Introduction

Cultures across the world possess naming systems that say something about their identity, history, and epistemology. Onomastics is defined as “the study of names and naming systems” (Koopman, 2002, p. 8). It is a field of interest across disciplines. Typically, people are named for identification, as a label, to differentiate them from others. But naming is also informed by many other reasons, some of which would be explored here. Contacts with other cultures could potentially alter naming systems often in a way that demonstrates the superiority experienced or registered in the new culture. This inscribed cultural coloniality. Cultural coloniality is used here to delineate the perceived superiority of one culture over another. It registers the preferences given to Arabic names and, by extension, Arab culture, over indigenous names, and culture of Hausa people. Decolonial thoughts and engagement are needed to confront this phenomenon. Maldonado-Torres (2016, p. 4) sees decolonization as “a direct challenge to the temporal, spatial, and subjective axis of the modern/colonial world and its institutions.” This project calls attention to the meaning, the wisdom, and the history embedded in indigenous Hausa naming systems. The aim is “to identify and valorize that which does not even appear as knowledge in the light of dominant knowledges” (Santos, 2018, p. 2). This is the hallmark of decolonial interventions that the paper foregrounds. It should also be noted that the aim is not to enforce a dualistic, binary way of looking at naming systems presented in the paper, but to register what is lost in the departure from indigenous to Arab naming systems. It is intended to disrupt the hierarchy and erase the shameful inferiority associated with Hausa indigenous names. It is a decolonial effort that calls attention to abandoned indigenous knowledge. It is a “kind of thinking that promotes decolonization, creolization, or mestizaje through intercultural translation” (Santos, 2018, p. 8).

This discussion on the naming system in Hausa is important for many reasons. It is not merely aimed at a nostalgic project to revive the indigenous naming system in Hausa and discard the Arabic ones. It is neither aimed at proving the existence of such names and by extension proving the idea that there was this robust naming system in Hausa before the Arabs. In other words, the project is not reactionary and defensive in nature. It is aimed at encouraging the few people who insist on maintaining these names by foregrounding the discourse and justifying their stance. As argued by Adamu, (2020, p. 10), “there are many individuals in contemporary Kano, who, despite the increasing Islamism, insist on retaining or using sunan yanka that reflects the traditional Hausa naming system, so long as these do not reflect un-Islamic attribute.” Sunan yanka or nicknames are indigenous names given to people in addition to their formal or proper names that are rooted in Islam. In some instance, due to their unique nature, these indigenous names become the only identifier to the people. This paper is intended to draw more academic attention on naming system among the Hausa as a decolonial project that draws attention to Hausa indigenous epistemes. This is important in reclaiming the academia as a site for the inscription of repressed knowledges.

Smith (1970, p. 331) defines Hausa people in relation to their language as “the people who speak the Hausa language.” They have a long contact with the Arabs and Arabic cultures going back to the seventh century as argued by Tsiga (2017, p. 10) that “with the arrival of Islam in the Kanem Bornu Empire in the Seventh Century and its subsequent diffusion into the neighboring areas, Islamic scholars and Islamic religious leaders had quite early added a significant value to the history and development of Hausa land.” This long contact with Islam has planted the religion in all aspects of life among the Hausa Muslims. This was foregrounded in the Islamization efforts of successive polities across hundreds of years. This was accompanied by Arabization—the slow but steady infiltration of Arab culture in many aspects of life including naming systems, mode of dressings, and many other quotidian experiences. However, the naming system is the aspect most affected by the desire to be Arabic. Most Hausa people retain much of their modes of dressing (Alhassan et al., 1988, p. 6). Despite the ubiquitous departure from the traditional naming systems to Arabic ones and the knowledge buried in the process, researchers and critics of cultural studies are yet to explore this area, especially from a decolonial, epistemic lens. Adamu (2020) is one of the few research works on the transformation witnessed by Hausa naming systems. He is interested in the way identity becomes fluid in the Hausa naming system. However, this paper looks at the indigenous or pre-Arabic naming systems in Hausa, the knowledge associated with these names, and the emergence of other non-Hausa names that do not register any meaning in the circumstances of the life of the bearers. The indigenous names are not merely signifiers of the persons who carry them. They are embedded with knowledge and useful information about the lives of their bearers, the circumstances in which they were born and sometimes the material and psychological conditions of other people related to them. This process demonstrates that the indigenous Hausa naming system was not arbitral. The system foregrounds the logic, epistemologies of the Hausa, and worldview about certain events and phenomenon around them. Oyěwùmí (2005 p. 4) argues that the term “worldview” is Eurocentric “used in the West to sum up the cultural logic of a society.” She instead prefers the term “world-sense,” which is applied in this paper to explore the construction of epistemology among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria.

