Trois Cents Noms de Personnes Lega: Au-Dela des Figures

Abstract

This paper aims at describing and analysing the personal names of the Lega people in Eastern Zaire. While a person's name is generally thought to designate a specific person, it also stands as a symbol of the thought of the community to which he belongs, and makes the designated person a kind of monument which reminds the people of the experience at a particular period of their history. A total of 300 personal names are collected among the Lega and the messages conveyed by these names are decoded. Then the names are classified into 64 types according to the meaning they convey. Besides the description of personal names as message, more than 140 Lega proverbs are also presented. It is pointed out that a study of the Lega personal names should necessarily involve a study of their proverbs. The latter serves as the ground for further research of the Lega language, mainly proverbial language which takes a special form of speech and is spoken exclusively by adult men.