Category Lexicography

April 15, 2018 by Kola Tubosun

It’s Time for an Online Yorùbá Dictionary

At least once a week these days, someone tags me on a post on Facebook, or on a tweet, asking for the meaning of a Yorùbá word. Often, it will be a word I know and I can help explain. In other times, it would be a word of whose meaning I’m not sure, or of whose meaning I’d been searching myself for a while. In the latter cases, I re-share the query to my friends, colleagues, and social media acquaintances, and in a few hours, we are usually able to find the meaning. It is usually an experience that leaves me more educated or enlightened than I previously was.

Over the last couple of years, as my reputation grew online as someone, even if mildly, competent in Yorùbá language, culture, and lexicography, so has the frequency of these interactions all around social media, with friends, and often times with random strangers confident that my knowledge would be enough to save the day or point them in the right direction. It’s not a totally misplaced confidence (since, even when I’m ignorant, I have sufficient background and connection to find what they’re looking for, or direct them to the right place), but it had also eaten into my own personal space and time.

And so, a few years ago, after we launched YorubaName.com as a first multimedia dictionary of names, the idea of another multimedia dictionary of Yorùbá language began to weigh in my mind. It was disturbing that there was no reliable place online where one could find the meaning of Yorùbá words. There are printed dictionaries with varying competence, scattered websites, and projects all around the web for sure, but none of them was comprehensive, free, easily accessible, and with a multimedia component. This last part has turned out to be very important in helping those who use YorubaName.com figure out how the names are pronounced – especially for foreigners encountering them for the first time. It is also a part that published books are unable to replicate.

However, even more interestingly for me, a student of language in general, I began to be disturbed by the absence of a Yorùbá-Yorùbá dictionary anywhere at all. All the Yorùbá dictionaries I had seen or bought or used since I’d been interested in the subject were bilingual, such that one could call them translation dictionaries. They are good to have if the aim was for users to translate their thoughts into English or meant only for users who spoke English alone and merely wanted to know the meaning of a Yorùbá word they’d come across, but not for much else. This is not an exclusively Yorùbá problem, I should point out. Everywhere the word “Yorùbá” is used in this essay, one could easily replace it with “Igbo” or “Hausa” or “Fulfude” or “Esan” and it would still be relevant, sometimes even in a worse way for some of these languages.

And so, we have decided to expand into a more ambitious lexicography project: a fully multimedia dictionary of Yorùbá that is free, open, accessible, comprehensive, and – importantly – monolingual. What this means is that while the definition of the words will have English translations/interpretations present (I guess that makes it monolingual-bilingual dictionary), it won’t be its primary feature. Users will be able to use the dictionary to understand what Yorùbá words mean in a different language (English/French/German/etc), but its focus will be in defining words in Yorùbá for speakers (and learners) of the language. Thus, instead of a traditionally Yorùbá-English dictionary, this will be a Yorùbá-Yorùbá-English (where English can be expanded to French/German/Portuguese etc later). It will also be multimedia, with a chance to embed photographs, audios, and videos.

There are many reasons for this focus on Yorùbá-Yorùbá first. First, we have always believed that development comes from innovation and that innovation cannot happen when one cannot think properly in their mother tongue. So empowering a Nigerian language, starting with Yorùbá, for which we have a volunteer team on the ground, to properly cope with the 21st-century reality is the first step in this direction. Some state governments around Nigeria (like Lagos) are already empowering their educational sectors to use local languages as a medium of instruction. This is a good thing. Creating more tools that are universally available and accessible to everyone with an internet connection will complement these new efforts and empower speakers of these languages to better understand their language and innovate with it. Think of an Igbo dictionary with Igbo definitions. Same for Edo or Berom or Ibani. Having these tools available online will also help these languages better interact with technology – a problem that has plagued many African languages since the invention of the world wide web.

And so, let me introduce you to our new project at www.YorubaWord.com and www.OroYoruba.com.

This will be the first of its kind that is crowdsourced, multimedia, and free to use. The crowdsourcing element, just like for YorubaName.com, will ensure that users are also part of the data-gathering team and our first feedback mechanism. New words will be added by users searching for them as well as by the in-house lexicographers and our collaborative researchers. Along with the aid of other resources from published materials and archives from over many decades of scholarship, we hope that this becomes the primary place for learning about Yorùbá words. The element of English incorporated as a complementary feature will also help this work function as a translation dictionary for those who might need it.

As with our earlier projects, there will also be sister projects with other Nigerian languages as soon as we find volunteer lexicographers and other kinds of support to bring them to life. For this, we have also bought IgboWord.com, HausaWord.com, and a few others. Earlier this year, we got an $8000 endowment from a Nigerian couple towards the Yorùbá aspect of this effort, which is why it is the first language to take off. We are still seeking other collaborations.

Our work at YorubaName has always been an intervention in the cultural space as a way to open up an underrated industry of African language technology and empower cultural enthusiasts, developers, scholars, and others, to document local knowledge in technologically accessible formats and empower us to better fit in the modern age. This was why we created a text-to-speech project in November 2017 at www.ttsYoruba.com and to help to pronounce the names in the Names Dictionary. It is why we released a free tonemarking software for Igbo and Yorùbá, and it is also why we are currently working to create artificial speech recognition solutions for Nigerian languages. It is why we are supporting efforts to create IgboName.com as a sister site to YorubaName.com. It is why we will continue to explore opportunities, in business, civil society, education, technology, and others, to empower our languages and cultures, and help them thrive in this century and into the next.

We continue to rely on your support. You can continue to reach us at project@yorubaname.com or donate to the project using this paypal link. Meanwhile, you can follow the new project at www.YorubaWord.com and at http://www.twitter.com/YorubaWord. New volunteers are welcome too.