Across many cultures, names and naming systems are embedded with the notion of identity of individuals and collectives, the social formation and changes were undergone by particular people, and all these are pathways into the epistemology of the people. This assertion is supported by Oyěwùmí (2016, p. 151) that, “[n]aming systems are by definition knowledge systems given the epistemic value of names.” Naming system educates about the collective thinking of a people, their social practices, and understanding of their world. This practice is still prevalent among the Fulani herders in Northern Nigeria. They wander from the North to the South along grazing lines. They have a habit of naming their children after the well around which they were temporarily settled when the child was born. This demonstrates an adequate knowledge of the geographical areas they cover as they wander to feed their cattle along grazing routes of thousands of kilometers. The children are already introduced into cattle rearing right from their names.

Similarly, Fowler (2012, p. 5) argues that there are value and expectations attached to naming systems. “The habit of finding moral meanings in all sorts of names led to their being regarded as ideals of behavior, especially for the bearer of the name,” added by Fowler. This means that there are meanings and logic attached to naming practices. The process is hardly arbitral. Many reasons abound to justify it. Fowler (2012, p. 4) opines that even for fictional writers, naming process could be a challenging task. Shakespeare, Henry Fielding, and Henry James had all relied on subscription lists and collected names from newspapers to find suitable names for their characters. In early Hausa fictional narratives, especially those written in the 1930s and 1940s, there are names common for characters whose behaviors deviate from the normative morality in the society. In many situations, the name of a character says something about the role they are to play in a literary text. This is a common tradition that could be observed in the early Hausa novels written in Roman scripts. They are full of charactonyms. Magana Jari Ce (1937) and Ruwan Bagaja (1934) by Abubakar Imam are examples of novels with charactonyms. However, this naming process has changed and is now continuously affected by the coloniality embedded in people’s thought today including literary writers. On the 18th of September 2021, I was a reviewer of a short story collection at the Katsina Books and Arts Festival held in Katsina State, Nigeria. It is titled Colours of the North (2021) by a young lady, Sodangi. All the characters are named after some fancy Arab words such as Nafi’ah, Reema, Nailatu, and Amalie. During our interactions, I was curious to know how she got these names and what they mean. She admitted that she searched and downloaded modern Arabic names from the internet. But she has no idea what they mean. But the paradox is that the short story is written to reveal the Colours of the North—the true shades of Northern Nigerian material reality but enveloped in disjointed, undefined charactonyms.

The discourse of naming system among the Hausa today

As part of its objectives, this paper draws attention to the knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy of Hausa indigenous naming system. It analyzes some indigenous names selected from the studies of Zurmi (2014, p. 31–33), DanMaigoro (2010, p. 158), and Ado (2012, p. 25–26). The paper proceeds with the presentation of some Arabic names used as part of Arab cultural coloniality now dominant in the region. The paper is structured into the following headings: Introduction, The discourse of naming system among the Hausa today, Hybridity in Hausa naming system, Indigenous naming system among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria, Arab names among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria, Arabic names as re-enactment of coloniality, and Conclusion that emphasizes the need for academic discussion on the importance of indigenous naming system in both formal and nonformal spaces. In general, this discussion calls for awareness in the decision of what form(s) of knowledge is useful for the society and can be adopted and adapted without reducing the indigenous practices to inferior status. This is important because “the project of decolonization must equally be a project of steering clear of this defensive and profoundly derivative ‘nativism’ in our scholarly work – but with the added recognition that this is not something that can be accomplished by simply deriding everything of the past as backward and irrational” (Nigam, 2020, p. 9). Reactionary argument in decolonial project fails in its mission when it becomes a nativist and cultural populism, as interestingly argued by Nigam (2020, p. 3–4) that:

