Abstract
This chapter deals with naming as an act of incorporation and accommodation of a person into society and in particular with spirit praise names as names of affection for a person.Raphaela von Weichs has examined how Bunyoro people in Uganda facilitated the integration of strangers by bestowing empaako ‘spirit’ names on them until this practice succumbed to colonial and missionary interventions. Clan members gave such spirit ‘praise names’ to their children to let them share in the auspicious qualities of the clan ancestors. To bestow such a ‘praise name’ on a stranger likewise entailed attributing a Bunyoro ancestral identity in its cosmological, social and emotional dimensions. Traditionally, a naming ceremony was required as a welcoming ritual for the spirit and for the person to be incorporated into the clan. Whereas under the impact of colonization, Christianization and urbanization many Banyoro have disregarded the naming ceremony, the names of affection are still in use. In this chapter von Weichs relates how, lacking a clan spirit herself but being asked time and again for her empaako name, she adopted the praise name of a spirit whose social attributes particularly appealed to her. To identify herself as such without relinquishing her Christian name enabled her to smoothly navigate between the complex and conflicting political and religious interest groups making up contemporary Bunyoro society. This naming practice enabled her to get integrated as a stranger into the local society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, the ethnonym ‘Banyoro’ (plural; singular, Munyoro) refers to the major indigenous population of the western part of Uganda. According to the National Census of 2014, the Banyoro count 966,976 people (http://www.ubos.org/). They speak Runyoro, a Bantu language.
- 2.
I wish to thank the German Academic Exchange Service for funding and Heike Behrend for her scientific expertise. I am indebted to Gerald Lubega for his support in my research, his continuous friendship and his sharing of memories from the land of empaako, weebale muno Amooti. My deepest gratitude also to all others who recognized me as Adyeri or in any other way welcomed me to Bunyoro.
- 3.
I use the word ‘stranger’ to refer to a person not (yet) known, and the word ‘foreigner’ to denote a person not (yet) belonging to the local social and political system.
- 4.
I wish to thank Gerald Lubega for this insight, 3 April 2017.
- 5.
John Austin (1975) speaks of an illocutionary speech acts when a ritual speech act is performed by a person in authority to do so and this person through his or her utterances changes the social status of the person or object in question. Hence, a ritual speech act performed by the ‘wrong’ person does not result in a felicitous or proper change of status.
- 6.
Article in Daily Monitor online, ‘Empaako: Bunyoro-Kitara cultural naming ceremony fading away’ of 11 April 2014.
- 7.
The British anthropologist John Beattie describes how novices were initiated into the spirit possession cult, but his account does not mention the naming of the novice (Beattie 1957). Beattie did not personally participate in the kubandwa rituals. His account is based on interviews with former spirit mediums who had converted to Christianity.
- 8.
Engabu Za Tooro (2013), film: Empaako tradition of the Batooro, Banyoro, Batuku, Batagwenda and Banyabindi of Western Uganda, Paris: UNESCO.
- 9.
Kinyoro is an adjective and is used to describe the way how things are usually done in Bunyoro culture or how Banyoro think about them habitually. Kinyoro epistemology is the system of thought used in Bunyoro to explain the world and its phenomena.
- 10.
In 1943, during World War II, Polish refugees were brought to the Ugandan protectorate by the British East African Refugees Administration (Piotrowski 2007). These refugees had been deported from the annexed Polish territories to the Soviet Union. From there thousands emigrated to the British sphere of occupied Iran before they were distributed to refugee camps all over the commonwealth. Total of 6400 refugees were brought to British East African colonies and protectorates. Some of them lived in a camp in Masindi in northern Bunyoro. During my research in 1999, I visited the site of this former camp. The Polish refugees had entered the collective memory of the local Banyoro as pitiable people, so different from the image of the hegemonic European colonizers. The Polish church and the cemetery testified to the camp’s existence and I learnt about the incorporation of these strangers into the embandwa cult as empolandi spirits.
- 11.
This spirit is considered as one of the most powerful of all Cwezi spirits. Epitomized as an elephant, Wamara is said to be the protective Cwezi of the Banyoro royal clan. In order to completely re-establish kingship in Bunyoro and to reconnect it with the world of the spirits a new spirit medium had to be initiated.