March 24, 2017 by Kola Tubosun

Of Names, Like Puzzles

I had a colleague in my last employment whose name was “Osokomaiya”. I’m deliberately leaving that unmarked for tone because that was how I first encountered it. But when I started hearing it pronounced, there were variations, from “Oṣókòmaiyà” to “Ọ̀ṣọ́kòmaiyà”. The latter is correct, by the way, but I also didn’t know it at the time, confused by the different ways in which the name was rendered to my uninitiated ear.

Last week, I asked him for the meaning of the name. After a few hours of waiting, he sent his response. The name, he said, meant “Adornment does not catch me unawares”: Ọ̀ṣọ́ ò kò mí l’áyá, which more accurately can be interpreted as “Adornment doesn’t overwhelm me.” It is an Ìjẹ̀bú name, but the etymology makes it likely to be borne in Ìjẹṣà and Èkìtì precincts as well.

What fascinated me about the discovery, however, was how knowing one name suddenly opened up another. For a while, a name “Olúkòmaiyà” had stayed queued up in our dashboard awaiting indexing. But because no one could figure out what it meant, it had remained there in waiting. By solving “Ọ̀ṣọ́kòmaiyà”, Olúkòmaiyà was easier to figure out: “Prominence/leadership does not overwhelm me.”

So I’ve been thinking of the process of decoding the meaning of names as similar to the process of solving a puzzle. What makes a puzzle interesting is that one clue usually leads to another and to another, until everything that once seems difficult opens up with ease. The example of Ọ̀ṣọ́kòmaiyà was only the recent one. A while ago, I had a similar experience with a name “Ariyehun” which, where I first encountered it in writing, seemed Yorùbá, but whose outward appearance lent nothing about its meaning until clues came from very unlikely sources.

Where I grew up in Ìbàdàn, one of our neighbours had a daughter named Ọlátóún. Until I became an adult, I had no idea what the name meant. So one day, while working, I found an entry in an old dictionary that defined it as “Wealth/nobility is worth rejoicing over”: Ọlá-tó-hún. Until then, I had no idea that “hún” was a Yorùbá word, and that it meant “rejoicing” or “celebrating” as it did in this case. The name Tóún is a typical Ìjẹ̀bú name, which explains the relative obscurity of the meaning, if not the name itself.

Figuring out what “hún” meant made the meaning of “Ọláníhún” even clearer. Even though it is a name that is borne almost all around Yorùbá land, most people (sometimes even those bearing it) have found it hard to break it down to its component parts. Or maybe I speak only for myself. In any case, it was now easier to understand either “Ọlá-ní-n-hún” (Wealth/nobility asked me to rejoice/celebrate) or “Ọlá-ní-ohun-hún” (Wealth/nobility has found something to celebrate). Either way, the puzzle was solved. Same for Adéníhún, etc.

So, one day, I returned to “Aríyehún” and the problem was solved without much effort. It is “a-rí-iye-hún: one who sees mother(s) and rejoices” and it made all the sense in the world. Also an Ìjẹ̀bú name, this turned out to be the direct equivalent of the name bearing the same meaning in standard Yorùbá: “Aríyàáyọ̀”. Many more names with “hún” in them fell open without any push, like “Aróyèhún”, a name I would have pronounced differently had I not encountered the relevant background information.

Maybe this is why I enjoy working here, on names. Rather than reach for a 3×3 Rubik’s Cube and solve a puzzle I’ve solved many times over, it is sometimes more delightful to sit back and try to understand the working of Yorùbá names, many of which I’ve taken for granted for a number of years. I’m sure it feels the same way, perhaps even with more pleasant rewards, in other languages.

What is your experience?

December 16, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

“Èṣù” isn’t “the Devil”; But You Knew That Already

Since readers of this blog have been fascinated with the last two posts on the etymology of common Yorùbá root morphemes, we might as well tackle the big and most controversial one: Èṣù.

Born into old Yorùbá mythology, lionized in the various Odù Ifá as a trickster god of some sort, servant to many of the other dominant gods, Èṣù enjoyed his run as a clown and Falstaff known for his mischief as well as an amorphous personality determined by situation, master, or purpose. He was not a harmless fellow, to be clear, but his character was usually determined by a lot more things than “good/evil” or “death/life” or “heaven/hell”. Then came Christianity.

I haven’t read enough about Nigeria’s pre-colonial missionary days to know the process by which certain expressions were agreed upon as representing specific ideas in the new Christian religion. (Please feel free to suggest in the comment below which books I should read for this purpose). But we know that when Bishop Àjàyí Crowther and his team decided on rendering the famous Biblical character known as Satan or Devil into Yorùbá, they settled on Èṣù, the Yorùbá trickster god. With the benefit of hindsight, the choice made some sense. To the new converts hoping to leave behind a culture in which one god wielded a lot of power to make or mar relationships depending on who was paying the bills or – as I’ll illustrate below – on the innate character of the people un/fortunate enough to interact with him, this was the perfect fall guy (or “fall god”, if we’re being technical). The Yorùbá had no conceptualization of heaven or hell as Christians did, so had no “devil” or “hell”. But since the bible needed translation and the missionary journey needed its fervent converts, Èṣù took the fall and acquired a new role.