After all, ‘decolonization’, beyond its immediate political sense, has often meant an inwardly directed search for some pure, uncontaminated indigenous self. […] But that search for a pure indigenous source turned out to be futile, leading only to violent attempts to get rid of ‘impurities’ that inevitably become part of life as it moves away from that pristine ‘source’. Thus, any search for a pure, unspoilt indigenous knowledge tradition is indeed a cul-de-sac to be avoided at all costs.

The arrival of Islam in Northern Nigeria saw the continued transformation of the society to comply with Islam as the dominant ideology. This transformation was pursued and intended to be wholly and thoroughly in all aspect of people’s lives. The Islamic revivalism registered by the reformation of the Sokoto Jihad in 1804 obliterated many of indigenous cultural practices of the time and reinscribed practices that are purely Islamic in nature and origin. The emergence of the Izala movement in the 1970s and 1980s reproduced similar attempts to redirect the society through the prism of Islam. This development saw “a greater gravitation towards acquiring more Islamic names” (Adamu, 2020, p. 13). Thus, it could be said that the increasing presence of Arab names, especially those not mentioned in the Qur’an, began in phases. The 1804 Islamic revivalism planted the seed of this practice. It was solidified by the influence of Tijjaniya order and the Izala movement from their emergence to the present. In fact, this practice was more glaring among the Izala adherents.

Onomasticians have established the tendency for strong connection between parents’ beliefs and the names of their children. Felecan and Bughesiu (2021, p. 4) argue that in many instances “the choice of a first name is determined by parents’ religious affiliation, by certain beliefs or superstitions that the bearer’s existence could be influenced in a favorable way.” This proposition applies in the Northern Nigerian context. Here, an ideological war is waged on many practices that were in the region before the arrival of Islam even when they are not necessarily forbidden in Islam. For example, Islam encourages the inscription of good and meaningful names on children with the hope that they take after what they have been named. The yardstick therefore does not lie in the language of naming but in the meaning registered by the name. Rooted in spirituality, naming people after the prophets mentioned in the Qur’an and after companions of the Prophet Muhammad became normative among Hausa people for centuries. Attributes of Allah are added in the naming process. This came to be so important that in rural areas; religious scholars are often given the responsibility of naming children. There were incidents where children were named with either phrases or names completely forbidden in Islam. This usually happened where the scholars had no knowledge of Arabic language but had memorized the Qur’an. There was a tradition of opening the Qur’an and naming the child after any first word noticed by the scholars. This tradition produced names such as “Lantana,” an abbreviated meaning of Lantana, meaning (You would not get) “Sayaqulu” (And (they) will say) “Alhaqqatu” (noun, an unavoidable reality), “La budda” (inevitable), Shamsiyya (adjective, of sunshine/with sunshine/attributed to the sun), and Mansiyya (the forgotten one).

Hybridity in Hausa naming system

It should be noted that the adoption of Arabic names, some of them with Hebrew origin, involved some modifications that adorned it with a local content to domesticate it as provided in Danmaigoro (2010, p. 160). This endeavor could be interpreted as subtle cultural resistance against pure Arabisation of the naming system. Some were morphologically altered to ease pronunciation. Examples are morphological processes such as elision in Ibrahim to Iro and Adamu to Ado. In other instances, the process foregrounds some form of elision or addition that deletes some consonants or segments of names to ease their pronunciation such as Mamman for Muhammad, Amadu for Ahmad, or vowel insertion in Mamuda for Mahmud. This practice demonstrates some decolonial efforts. The Hausas creatively insert their presence through modifications and adaptations of these names. In other words, the names were “Hausanised.” Another example of domestication are the names Hassan and Hussain used in the naming of twins even though the grandsons of Prophet Muhammad from whom these names were taken were not twins. The reverence for these two figures made it possible to borrow and adapt their names whenever twins are born into a family. The first to be born is named Hassan and the second Hussain for male twins. This is further extended to create the female versions of these names for Hassana and Hussaina for the first and second child respectively. Anyone born after twins, irrespective of gender, is named Gambo. These are still very common and could be found across families in both cities and rural areas. The process is similar among the Yoruba where there are babies who “pre-empt the elders and literally name themselves through the way in which they come into the world” (Oyěwùmí, 2016, p. 155).

