Onomastic aspects of Zulu nicknames with special reference to source and functionality

Abstract

Nicknames have been analysed, recorded and processed in many diverse ways by different languages, scholars and communities. In Zulu, many works of similar type have all been the size of an article up until 1999. This research on the subject is one of the first done in this depth. Nicknames form part of a Zulu person's daily life. They identify him/her more than the real or legal name. They shape him/her more than any other mode of address. They influence behaviour, personality, interaction based activities and the general welfare of an individual. They discipline, they praise, they mock too. Surprisingly, they are regarded as play items. They are even termed playnames (izidlaliso). But they are as serious as any item that makes an individual to be a significant figure in the community. They are unique in the sense that they stick more obstinately on the victim should he/she try to get rid of them. They are capable of staying for life. They only vanish to give others a chance to feature on the same individual. They are so poetic. A talented onomastician can tell a full story about an individual without him grabbing what is being said about him just because the story is spiced with just a single figurative nickname. They haunt the whole arena of the parts of speech in a language, especially the Zulu language. They modify the well known meaning of words into special references that paint in bright colours the character of an individual. Zulu nicknames processes visit all possible languages and adapt items from into Zuluised special terms that a capable of inheriting an onomastic status. They originate even from the most sensitive sources like people's private lives. The only challenging area about nicknames is that bearers do not want to expose them to peale who are not known to them, even if they do not fall into a category of nicknames for ridicule. Finally, nicknames have been exposed here as linguistic items that organise the community into makers and bearers, and then users of nicknames.