A PRAGMA-SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF HAUSA PERSONAL NAMES

Abstract

This study investigates Hausa indigenous personal names as pragmatic-sociolinguistic phenomena, examining them not as static labels but as communicative acts embedded in cultural practice. Guided by Bach and analyzes seventeen (17) names collected from selected Hausa communities across Katsina State. Data were obtained through interviews, participant observation, introspection, and archival records, and were analysed thematically across categories such as birth circumstances, physical traits, kinship, temporal markers, and flora/fauna. Findings reveal that Hausa names function as locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts that encode grief, resilience, ecological awareness, kinship identity, and moral values. They operate as cultural diaries, preserving memory, negotiating survival, and expressing worldview (Rayuwar Hausawa). The study highlights the sociolinguistic tension between Arabic-derived names, associated with prestige and religious identity, and indigenous Hausa names, often stigmatised as traditional or pre-Islamic. By situating Hausa naming within a pragmatics-sociolinguistics framework, this research contributes to onomastics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics while foregrounding the importance of preserving indigenous naming practices as cultural archives and communicative resources.