There are still other occasions in which names are also transformed by adding some attributes in them that demonstrate adequate knowledge of the personalities of the original bearers of the name. In such situations, Hausa names emerged such as Gadanga for someone named Ali, after the companion and cousin of Prophet Muhammad. Gadanga stands for heroic deeds of Ali. The name Ali is often substituted with Gadanga. A similar process applies to Ado for Adam. Another example is Garba for Abubakar. “Garba” is about the lying position of the body of Abubakar, the companion of the Prophet. It is from Arabic “garb” (west) because Abubakar’s grave lies westward from that of the Prophet Muhammad. This process foregrounds the remaking of the structure of the names as part of their domestication. It could also be seen as a form of decolonial initiatives as it enabled the Hausa to modify these names. Today, there are situations where people name their children after Arabic days of the week with some modifications, for example: Danjuma/Jummai (born on a Friday for baby boy and girl respectively), Dan Asabe/Asabe (born on Saturday for baby boy and girl respectively), Danladi/Ladidi (born on Sunday for baby boy and girl respectively), Dantalata or Dantala/Talatu (born on Tuesday for baby boy and girl respectively), and Balarabe/Balaraba (born on Wednesday for baby boy and girl respectively). These names are derived from the prefix “Dan” or “son of” that already exists in Hausa. Although the names were originally Arabic, the format of the naming process existed in Hausa naming system that registered kinship relations already as could be seen in names such as Dantata (son of Tata), Dangote (son of Gote), Danbaba (son of Baba), and Dankaka (son of Kaka), among others. In these examples, children are named as attachments to their aunts, uncles, etc. In Hausa, there were frequent usages of hypocoristic to indicate kinship relations, as age identifiers, to express “affection, endearment, warmth, and a positive attitude towards the person referred to” (Newman & Ahmad, 1992, p. 163). However, this process is becoming less and less frequent with the sustained culture of becoming more Arabic and therefore “more Islamic.”

Indigenous naming system among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria

Isma’ila and Abubakar, (2016), classify the Hausa indigenous names into four categories: names of time in which a child is born; names associated with certain circumstances, material and otherwise, in which a child is born; names associated with weather conditions; and names related to the physical conditions of the child.

Table 1 contains Hausa indigenous names and the knowledge associated with their bearers. They are provided in the studies of Zurmi (2014, p. 31–33), DanMaigoro (2010, p. 158) and Ado (2012, p. 25–26).

Table 1 Hausa indigenous names
Full size table

As could be observed from the table above, indigenous names among the Hausa embody knowledge about their temporal and spatial settings, their forms of social relationships, history, identity, and expectations on the named child. Koopman, (2002, p. 17) states that “[t]o Euro-Western thought generally, a name is not part of a person or a personality. The name is a ‘label’, a ‘tag’, something to be used in reference to a person, but no more than that.” In Hausa naming systems, a name is beyond a label for identification. It forms part of one’s personality. It should be noted that in remote areas, these names could still be found as nicknames. They serve as unofficial names that usually become more popular than the Islamic inclined official names. Many people often live and die with their proper or official names unknown. They would only be known with their nicknames from birth to death. This happens because the unofficial names have been used since birth to address the person. The official ones are employed in official documents only. If the person is not fortunate to attend a modern Western school, the official name would never be of use then. Thus, there are several reasons that influence choices of names within the Hausa indigenous systems. This is not only applicable to Hausa society. In other spaces, naming could even be political as argued by Nyambi and Mangena (2016, p. 5). They explore the politics of naming practices in the post-apartheid South Africa. They foreground the importance of personal, collective, and national identities associated with naming systems.

