Personal Names as Repositories of Communal History and Circumstance among the Igala People of Kogi State

Abstract

Personal names among African communities function as durable instruments of memory, holding within a single word the conflict, migration, reconciliation and communal occurrence that shaped the moment of a child's birth; this premise underlies the paper, Personal Names as Repositories of Communal History and Circumstance among the Igala people of Kogi State. The paper attempted to identify the categories of communal history and circumstance encoded in Igala personal names, examined the processes by which such names are assigned in relation to family and communal conditions surrounding birth, and assess the extent to which this historical content is presently preserved or eroded among Igala bearers in Kogi State. Halbwachs's Social Memory Theory was adopted as the guiding framework, treating personal names as social instruments through which a community relocates and sustains its past. A systematic review methodology, structured according to the PRISMA 2020 guideline, was employed, drawing on twelve verified scholarly sources retained after a staged process of identification, screening and eligibility assessment. Findings showed that Igala names encode identifiable categories of communal experience, including conflict, migration and reconciliation; that naming is assigned through an interpretive, communally witnessed process rather than private parental choice; and that indigenous naming content is undergoing measurable erosion among urban and elite bearers, though comparative evidence suggests deliberate maintenance can sustain such content even beyond the ancestral territory. The paper concluded that Igala personal names remain a viable, though weakening, repository of communal history, and recommended deliberate documentation, community-based naming education and further empirical fieldwork within Kogi State.