. 31. (Dec., 1931), pp. 272-274.
Migeod, F. W. H. "Personal Names among Some West African Tribes." Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 17, No. 65. (Oct., 1917), pp. 38-45.
The files are RAR'd; so you need WinRAR to open them. WinRAR is commonly available on the web.
Abdalla