I was once asked on Facebook, by the author Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà, the following question: ‘Why do the Yoruba say “Èṣù má ṣe mí, ọmọ ẹlòmíi ni o ṣe” when he is such a harmless just-slightly mischievous fellow, so useful at helping us understand the contradictions of our lives?’ Here was my response, in full:

There is a famous story of Èṣù in his most mischievous element, one day walking on the street and (perhaps bored) deciding to confound two friends who had displayed what he considered an irritating level of public affection for each other. What he did was to wear an outfit that had two different colours on each side, one part red and the other black. But the colours were split such that each was on two sides of his body – the red on the right and the black on the left. For some reason, the friends didn’t see him until he walked right between them, so each only saw one colour. But as soon as he had gone and disappeared, they began to argue between each other about what colour the stranger wore. One said “red” while the other said “black”, and the argument degenerated. Needless to say, that was the end of the “friendship”. What’s the lesson here? I don’t know. Perhaps, that you never really know how friendly you are with one person until you’ve had a disagreement, or that if you let a difference in perspectives change who you are, then you were never close in the first place. What I took away, referring to your question, is that the Yorùbá often wish never to be subjected to such test, not because it is always harmful, but because it can sometimes have unintended consequences. But as far as Èṣù is concerned, he’s just providing just one more way to test what we’ve agreed upon as conventional truth.

Anyway, since the Holy Bible became our primary source of interpreting this new foreign idea, the language adapted to it, with everything evil becoming associated with “Èṣù”. If you didn’t go to church, or did things that the church frowned upon, you were “ọmọ Èṣù”. It was probably also helpful that it contrasted easily with “ọmọ Jésù” which is the good child, son of Jesus”. Jésù, the saviour, was on one side, and Èṣù, the devil, the accursed one, was on the other. Eventually, all those previously named with Èṣù began to change their names. If the psychological bullying of the Pentecostal movement didn’t get you, your mates in school, who came from Christian homes and knew of Èṣù only in that one context of the church, would ensure that you make required changes.

Names like Èṣùbíyìí (Èṣù gave birth to this) or Ẹṣùgbadé (Èṣù received royalty) slowly disappeared from use, to be found only in literature and television. Even in the case of the latter, children were warned off too much familiarity with such forms of entertainment with the worry that one might get tainted by that contagious evil. Others just changed them to Olúbíyìí or Olúgbadé. See previous post on Olú.

But there was a slight break. Crowther and his other translators, for some reason, decide to translate “Deliver us from evil” as “Gbà wá lọ́wọ́ bìlísì”. Bìlísì was a Yorùbá corruption of Iblis, which is the Arabic word for evil and had also entered the Yorùbá vocabulary due to Hausa/Arabic influence from the north. That was fine. But why wasn’t it used in all all the other cases where “Devil” or “Satan” needed translation help? “Satan” sometimes was translated as “Sàtánì”, which was good, but in popular usage Èṣù became more famous than them all.

In October 2015, before I started working at Google, I was tagged by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina on Facebook about someone who wanted to know why Google Translate had “Devil” and “Satan” translated as “Èṣù” when they were not the same thing. I answered that it was probably the fault of earlier translators of the bible where Google engineers likely got their data. I began working at Google later that year but totally forgot about the tag.

Then sometime in January 2016, something else brought the issue to my attention. I was now an employee of the company and now ostensibly in a position to make a change. The idea that generations of Yorùbá children/readers and non-speakers would grow up getting a wrong impression if all they had was Google Translate to learn from felt very disturbing. Technology was replacing books anyway, and we needed it to better represent the culture.

At the time, however, I had no idea that I could do anything about it. My role in at Google was on a totally different project. Google Translate is manned, contrary to what people outside think, not by linguists but by engineers. And I didn’t know that I could convince these guys who worked many miles and time zones away to pay attention to something seemingly mild, and with agreed-upon roots in the foundation of Yorùbá literacy. But it turned out that I could, and I did.

For ideas, I crowdsourced an open conversation on my Facebook page about prospects of each new translation suggestion. And a week later, the translate engine had begun to reflect a more acceptable approximation of evil/devil/Satan in Yorùbá to users of that Google service. I made a tongue-in-cheek post to that effect on January 16th: “Early this morning in Mountain View California,” it read, “the trickster Èsù was relieved of its perceived demonic duties.”

Èṣù now translates as Èṣù, devil as Bìlísì, and Satan as Sàtánì, and Demon as ànjọ̀nú (also with an arabic Etymology). Only fair. The tone marking on the translations were the cherry on top. I wish all the Yorùbá words in the machine had tone marks, but that would mean replacing the engineers behind Google Translate with actual linguists. A long shot.

Now this probably would not change the public perception of what had taken generations to ingrain, but one hopes that it might begin a new way of restoring the true role of what was just another character in the Yorùbá religious pantheon in the public consciousness. At least one way of being true to the word’s cultural and linguistic history.

____

Postscript

A year or so after I left Google, people started pointing out to me that the translations had reverted to Devil, Demon, and Satan for Èṣù. Being out of the system, I couldn’t do anything about it. I returned to Google in February of 2019 as NLP Linguist for African Languages, and the original changes are back, hopefully for good this time.

in General / Language / Lexicography 8 comments

December 15, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

“Olú” isn’t (Always) “God/Lord” Either

After the last blog post examining the common misunderstanding of the Yorùbá root word “Ọlá”, I realised that there are more of these root morphemes whose meanings are not often clear among native speakers, and subsequently among non-native speakers.

One of these is “Olú” commonly translated as “Lord” or “God”, but which is not always deserving of such a simple reading.

Like “Ọlá”, there are instances where “Olú” could be a short form of “olúwa” which, in many cases, refer to lord/master. e.g. “Olúwa mi. Olówó orí mi…” said by a woman to her man is believed to be a term of endearment: my lord and owner/master. (Sorry, feminists).

But in translating the Bible into Yorùbá in the early/late nineteenth century, the word olúwa was used generously to refer to “the Lord” Jesus Christ, and it took a different meaning. “Olúwa” (especially written with capital letters) became identified only with the son of God, and “Olúwa Ọlọ́run” (Genesis 2:7) as God him/herself.

Written in small letters, it continued to be used as “lord”, a term of endearment, but also a generic word for “individual”. e.g. Ta ni olúwa rẹ̀ to ń pariwo níbẹ̀ yẹn? (Who is the individual making noises there?). In most cases where it is used in the latter case, it is often in anger: Ta l’olúwa rẹ̀!?

