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Help[Opinions] Under-representation of African names
Dear Behind the Name,
Your sites have been very inspiring and useful to me because, as a writer, I often need character names, and this is a great place to start.
However, I have tried time again to find African names, but your site seems to be lacking in them. Now, I know you have them, but what I am protesting is how you lump them into broad categories as if Africa is a country, and not a continent like it is. E.g., Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, etc. is grouped under "West Africa", while Ethiopia, Djibouti, Rwanda is categorized as "East Africa".
I would appreciate it very much if you could be more specific about Africa's countries, and treat Africa, and its culture and names, as the unique and important topics they are.
Thank you.
Your sites have been very inspiring and useful to me because, as a writer, I often need character names, and this is a great place to start.
However, I have tried time again to find African names, but your site seems to be lacking in them. Now, I know you have them, but what I am protesting is how you lump them into broad categories as if Africa is a country, and not a continent like it is. E.g., Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, etc. is grouped under "West Africa", while Ethiopia, Djibouti, Rwanda is categorized as "East Africa".
I would appreciate it very much if you could be more specific about Africa's countries, and treat Africa, and its culture and names, as the unique and important topics they are.
Thank you.
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Replies
I think that it makes sense to use a smaller number of categories for a smaller number of names. There are only 573 total names under "African names" in the database. Splitting it up into the individual countries would make really small categories, no? The individual country information is included in the name descriptions.
I understand it's frustrating when there's only a small amount of entries for the culture/s you're most interested in. I think looking in the submitted names is a good idea. There are plenty of reasons why a site might not have completely equal global coverage. You might want to try specialty African naming resources.
edit: This is a good resource for Zulu names I think. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/afl/zulunames.htm
I understand it's frustrating when there's only a small amount of entries for the culture/s you're most interested in. I think looking in the submitted names is a good idea. There are plenty of reasons why a site might not have completely equal global coverage. You might want to try specialty African naming resources.
edit: This is a good resource for Zulu names I think. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/afl/zulunames.htm
This message was edited 5/20/2020, 9:24 AM
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That sounds as if you exclusively rely on this website for learning about given names that originate from the cultures that are native to the African continent. Have you tried branching out? For example: how about paying a visit to the nearest university library in order to see if they have a scholarly book about (for example) Zulu given names? You sound a bit entitled, in the sense that you seem to expect this website to do the research for you at your "encouragement". How about doing some of your own research? You are a self-professed writer, do you not enjoy devouring books about topics that are important or otherwise of interest to you?
Have you heard of the term region? East Africa is a region, as is North Africa, South Africa and West Africa. It makes sense to list the countries and cultures according to region, especially if you look at how enormously vast the African continent is. I imagine that that makes it easier for the webmaster to create a sense of order and keep a good overview of the many cultures and their names. Not to mention that it also makes it a lot easier for the average person to get a general sense of where on the African continent the cultures in question live. In other words: this is more about accessibility and being practical. It has nothing to do with viewing and treating Africa as if it is a country. Using regions does not equal "country".
The same approach is taken with the cultures from other continents, e.g. English and French are listed under "European" and Chinese and Thai under "Asian". But I am not hearing you about how that is treating Europe and Asia as countries instead of continents. Why are you singling out exclusively the cultures from the African continent?
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Out of curiosity, were those Native American names removed in the end?
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Yes, they were.
I respectfully decline to make further comments about that particular matter (in case you were hoping for more information), as that seems to be the wisest course of action in the long run. Thank you in advance for your understanding! :)
I respectfully decline to make further comments about that particular matter (in case you were hoping for more information), as that seems to be the wisest course of action in the long run. Thank you in advance for your understanding! :)
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yes ...
And also, many African languages are spoken in more than one country in the given region. So saying that a name is "Nigerian" would be inaccurate if it was also commonly used in Kenya. And of course, many countries have more than one official language and many more that aren't official but are still widely spoken, and that complicates the categorization.
And also, many African languages are spoken in more than one country in the given region. So saying that a name is "Nigerian" would be inaccurate if it was also commonly used in Kenya. And of course, many countries have more than one official language and many more that aren't official but are still widely spoken, and that complicates the categorization.
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I agree with the points made in this response 100%. It articulates what I wanted to say better than I ever could.
I also agree that the OP was too aggressive, but I’m not sure we need to meet that aggression with quite so much of our own.
Hopefully this will end up opening the door for a calm, rational discussion on the representation of non-Euro-centric names on this site. It’s a very well-researched, well-maintained and trusted source and it would be the ideal place for an expanded database of African names if such a thing were feasible. I wouldn’t mind hearing from the powers that be about why it hasn’t happened so far.
I also agree that the OP was too aggressive, but I’m not sure we need to meet that aggression with quite so much of our own.
Hopefully this will end up opening the door for a calm, rational discussion on the representation of non-Euro-centric names on this site. It’s a very well-researched, well-maintained and trusted source and it would be the ideal place for an expanded database of African names if such a thing were feasible. I wouldn’t mind hearing from the powers that be about why it hasn’t happened so far.
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Apart from all the points that Dorchadas made so very cogently, I suspect it's a matter of priorities. Making lists and doing statistical things for no urgent and/or profitable reason is a very First World thing to do. South Africa is pretty sophisticated in many ways, but we don't make births, marriages and deaths statistics available annually, let along lists of names in use! And in large parts of the continent, people and governments and bureaucracies are focused on survival, and anything that doesn't actually do that will probably not get done.
I have been able to send Mike C a couple of lists of Top Ten Names in the Last Year, which did come from the Department of Home Affairs and should be reliable (the Dept claims to be working on being more informative; which would be nice. We'll see.) but are just that - lists. With no indication of which language the names are used in, let alone what they mean. And if we can't do a decent job, I don't hold out much hope for, let's say, South Sudan, though I'd love to be proved wrong.
I have been able to send Mike C a couple of lists of Top Ten Names in the Last Year, which did come from the Department of Home Affairs and should be reliable (the Dept claims to be working on being more informative; which would be nice. We'll see.) but are just that - lists. With no indication of which language the names are used in, let alone what they mean. And if we can't do a decent job, I don't hold out much hope for, let's say, South Sudan, though I'd love to be proved wrong.
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Hey, thanks for writing. I agree with your concerns about the lower volume of African names in the database and about the broad categorization into regions, rather than languages. I've found the database does have more detailed (though of course, not vetted) information about African names submitted by users. For example, check out the lists of user-submitted Amharic and Igbo names: http://www.behindthename.com/submit/names/usage/amharic
http://www.behindthename.com/submit/names/usage/igbo
This discussion may get moved over to the Name Facts board, but thanks for raising your concern.
http://www.behindthename.com/submit/names/usage/igbo
This discussion may get moved over to the Name Facts board, but thanks for raising your concern.
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