An ethnolinguistic study of Niitsitapi personal names

Abstract

This dissertation examines the uses, functions, and meaningfulness of traditional personal names and naming practices in Niitsitapi (Blackfoot Indian) culture. The current study indicates that Niitsitapi personal names appear to play a major role in capturing and conveying various aspects of traditional Niitsitapi sociocultural knowledge. Niitsitapi personal names thus appear to form an integral part of Niitsitapi oral tradition, and also seem to play a powerful role in establishing and maintaining Niitsitapi conceptualisations of individual, as well as social and cultural, identity. This dissertation supports the position that, in addition to their nominative function, names contain and communicate sociocultural meaning, based on their associations with a wide range of non-linguistic factors which form part of the sociocultural environment within which they are used. The methodological approach stresses the importance of studying personal names in cultural context and strongly emphasises the use of indigenous knowledge as a means of explaining personal naming phenomena from a native cultural perspective.