A morphological analysis of Sukuma place names: A case of primary school names in Shinyanga, Tanzania

Abstract

Place names are vital language forms as they are entrenched with data about their ethnic origins. They are crucial linguistic, historical, geographical, and socio-cultural data sources. A growing body of evidence suggests that place names have been studied mainly from a semantic standpoint. Studies focusing on the morphological analysis of place names are limited. This denies onomasticians access to knowledge regarding the structures and processes forming place names in many languages. This paper examines the morphological aspects of Sukuma place names, mainly names of primary schools in Shinyanga Rural District, Shinyanga Region, Tanzania, to uncover their underlying structural patterns and the word-formation processes. The data for this study were 125 names of primary schools found in the Shinyanga Rural District, collected through the documentary review method. The collected names were subjected to morphological analysis by decomposing them into constituent morphemes to establish their structures and word formation processes. The findings indicate that Sukuma place names minimally consist of a noun or verb stem, though most are composed of a prefix and a noun or verb stem. The study further establishes that Sukuma speakers use inflection, derivation, and compounding strategies to form place names. The results of this study support the view that names, like other words in a language, have elaborate linguistic structures that can be analysed morphologically. It is concluded that the structure of place names is as significant as the motivational factors for place naming in determining or contributing to the meaning of a place name.