In all the cases listed above, Olúwa/olúwa is written and used in full, with no abbreviations.

But before the generous use of olúwa in the bible, children have been named with “Olú” as a root morpheme for many generations. And in these instances, it meant something far away from the Christian “lord” and “saviour”. It simply meant “prominence” or “prominent one” or “head”; anything signifying of stardom or elevation of status in society. An “olú ọmọ” was the star child, the prominent child with promise. The “olú igbó” was the head of the forest, and the “olú ọdẹ” was the head hunter. Same for Olúawo (or Olúwo), Olúòkun, etc. Even the traditional head of Ìbàdàn is called Olúbàdàn (“the prominent head of Ìbàdàn”). Even our distant cousins in Warri have their king called Olú as a primary title.

So children named Olúmìdé, Olúwọlé or Olúbáyọ̀dé were initially named for their intended/projected prominence: “My star child has come”, “The prominent one has entered the home”, and “Prominence came with joy”, respectively. Those meanings still hold till today.

But the ambiguity introduced by the expansion of the meaning of “Olú” to also mean “Olúwa” when Yorùbá citizens began to embrace Christianity with uncommon fervour began to muddy the waters as time went on. A name like “Olúṣẹ́gun” which would otherwise mean “the star child has conquered” could now also mean “the Lord conquered” as thanks to God for the successful birth of the child, or a future projection into his future successes in battle. The latter meaning was enthusiastically embraced by Nigeria’s past president Olúṣẹ́gun Ọbásanjọ́ whose life story of battles, defeats, and resurgence seems to have perfectly matched his given name.

Names like Olúdárà or Ọláolú began to be expanded to be written also as Olúwadárà or Ọláolúwa even if it wasn’t the originally intended meaning while names like Olúwaṣeun began to mean only one thing (“The Lord be praised”). In actual fact, one can guess that names beginning with “Olúwa” began to surface and increase in usage only after the successful Christian missionary incursion in to Yorùbáland. Before then, it would be rare to envision a name like Olúwalógbọ́n (“only the Lord/God is wise”) or Bólúwatifẹ́ (“As the Lord/God wants”) being given in a community with mostly animistic and polytheistic outlook.

In any case, not all names can be expanded into “Olúwa”, and those have mostly retained their original meaning. A name like “Máláólú”, for instance, means “give the white cloth (of the Ọbàtálá religion) to the prominent one” perhaps in worship or as sacrifice. There is no way in which “give the white Ọbàtálá cloth to the Lord Jesus” would make any contemporary sense. It is the same with Olúdọ̀tun (“prominence/stardom is renewed”) or Kúmólú (“Death took our prominent head”) which can not be changed to “Olúwadọ̀tun” or “Kúmólúwa” without raising eyebrows. Thankfully.

Something else also began to happen, however, especially with more Pentecostal growth. Names originally with traditional root morphemes like Ògún, Ṣàngó, Èṣù, Omi, Oṣó etc began to be replaced with Olú instead, a seeming harmless and possible Christian replacement for their “heathen” heritage. Thus Ṣóyínká (“I’m surrounded by sorcerers”) became Olúyínká (“I’m surrounded by prominence/Lord Jesus”), Èṣùbíyìí (“Èṣù gave birth to this”) became either Jésùbíyìí or Olúbíyìí. Ògúnsànyà became Olú́sànyà. Popular musician Dúpẹ́ Ṣólànà became Dúpẹ́ Olúlànà.

One of the challenges of our work in defining names in the Yorùbá Dictionary of Names is in knowing when the name refers to a Christian root or the original, more traditional one. The process of discovery is half of the fun.

What does your name mean?

in General / Lexicography 4 comments

December 12, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

“Ọlá” Isn’t (Always) “Wealth”

One common stereotype about Yorùbá names is that they, on the surface, always seem obsessed with wealth. It is incompatible with the truth, of course, but examples are usually provided easily to show how almost any verb combined with the word for “wealth” will almost generate a Yorùbá name.

My name is “Kọ́lá” (full name Kọ́láwọlé), a very good example of this instance.

There are others: Bọ́lá, Ṣọlá, Tọ́lá, Nọ́lá, Fọlá, Dọlá, Gbọlá, etc. In actual fact, I realised a while ago that a simple computer program can generate unlimited numbers of valid Yorùbá names if we would just combine almost any consonant in the language with a few key root morphemes (like ọlá, adé, oyè, etc).

The problem, however, is that the “ọlá” in Yorùbá names do not all mean the same thing. They are not, to use a cliché, created equal. In the case of “Kọ́láwọlé”, I can provide a curt interpretation as “(He who) bring(s) wealth into the house” but that doesn’t say all that the name embodies. In any case, the “ọlá” in the name is more than nominal wealth. It is prominence, it is dignity, it is nobility, it is success, it is honour, it is acclaim.

A man referred to as “Ọlọ́lá” is not just rich, he is a notable public figure with admirable nobility. If money were to be the distinguishing factor, he would be called “Olówó” instead. There is another appellation given to properly highlight material wealth. That is Ọlọ́là. This ọlà (note the difference in the tonal marking) highlights material success above individual character or nobility.

Therefore a name like Adégbọlá would be better interpreted either as “We have arrived to receive wealth” or “The crown/royalty has received nobility/prominence/honour/success.” The context, or the family story, will decide which one is appropriate in each instance. A name like Ọláńrewájú, however, brings a different problem. Same with Ọláwálé. Here, the root “ọlá” is being given a subject role in which it is forced to be more than wealth or nobility. It becomes a person! A Dictionary of Yorùbá Personal Names by Adébóyè Babalọlá and Olúgbóyèga Àlàbá defines both, respectively, as “The head of this noble family is progressing” and “The new member of our noble family has come home.” In both cases, Ọlá is a living being, represented by this newly-born child.

