Dang-blang cyberspace! Let's see if it's condescending to play my game this time ...
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)
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:
Andro (<
Andrew), Sendra (<
Sandra), Derrol (<
Darryl), Dominiec (<
Dominic)
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.
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.