Personal Names in Bassari Society

Abstract

An area spanning the Senegal-Guinean border is home to a people called the Bassari, who call themselves alian (pl. bulian). The Bassari are cultivators whose staple crops are millet, earthpeas, peanuts, rice, fonio and corn. They also engage in fishing, hunting, bee-keeping and other activities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe eight types of personal names in Bassari society, to study the differences between these eight names and to examine the relation between names and the individuals who bear them.

Section 2 describes the eight names in detail.

Sections 3 and 4 examine the notion of “meaning” of names.

Section 5 analyzes the relation between names and the individual.

Section 6 describes the name-giving practice at the initiation ceremony and then argues that boys in Bassari society become adults through “pluralizing” their names.

This practice of pluralizing names seems now to be changing under the influence of the dominant ethnic groups in Senegal.

The final section attempts to analyze what this change is exactly and concludes that it is not solely a change in “social identity” but also a change in people’s “mode of existence.”