Please leave other relevant examples that you’re familiar with in the comment below.

In other instances, Ọlá means “blessing” or “grace”. And isn’t that interesting? The sentence “Ọlá Ọlọ́run ni mo jẹ” means “I’ve benefited from the grace of God.” In this case, it is not “wealth” or “nobility” at all. What the name is saying is that if not for the presence/grace/help of God, the child wouldn’t have been born. Now, this doesn’t mean that it couldn’t also mean “the wealth of God”, but that would be a simplistic reading indeed. This interpretation would explain names like Ọláìyá (“the benefit/grace of mother”), Ọláòkun (“the benefit of the ocean – or foreign travel”) or Ọláolúwa (born by “the grace/benefit of God”). See also: Ọláifá, Ọláọ̀pá, Ọláoyè.

Photo from PixarBay

In late 2015, an expectant inter-ethnic couple (the wife is Yorùbá while the husband is Igbo) wrote to us asking for help in picking out a name for their firstborn child (you can read the whole blog post here). They were open to anything, especially names that could be easily pronounced by both parents. But they had a caveat: the name shouldn’t have “ọlá” in it. Why? Because it connoted “wealth” and they wanted names that focused instead on celebrating the child than something that would seem so superficial and focused on material gains. They eventually settled for “Tiwanìfẹ́” (Ours is love/loving) which is a beautiful name. But had they settled for “Tiwalọlá” (ours is grace/nobility/wealth), it would also have been equally as delightful. In any case, the “wealth” or “nobility” in Tiwalọlá refers to the child and nothing else: “this wealth, this child, is ours”.

Perhaps it is what is lost in translation. When we say “wealth” in Yorùbá, we are not always referring to money or material wealth (that would be ọlà). That “wealth” referred in “ọlá” is something more: human potential, largeness of heart, generosity of spirit (and of materials, yes), nobility, dignity, honour, and grace, depending on context. In names like “Ìwàlọlá” or “Ọmolọlá”, the definition of “ọlá” is actually given, as “character” and “child” respectively. And in “Babalọlá”, “Father/hood is honour/wealth/nobility.”

That is why what a child like “Kọ́lá” brings into the house in “Kọ́láwọlé” is more than just a temporary (or even measurable) treasure.

in Language / Lexicography 4 comments

August 31, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

On Lukumi Inclusion on YorùbáName.com

Lukumi/Lucumi is a version of Yorùbá that survived the Middle Passage and has continued to thrive in Latin America particularly in Cuba. It shares several attributes with standard Yorùbá in phonology and lexicography with mild differences in spelling and tone. You can read more about the differences and similarities here.

At YorùbáName.com, we are committed to an inclusive work that takes into account all variants of Yorùbá in Nigeria (Ijẹ̀ṣa, Ìjẹ̀bú, Ìlàjẹ, Ondo, etc), as well as other variants from Francophone West Africa (Benin, Togo) to Anglophone West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana) to Latin America (Brazil Cuba, Jamaica, etc) and even to Arabic. We’re always looking for lexicographers/scholars who are able to help facilitate this inclusion. Names from Benin Republic are already being added thanks to the work of Laila Le Guen and Dr. Moufoutaou Adjeran. (More about that here and here).

Photo from OrishaImage.com

As from this week, users of our dictionary will notice new names common to Lukumi speakers in Cuba. Thanks to the work of Nathan Lugo who is a scholar of the language (and a practitioner of Yorùbá religion) in collaboration with our lexicography team, we are adding all Yorùbá-Lukumi names in pursuit of our desire for a comprehensive work useful for all Yorùbá speakers, descendants, and enthusiasts everywhere.

The spellings will be unfamiliar to local Yorùbá speakers (Obbá, Oddualá, Echudiná, Oyeboddé, etc) but to those who bear them in the diaspora, they’re properly spelled and marked in the tradition of their Yorùbá ancestors. At YorùbáName.com, you will be able to identify them by spelling and peculiar tone (accent) marking, and also by our geolocation tag foreign-general.

What our lexicographers are doing along with Cuban scholar Nathan Lugo is to ensure that variants of the name in West African Yorùbá are also listed, for the benefit of both diaspora users as well as continental ones. This complementary exchange will, hopefully, improve the quality of interaction between the two communities separated by hundreds of years of history, and a large body of water.

in General / Lexicography 4 comments

July 20, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

The Making of an Entry: from Submission to Publication

As at this writing, there are 3,629 published name entries in the dictionary.

At the rate of about twenty new entries per day, we could reach a year’s goal of 10,000 entries in no time. In this post, I would like to show you how a submission from the homepage becomes an indexed entry in the dictionary. There will be lots of pictures to illustrate the process.

The homepage is at YorubaName.com where hundreds of users have submitted their names into the dictionary since we launched the public page in February 2016.

So, what happens when an entry is submitted?

On the lexicography dashboard, I see a list of names suggested by the public, or by other in-house lexicographers. As you can see in the image below, the email of the submitter is listed.

I have blurred an email address to protect the person’s privacy. In the future, we will have a login name instead of an email address.

To begin editing, I click on whatever name I would like to work on. In this case, I give preference to the publicly submitted name over the in-house ones. The name is “oderinde“.

In the edit mode, the name is expanded and I can see all that the submitter put in his/her submission. In most cases, as in this example, the submitter hasn’t been able to find the exact spelling of the name so some editing will be needed.

I begin first with capitalisation. I change the first letter from “o” to “Ọ”

The submitter seems to have an idea of the meaning so I move further down to the syllable breakdown. This functionality is meant to be used to train our text-to-speech system to know how to render Yorùbá names. The functionality isn’t yet live, but the field is compulsory, so I complete it, rendering the name syllable by syllable.

