Names in Chinua Achebe\'s Anthills of the Savannah

Abstract

This paper examines the formation patterns and functions of names in Chinua
Achebe\'s Anthills of the Savannah, motivated by the scanty scholarly studies on
names in the text. All the personal names in the text are studied and analysed,
using insights from contextual models. The paper identifies four types of names in
Anthills: official names, first names, nicknames and institutional/titular names. It
also picks out three dimensions of these names: branching, non-branching and
active-mentioned, which are associated with the types. It shows that the names
have structural and formation patterns such as + title prefixing, +first name, +
surname, indigenous language form, coinage, abbronymy, clipping, qualification
and full form representation. It also demonstrates that the names play contextual
and ideological roles such as being interactional tools, address terms, weapons of
criticisms and vision projectors. The paper concludes that names in Anthills are
carefully chosen to serve particular thematic and stylistic purposes.

Keywords: Chinua Achebe, Anthills, names, formation, context and function

MARANG Vol. 18 2008 pp. 49-67