In the examples given above, one can see the efforts by Hausa people to make sense of their world. Some of these are related to the understanding of temporality and spatiality. They embody perspective about the seasons in which people are born. They also delineate one’s position in the larger extended family where affinity to kinship is a revered tradition. These names are also sites for the knowledge of gender perception and relationships. One could see what gender of the child is needed and at what point. Faith or belief is also an integral part of Hausa world’s sense. There is adequate consciousness in the role of the supernatural in one’s personal life. Childbirth is also an important occasion for a family so much that a child could be named after the experience of the mother during delivery for instance, in the case of Shekarau/Shekara (male/female) who spent a whole year (shekara) in the womb and Arzika where a prolonged labor was experienced or Tunau or Kyauta where all hope of conception is lost before the mother becomes pregnant, (Ado, 2012, p. 25). Each of these examples is a layer of knowledge that is slowly becoming extinct in the society’s quest for modernization or Arabisation. In addition, these examples demonstrate that names are central to the overall understanding of life and all its ramifications in the society. As argued by Roff (2007, p. 386) that “names, like other aspects of culture, contain discourses that link them to social, political, economic, and religious institutions.”

According to Adamu (2020, p. 4), the indigenous naming system that registered the personal history, birth diary, and cultural epistemologies is gradually neglected since its root goes back to the pagan era of pre-Islamic Hausa land. However, of recent, names in this category began to be considered with disdain. They are associated with traditionality against modernity, with paganism against Islam, and therefore meaningless. Adamu (2020, p. 5) argues further that “while indigenous Hausa names are not derived from Islam, they are not unislamic.” But they are generally understood as such in order to set hierarchy with Arabic names considered to be superior. The bearer of Arabic name is considered more modern since that name is associated with the present-day middle class Muslim families who consider themselves modern and educated in Western ways. A child growing up with an indigenous name in a city can easily be bullied for having a pagan name since the name cannot be traced to prophets, the pious people or simply that the name is not Arabic. This could be attributed to the fact that children are mostly unaware of their indigenous Hausa history. The indigenous body of knowledge itself is often branded as superstition. This relationship to the traditional or indigenous names becomes more complicated with their retention by the Hausa non-Muslims, the Maguzawa or the Hausa pagans or “the non-Muslim Hausa” (Barkow, 1973, p. 59), who are still present across communities in Northern Nigeria. The Maguzawa are considered the original Hausa people who retain the pre-Islamic Hausa culture in its entirety including magic, superstition, and other practices often pejoratively labeled as “animist practices” in the region. They refused to completely drop the indigenous names, but in many instances, they retain part of them even when they convert to Christianity and ceased to be pagans. Another interesting thing about them is that they embody a hybrid of Islam, Christianity, and indigenous Hausa culture in their naming system. They exemplify what Mazrui (1983, p. 114) calls “the triple political and cultural heritage of the African continent – the indigenous, the Islamic and the Western.” One person can have three names from the three different traditions. This made it possible to treat these names with disdain since they are considered the preserved of non-Muslims Maguzawa or Hausa Christians.

Oyěwùmí (2016) studies a naming system among the Yoruba in Nigeria where she argues that “Muslim converts as much as Christians saw indigenous names as ‘paganish,’ they did not need much motivation to move away from them” (p. 200). This is very much similar with indigenous names considered heathenish among Hausa Muslims in Northern Nigeria. But it is a different case with the Hausa Christians in the region. They are majorly able to incorporate both indigenous, Muslims and Christian names. I have encountered students with names like Tina Mala’ika Sa-riga (Tina: Christian, Mala’ika: Islamic, and Sa-riga: indigenous). The indigenous forms part of their identities that go back to centuries before the arrival of Islam in the region. They are open enough to also admit names associated with Muslims in the region due to their proximity and associations with Hausa Muslims. Many of their settlements saw an increased contestation for conversion by both Muslims and Christians. In situations where they are converted to Christianity, they often add a Western name in addition to their indigenous and Muslims names to assert their adherence to Christianity.