By now, I’ve completed the three required fields. So, to prevent my work from being lost, I scroll down and save the entry.

I get a notification on the top right corner.

Sometimes I return to the “meaning” box to modify what the submitter wrote.

Then I move to the “morphology” field to break down the name according to its smallest meaningful units (the linguistic term is morpheme). This is usually the most exciting part for me, because that is where the names usually unravel.

The morphology and the gloss fields are usually written in small letters, but their meanings can include capital letters in the case of proper nouns.

Sometimes there is more than one meaning of a morpheme, so I supply them, and then save.

I save at this stage by just hitting “enter”.

The geolocation field is one of our most cherished features, designed to be able to map certain names across the country. The user has chosen “Abẹ́òkuta” as the location of this name. But because I know that it is a name that is borne in other different parts of Yorùbáland, I add another location indicator: “General”.

At this point, I get an epiphany as to a better way to express the meaning of this name that is not too literal as to render it risible.

So I edit it again. This time I’m satisfied.

Finally, to see if there are notable people with this name, I turn to Google, which never fails.

I get many hits, but I am biased to the topmost one.

I sometimes also go to the “news” tab, since notability might also reflect in the newsmaking ability of the bearer.

In the end, I settle for the topmost hit on Google. For now, at least, until another user goes to the entry and upbraids us for overlooking another famous name.

I add the link as well.

Then save.

Finally, I publish the entry.

Ọdẹ́rìndé is now in our dictionary!

The end.

————-

Addendum

Shortly after this post was drafted for review, Laila drew my attention to an interesting phonological feature in this particular name which I’d not paid attention to in my earlier work: there is an extra /ẹ/ in “Ọdẹ́rìndé” which I hadn’t accounted for before. As it often happens with incomplete entries, I simply returned to the name and edited as necessary.

I also left a short note in the relevant box about the phonological behaviour of certain tones like this in contiguous environment. In a layman’s language, a grammatical morpheme in this word took on the feature of a neighbouring vowel resulting in an extra tone mark where there otherwise isn’t any.

Fascinating linguist’s stuff.

————-

If you’d like to join our lexicography department to help speed up the meeting of our 10,000 names goal, send an email to project@yorubaname.com with “Lexicographer Volunteer” in the subject field.

in Language / Lexicography 0 comments

July 13, 2016 by Kola Tubosun

What Do Lexicographers Do at YorubaName?

If you’re reading this, chances are you have either signed up to be a lexicographer on the YorubaName project or you’re considering joining the ranks of our volunteer lexicography team. If so, chances are also that you have a general idea about what lexicography means. Still I’ll say, to save time for those who don’t, that our work in this department has to do with annotating, tone-marking, providing and researching meaning, researching name geo-locations, and generally being the last line of defense before a name entry is published.

So, thank you for your interest.

This job is quite important. First, if you are a volunteer lexicographer, you have do one thing first. Go, right now, and install our free tone-marking software on your computer. You will be needing it for your work.

In this post, I will try to clarify much of what the lexicographer’s job entails, with illustrations and texts. I’ll give you a feel of the dashboard which I’ll assume, for now, that you haven’t yet had a chance to work with. This would be an introduction to all the features in the back end open to you as a lexicographer, so you can make sure that an entry is good to go before it is published.

Types of Lexicographers

Currently, we have two privilege levels for all lexicographers. There is a Basic Lexicographer and Professional Lexicographer. Both have very important and complementary roles. Both roles are also subjected to the privileges of the head lexicographer who has a slightly higher privilege than both.

The Basic Lexicographer is a new lexicographer whom we have not yet tested, but who is willing and able to work. The “basic” tag says nothing of their ability beyond the fact that we have not yet been able to assess their capabilities. Most Basic Lexicographers will eventually graduate and be given Pro Lexicographer status if their work convinces us of their lexicographic capability and their ability to deliver excellent work without supervision.

Duties and Privileges of the Basic Lexicographer

Add new names to the dashboard: This can be done through the homepage, like every other user, or through a personal dashboard account which, as a lexicographer, you will already have. The names you add will not be immediately published, but they will be saved in a place where someone with the Pro privilege can check and approve them.
Modify names already in the dashboard: You will have access to the dashboard to see all the names already indexed in the dictionary. You will be able to open and edit any one of them, especially those that are not complete, or those with meanings that could be better defined. These changes, again, will not go live immediately, unless approved by someone with the Pro privilege.
Accept names suggested by users: As a basic lexicographer, you will be able to see all the names suggested by our users. Some of them are legitimate Yorùbá names we don’t yet have in the dictionary while some are names that are not Yorùbá at all but sent in as a prank or by mistake. It will be your role to know which to accept and which to reject. You will have the privilege to do both.
Sort out feedback messages: As a basic lexicographer, you will be able to see all the feedbacks given to any name entry through the “improve this entry” button on the homepage. You will be able to accept or delete these feedbacks, and/or incorporate them into the name entry as necessary.
You will not be able to delete any name in the database. Neither will you be able to make a final publishing decision on your edits. These will go through a second layer of approval before they go live.

Duties and Privileges of the Professional Lexicographer

You will be able to do everything the Basic Lexicographer can do.
You will have the power to publish these names directly without further approval, which makes your role very important.
You will also be able to approve/reject changes made by lexicographers with the Basic privilege.
One of your key roles will be to collaborate with those with Basic privileges, suggesting corrections and improvements to their work, and recommending any notable Basic Lexicographer for upgrade to Pro status.
You will also coordinate with the head lexicographer whenever necessary and in making certain decisions that may affect the running of the dictionary.

Welcome to the Dashboard

When you’ve been accepted as a lexicographer for YorùbáName.com, you will get a username and password with which you will be able to login to the dashboard.

