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Dang-blang cyberspace! Let's see if it's condescending to play my game this time ...

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Table 9: English influence on Afrikaans given naming practices(percentages) Boys Girls
StA 33,3 (n = 10) 0,3 (n = 1)
AltA 55,1 (n = 49) 32,87 (n = 24)

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The naming choices of AltA speakers reveals a greater degree of English influence (for both boys and girls) than those of the speakers of StA. The lower educational level of AltA speakers, as confirmed by the background information collected, and inequalities built into the social system may be responsible for the following non-typical spellings:

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Andro (<Andrew), Sendra (<Sandra), Derrol (<Darryl), Dominiec (<Dominic)

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Only one AltA baptismal boy name uses a combination of English and Afrikaans names: Stenton Johan. In this group we also find combinations of English and Xhosa names as baptismal names: Tony Malwande, Richard Mbulelo.

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According to Smit (1990), the use of English names might be attributable to an urge for renewal and the perception that these names are socially more distinguished. It is interesting that this trend towards innovation is particularly visible in the naming of boys, but that it is also considerably more prominent among speakers of AltA than of StA.

Well searched, Magia! I actually know this article - and Vivian de Klerk! - but I'd forgotten there was a version of Darryl in there.

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For those friends who don't feel strong enough to fight their way through the Afrikaans text, here's a quick translation of the relevant bits: (Just note also that Standard Afrikaans is spoken by, typically, educated mother-tongue speakers, Alternative Afrikaans by less-educated people - unskilled and semi-skilled labourers and the rural poor - who may or may not have an indigenous language as their mother tongue.)

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I rather suspect that little Stenton Johan was named after someone called Stanton - along the lines of Sendra and Derrol above.

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I'd like to know if this trend is continuing: I heard recently about some informal research into burial customs, where Sotho-speaking people had, thirty years ago, just buried their dead without even a headstone in one little graveyard outside a country village. Then they started using headstones with names and perhaps a text - the sort of thing we're used to - and using English to do so. More recently, after our liberation as a country, they are continuing to use headstones with words on, but now the words are in the local language, Sotho. Perhaps they are feeling that their own language now has the same feeling of dignity and social distinction that Vivian de Klerk identified as a reason for her Xhosa informants using English names; so maybe things are changing in the Eastern Cape as well.

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