Thus, through the intensification and deepening of Arabic culture that is conflated with Islam, another form of knowledge production is currently being thwarted. When Islam brought Arab literacy in Northern Nigeria, scholars were able to modify Arabic letters to write in Hausa and Fulfulde languages to foreground another form of literacy known as Ajami that became typical in the region. It thrived in scholarship, commerce etc., even among ordinary people before British colonialism destroyed it through different colonial policies. Indigenous names are now on the extinct thanks to social pressure to become wholly Arabic as part of an extension of becoming Muslim. However, few exception is found in people who combined both local and Arabic names as noted by Oyěwùmí (2016, p. 206), who is of the view that, “this pairing of local names with Arabic ones is not just a Yoruba phenomenon: it has also been identified in Fulbe and Wolof communities in Senegal and in Hausa communities in Nigeria.” But this creativity is facing threats even among the Yoruba as asserted by Oyěwùmí (2016, p. 206).

Arab names among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria

This paper acknowledges that the transfer from Hausa indigenous naming to naming from Islamic sources or Arabic culture is both positive and negative in different ways. In situations where the adopted names are taken after prophets, the companions of Prophet Muhammad, then it could be understood as the extension and accommodation of Islamic epistemologies into the Hausa society. The stories of the personalities of these names are usually recalled whenever the bearers of the names arrived. In addition to the expectation that the bearers would emulate the good manners and saintly behavior of these personalities, which is the hallmark of the Islamic naming process. It is also another way of retelling the life and experiences of prophets, companions of Prophet Muhammad, and other pious people. Through this manner, the reverence of the personalities whose names are borrowed, and the importance attached to these names, children are taught many things about morality and other etiquettes as lived by these personalities. The lives of pious people are in constant sort of “reincarnation” in the bodies of other people. Their experiences are relived in people who acquire their names and who are expected to strive to emulate them. The bearers are usually informed about the names they bear—including the origins, the good qualities of the original bearers of the names, and what they are expected to do in order to live a pious life. This is one of the ways to disperse knowledge and experiences that could mold the character of the bearer of such names. People are also named from the names and attributes of Allah. The prefix “Abdul” male servant and “Amat” female servant are added before these names and attributes to create a servant of Allah. This is also from the inherited system of the Arabs. Many of these examples are ubiquitous in today’s Northern Nigeria.

However, the problem is where everything Arabic is conflated with Islam. Despite the unique relationship between Islam and Arabic language, not everything Arabic is Islamic. I have noticed that this conflation is becoming widespread especially among the middle-class families who have some Western education and still want to preserve their religious identity. The names register particular social class of the bearers’ parents. Here, fashion and appeal to or belonging to a social class sometimes informed the choices of these names not their religiosity. Even parents who do not belong to the middle and upper class aspire to be there through this fashionable naming process. This practice falls within the classification offered by Fowler (2012, p. 20) that “[f]ashions of naming are not just a matter of liking but of class affiliation or aspirations.” They adopt Arabic names that have not been from any religious saint. Most of these names are considered fashionable. It becomes problematic because sometimes the names do not signify anything in terms of knowledge or identity of their bearers. The indigenous names treated with disdain are much more meaningful than some of these names taken from Arabic. People find it funny when they have the Arabic names translated to them into Hausa. They will never imagine naming their children in the Hausa translation. But they accept the Arabic names because they think they are meaningful even when they are clearly not. Fowler (2012, p. 22) sees a similar pattern in naming practices among the English in the United Kingdom today and concludes that “[i]n our time, naming seems to have reached a new depth of irresponsibility.”

Thus, what is obvious in the naming practices among the Hausa in Northern Nigeria could be interpreted as a conflation of Arabic language and culture with Islam. There is continued glorification of Arab culture in the region, often at the expense of indigenous Hausa culture. An Arabic sounding name is generally considered Islamic among many people who are not grounded in the knowledge of Islam and Arabic language. Through this process, as would be shown later in this paper, many names are popular today among Hausa without their bearers knowing their meanings. These names are not traced to any historical personality in Islam, which means that they do not follow the common tradition espoused by the religion. They also do not contain something positive that the person could be hoped to grow up to become. They also have no relationships with the circumstances of the birth of their bearers. What happens here is the appeal to the sonority of their sounds to the hearers. They are arbitrarily chosen by the parents. In most cases, they are ordinary names for ordinary things used in Arabic settings. There are other moments where these names could be found among the Arabs. But they are very similar to the indigenous names of Hausa naming system. People are named after certain things related to either their birth circumstances, a birth diary, or the material condition of the family they are born into. In Table 2, some of these names are provided here and their meaning. They are typically found among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria today.