When that happens, you will see the log-in page like this:

And when you get in, you will see the dashboard itself which looks like this:

The red box tells you how many names we have in total. The green one says how many have been published/indexed and are available to the public. The blue one shows how many have been suggested/added by the public but haven’t been worked on at all while the yellow/orange box shows the names that are currently being worked on but haven’t been published.

Further down, you can see names recently added and published. But more importantly, you can see the feedback by the public and the date the feedbacks were made. As a lexicographer, you will have access to all these features and will be able to click on them and make changes as necessary.

The “Find Entry” search box also allows you to search for any name in the database. This is especially useful if you’ve come into the database specifically to work on a name that has just popped into your head.

Searching for it here will take you directly to that name, where you can begin to work on it.

This is a name edit mode:

At the bottom of each page in the edit mode – depending on your lexicographer privilege – you will find the button to either save your work, publish your work, or delete the entry.

As you will see, not all the fields are compulsory/required, which means that a name entry can be declared “complete” with just a few compulsory fields filled out. It is our aim, going forward, that each name entry should have a certain threshold to be considered complete, giving the user a rich linguistic, cultural (and perhaps onomastic) experience on every single entry of the dictionary.

Working Offline

Lexicographers of both Basic and Pro privileges will be able to add names into the dictionary via an offline spreadsheet which can be downloaded from within the dashboard. What this means is that even if you don’t have regular access to the internet, you can download this spreadsheet where you can enter all the names you gather. And when you finally get online, you will be able to upload all the names at once.

But even if you are not adding any names to the dashboard, you can take on the role of the lexicographer that regularly monitors entries without complete fields (e.g. an entry without a complete or verifiable meaning, or an entry without proper tone-marking, etc) and then goes to friends, researchers, or people bearing these names on social media in order to verify the correct spelling, meaning, or tone-marking on their names. Your work is equally as important.

We are also looking to involve scholars affiliated to higher education institutions, professors whose students could directed towards this purpose, or private researchers all around the world, who have time on their hands to visit local Yorùbá villages in order to help improve the geo-location for all the names we currently have. There may yet be other ways to further our lexicography work besides what we’ve articulated here: let us know what you have in mind.

There are a few other lexicographer roles that don’t deal with the dashboard at all. These may also interest you: helping to generate name-related quizzes for our social media accounts, looking out for rare names in the dictionary for highlighting on random days on our social media pages, or helping to come up with interactive ideas from the dictionary that can engage our multimedia audience. This might be best for those who might not have too much time on their hands but still want to help out in some way.

Conclusion

As this is just an introduction, I hope I have given you a broad idea of what to expect. As a lexicographer, you will be joining an active group of people who find names and words fascinating enough to spend hours of their daily time with. We welcome you with open arms and hope that, more than anything, you find the experience as entertaining and educative as you find it challenging and enlightening.

If you are just deciding to join us in Lexicography, send us an email at volunteer@yorubaname.com with “Volunteering for Lexicography” in the subject line.

in Lexicography 0 comments

October 15, 2015 by Laila

Guest post: clan names of the Ṣabẹ́ (Republic of Benin)

Ṣàbẹ́ is a locality of the Collines region in the Republic of Benin, whose inhabitants are linguistically and culturally part of Yorubaland. In most Ṣàbẹ́ clans, personal clan names are assigned to the children and there is a host of such names for both girls and boys.

These clan names are often related to the order of birth but one must bear in mind that they are different from another set of names especially dedicated to the child’s position in the family. Clan names and birth rank names are indeed two different things: the birth rank names used by the Ṣàbẹ́ were borrowed from the Bàátọ̀nú with whom the Ṣàbẹ́ are linked by a kinship-based joking relationship (gonẹ̀cí). In contrast, clan names will in most cases simultaneously identify a person’s clan affiliation, their sex and their birth rank.

Ajàsọ̀ clan

Children of this clan are given names such as:

Order of birth

1st born

2nd

3rd

Male

Mọ̀sìà

Agé

Sọ̀gbà

Female

Agbàkẹ̀n

Tilé

–

Akọ clan

Order of birth

1st born

2nd

3rd

4th

Male

Agbàcí

Olóní

Gbẹ̀dó

Kòcòní

Female

Wẹ̀sẹ̀ú

Òòpó

Àgàá

–

Akútúànbẹ clan

Order of birth

1st born

2nd

Male

Ajéè

Ọlọ́ta

Female

Ọjá

Ijègbé

Amùcù clan

This clan is also known as Ońlẹ̀. It is a princely clan like the Ọ̀tọ́lá clan (see below). Children born to this clan bear names such as:

Order of birth

1st born

2nd

3rd

4th

Male

Yáì

Càfàà

Adìmí

Ajẹn-ẹn

Female

Yẹ́bà Bèjì

–

Eegú clan

This clan worships a deity called eegú, hence its name. Descendants of this clan are given the same clan names irrespective of sex or order of birth.

Eegújọbí “we are all descendants of eegú”
Jẹ̀níhẹn “Jẹ̀ has a lineage”
Eegúlétí “Eegú has granted my wish”
Jẹ̀gbèmí “Jẹ̀ supported me”

Names bearing the prefixes Eegú- or Jẹ̀- indicate that their bearers are members of this clan.

Ọgá clan

Ọgá clan names do not refer to the order of birth but they do provide a differentiation based on the child’s sex.

