African Ethnonyms and Toponyms: An Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

A major trend in African Studies today consists in using traces of African culture embedded in African names and naming practices to recover or reconstruct African heritage. African names are oral records that can be meticulously processed and analyzed by African and Africana scholars. The emphasis is placed on two categories of names: ethnonyms and toponyms. Ethnonyms are names of people and ethnic groups whereas toponyms are names of places. These two categories of names constitute two important subfields of African onomastics. In addition, they are related in three interesting ways. First, some ethnic groups derive their names from place names and vice versa. Secondly, unlike other types of names such as anthroponyms or personal names, which can easily change or disappear according to the biography of the bearer, toponyms and ethnonyms have a durable life span.Toponyms in particular constitute fixed landmarks whose durability makes them important data for historical research. Thirdly, and more importantly, ethnonyms and toponyms constitute an intricate and semiotic structure, a kind of palimpsest that crystallizes a layer of meanings of community experience. These meanings can be conceived of as approaches or facets of the collective experience of a group. There are at least five facets: the geographical, the historical, the linguistic, the symbolic, and the socio-political facets.

This bibliography contains annotations of sources on ethnonyms and toponyms from the Maghreb region and Sub-Saharan Africa dating from 1930 to the present, regardless of the origin, nationality and race of the authors. The principal criterium for the selection of publications is the geographic location of the ethnic groups they describe or analyze. I have also tried to ensure that all the facets described above are represented in my bibliography. English, French and German have been my three research languages. In some rare cases I have used sources in Portuguese and Afrikaans after having native speakers check my approximative understanding of the texts.