Table 2 Some popular Arabic names and their meanings
Full size table

Arabic names as re-enactment of coloniality

As a recent trend, some of the names above are used as nicknames, especially the first two examples above. This happens when the child is named after any of the grandparents. In the Hausa tradition, it is disrespectful to call one’s parents or in-laws by their names. In this circumstance, these names are adopted instead of the proper names that would later be used in formal situations. However, there are moments when these names are used as proper names. As can be seen in the translation, these names do not say something meaningful in the thoughts and philosophy of Hausa people about their world, about their environment, or personal history. There is no correlation between the name, and anything associated with the child, the bearer of it. The name plays no role other than mere identification. Nothing about the bearer could be deciphered in the name. There is often an embarrassment when people are asked what some of these names mean. Even though the indigenous system assigns animal names to people, but the animals are very specific, and the practice is very rare. They are usually animals that register physical prowess, braveness, or an overwhelming energy such as lion, or elephant. The bearers of these Arabic names are usually not aware of the meanings of these names given to them by their parents. There is no connection between the names and their bearers. Through this process, a body of knowledge is on the extinct. It is being replaced and buried by another system of naming through which almost nothing could be learnt (Adamu, 2020, p. 13). This is an example of epistemicides “the destruction of an immense variety of ways of knowing that prevail mainly on the other side of the abyssal line” (Santos, 2018, p. 8). The practice is not epistemic nomadism. It is a situation where meaningfulness is being replaced by meaninglessness.

Similarly, in the examples above, there are places where the indigenous names that were repressed staged a return in the Arabic language. Names such as Fahad (cheetah), and Furera/Hurera (cat), are associated with the very culture of pagan Hausa which is earlier branded as “heathenish.” Another example is Saif (sword). Any child named after these in the Hausa translation would attract attention if not outright rejection, among the larger family or the community, especially in urban centers across Northern Nigeria. There are also instances where these names do not signify anything. For instance, “Ismuha” ought to be a beginning of a sentence, when one is asked the child’s name. This also suggests lack of knowledge of basic Arabic despite the urgency to appeal to it. These practices are direct consequences of cultural colonialism that transplanted Arab culture as an accompanying product of Islam in Northern Nigeria.

Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated that there is a need to resuscitate the Hausa indigenous naming system that is encroached by the quest for modernity which is equaled with becoming more Arab. It presented the knowledge embedded in the indigenous names and the absence of meaning associated with names commonly found among people especially middle-class families across towns and cities in Northern Nigeria today. Hausa indigenous names embody the Hausa people’s sense of their world and of their geography, their cosmology, their understanding of climate, philosophy, beliefs, values, and hopes for the future. The names also register the relationship between Hausa people and the nature around them. The names are also sites for the exploration of social relations in a society that values kinship relations. These names also foreground gender roles and expectations in relations to childbirth. They are part and parcel of the identity and well-being of a Hausa person. A decolonial view of these names would bring attention to them and remove the pejorative gaze imposed on them because of Arab cultural colonialism. The foregrounding of this discourse in academic spaces would also encourage people to maintain their indigenous names and to encourage others to return to their usage. This is important because the academia is a space with the power to shape narratives, to foreground ideas and question beliefs and practices rooted in coloniality and relevant in the everyday experiences of the people. Cultural decolonization is as good and relevant as political and economic ones. It restores the dignity and completes the humanness of a people with a colonial history. This paper also hopes to encourage more debates on naming systems so that the society becomes more and more conscious of names given to children and their meanings in the Northern Nigerian religious and cultural spaces.