- 12.
In recent years evangelical churches and religious movements have stigmatized the empaako names as ‘satanic’.
References
Austin, John. 1975. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baker, Samuel. 1874. Ismailia: A Narrative of the Expedition to Central Africa for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. London: Macmillan.
Beattie, John. 1957. Initiation into the Cwezi Spirit Possession Cult in Bunyoro. African Studies 16 (3): 150–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020185708707026.
———. 1958a. Nyoro Marriage and Affinity. Africa 28 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/1156570.
———. 1958b. The Blood Pact in Bunyoro. African Studies 17 (4): 198–203.
———. 1961. Group Aspects of the Nyoro Spirit Mediumship Cult. Rhodes Livingstone Journal 30: 11–38. http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fk11-005.
———. 1965. Understanding an African Kingdom: Bunyoro. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Behrend, Heike. 2011. Resurrecting Cannibals: The Catholic Church, Witch-Hunts, and the Production of Pagans in Western Uganda. Oxford: James Currey.
Braudel, Fernand. 1949. La méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II. Paris: Armand Colin.
Doornbos, Martin. 2001. The Ankole Kingship Controversy: Regalia Galore Revisited. Kampala: Fountain.
Doornbos, Martin, and Frederik Mwesigye. 1995. The New Politics of King-Making. In From Chaos to Order: The Politics of Constitution-Making in Uganda, ed. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle, 61–77. Kampala/London: Fountain.
Doyle, Shane. 2007. The Cwezi-Kubandwa Debate: Gender, Hegemony and Pre-colonial Religions in Bunyoro, Western Uganda. Africa 77 (4): 559–581. https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2007.77.4.559.
Engabu Za Tooro. 2013. Empaako Tradition of the Batooro, Banyoro, Batuku, Batagwenda and Banyabindi of Western Uganda. Documentary Film, Paris: UNESCO. https://ich.unesco.org/en/USL/empaako-tradition-of-the-batooro-banyoro-batuku-batagwenda-and-banyabindi-of-western-uganda-00904.
Isingoma, Bebwa. 2014. Empaako “Praise Names”: An Historical, Sociolinguistic, and Pragmatic Analysis. African Study Monographs 35 (2): 85–98.
Kaahimbara, Akiiki J. 1974. Some Traditional Beliefs of the Batooro. Occasional Research Papers in African Religions and Philosophies, No. 281. Kampala: Makerere University.
Manual for Runyakitara Language Instruction, Department of Languages, Makerere University. n.d.
Museveni, Yoweri K. 1993. Sowing the Mustard Seed. London: Basingstoke.
Musinguzi, Bamuturaki. 2014. Empaako: Bunyoro-Kitara Cultural Naming Ceremony Fading Away. Daily Monitor Online. https://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture/Reviews/Empaako%2D%2DBunyoro-Kitara-cultural-naming-ceremony-fading-away/-/691232/2276064/-/item/2/-/mc26gf/-/index.html. Accessed 13.11.2018.
Nsamba, Yolamu N. 2016. In Love with Uganda Oil and Bunyoro Clans: Lessons from Kitara History. Wandsbeck: Reach Publishers.
Nyakatura, John W. 1947. Abakama (Kings) of Bunyoro-Kitara: Abatembuzi, Abacwezi, Ababiito. St. Justin: P. Q. Canada.
Piotrowski, Tadeusz, ed. 2007. The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Speke, John H. 1864. Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile. Edinburgh/London: Blackwood.
Taylor, Christopher. 1992. Milk, Honey and Money: Changing Concepts in Rwandan Healing. Washington/London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
vom Bruck, Gabriele, and Barbara Bodenhorn, eds. 2006. The Anthropology of Names and Naming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von Weichs, Raphaela. 2013. Die Rückkehr der Könige von Uganda. Politische Kultur und Moderne in Afrika. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
von Weichs, R. (2019). “What Is Your Empaako?” Naming and Becoming a Munyoro in Western Uganda. In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-16702-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-16703-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)