Male

Ayédìtẹ̀n “the world has become history”
Ayédìlú “the world has become a village”
Ayélàùn “the world is scary”
Ayélòmí “the world disgusts me”
Kúbíyà “death causes sorrow”
Ayédẹgẹ́ “the world is fragile”

Female

Ilétíkú “it is from our surroundings that death arises”
Inọ́nihan “the belly is inscrutable”
Kámia “let’s be cautious”
Lèéminọ̀ “who can read someone else’s thoughts?”
Kámáhòtẹ́n “let’s not think about all of life’s sorrows”

Ọ̀tàà clan

Order of birth

1st

2nd

3rd

Male

Oluku

Apàdó

Apàkí

Ayédọ̀n

Abúmọ̀

Jọ̀mọ́

Sẹ̀ndà

Dàkpánọ̀

Àjẹ̀nẹ̀

Female

Ejò

Sùú

Dòganí

–

Nanọ

Cánọ̀

–

It is worth pointing out that in this clan, several personal names are specifically meant for the first born child of a given family, whether they be a boy or a girl.

Ọtọ́lá clan

It is a princely clan whose children bear the following names:

Order of birth

1st born

2nd

Male

Yabi

Afùdá

Female

Yẹ́bà

–

Jàbàtá clan

Order of birth

1st

2nd

3rd

Male

Awéè

Sámọ̀

–

Ajàmọ̀sì

–

Female

Ọlájọ́

Ọgẹ̀dú

Edìíbì

Sùnmọ̀ní

Ẹgbẹ̀á

Jàlúmọ̀ clan

Order of birth

1st

2nd

3rd

Male

Akíyọ̀

Ọ̀fẹn

Ẹtká

–

Female

Obò

–

Àndó

Òlé

Sẹ̀ngà clan

Male

First born: Sẹwọ́ “to vomit”, Ògídí, Àsùní “a God-given child”
Second born: Dẹ̀nọ̀

Female

First born: Idóó “bereavement”
Second born: Onẹ̀dọ̀n “man is pleasant”, Onídọ̀n “today is better”
Third born: Olúpé “we are all here”

Sọ̀lọ́ clan

Order of birth

1st

2nd

Male

Cànbí

Sìnẹ̀bú

Ajàbà

Ogíní

Female

Sọ̀lọ́

–

Bọ́nẹ

–

Contributor’s profile

Dr. Moufoutaou ADJERAN is a sociolinguistics lecturer at Abomey-Calavi University (Republic of Benin). He is also a member of the Sociolinguistics and Yoruba Studies research centre and of the Francophone Sociolinguistics Network.

The original post was published in French on YorubaName.com. Translation into English by Laila Le Guen.

in Featured / Language / Lexicography 2 comments

May 9, 2015 by Kola Tubosun

The Curious Case of Written Nasals

For a while, I’ve noticed the absence of tone marks on the Yoruba “n” and “m”. But, thinking about it now, I realize that noticing that absence itself is conditioned by an awareness of an earlier presence of the feature in some old published literature.

I grew up reading literature in both Yoruba and English, and I am still capable of conjuring the moods and affectations that occasioned my reading of works by Adebayo Faleti, Bamiji Ojo, J.F. Odunjo, Akinwunmi Ishola, etc. It is perhaps the same reason why in thinking back to the features of some of those writings, I remember having come across the syllabic nasals written with the tone mark. Like in a word like “Bọ́lánlé”, for example, or “Ọláńrewájú”. More than the tone-marked syllabic nasal, in fact, my memory of those times includes a whole lot of dynamic and exciting diacritics on written Yoruba vowels.

For some reason, however, most of these symbols are gone, no longer to be found in written literature – at least those published after the nineties. I remember once seeing the caron, a v-shaped (so called “assimilated low-tone”) sign that was used to replace a vowel cluster (as seen in “Káṣimáawòó”). Instead of the two “òó” as in this case, there’d just be one “o”, carrying the caron, signifying the two contrasting tone marks it carries. There is also a reverse of this sign, the inverted “v” circumflex which is used to signify the combination of a high tone and a low one. There was a tilde / ̃/signifying nasality, and a macron / ̄ /showing mid-tone. These are all gone, not just in writing, but in some cases in computer keyboards as well. But none is more curious for me today than the disappearance of the tone mark on the syllabic nasal.

The syllabic nasal, so called because of its ability to (without having more than just a single letter) embody the properties of a distinct syllable, has always carried a tone mark for obvious reason. It is the unit of sound, and must necessarily account for the tone it carries. In other instance of the nasal where it is not syllabic (e.g. the “n” in “Olatubosun”, “Adeosun”, etc), the “n” is simply left alone as a ghostly presence, physically symbolizing the end of the word, and phonetically representing the nasality that exists, actually, on the preceding vowel (in this case, “u”). When it’s syllabic, however, it, in itself, is the syllable, occupying a pride of place in the word (e.g. the “n” in “Bolanle”, and the “m” in “Odunmbaku”). Broken down into syllabic components, the names would be “Bo-la-n-le” and “O-dun-m-ba-ku” respectively, leaving the syllabic nasals alone as the masters of their syllabic domains).

“Aare-Ago Arikuyeri” by Lawuyi Ogunniran (1977)

So, what happened? We used to see the words written as “Bọ́láńlé” and “Ọdúnm̀bákú” respectively, with the tone marks placed on the “n” and “m” to show their place in the realm. But today, most written Yoruba literature (and there are not many of them) write them as “Bọ́lánlé” and “Ọdúnmbákú,” with nothing showing the syllabic nasals as anything different from their mere filler equivalent. My suspicion is that the Yoruba tone-marking rule (“Only vowels should be tone-marked”) which used to accept exceptions for syllabic nasals, eventually became universal, wiping out whatever is left of the initiative to continue tone-marking syllabic nasals. Standardization efforts over the years have only too permanently registered their influences on the language, leaving us with what we have now.

Now, I should probably clarify that much of the published literature from which I’ve drawn this conclusion are written in English (by Yoruba writers, no less). However, the fact that tone marks are placed on every other syllable in the word, but not on the syllabic “n” and “m”, in all those cases, is curious enough. Being aware of this phenomenon is also enough incentive, now, to pay more attention to what conventions have been accepted, over time, by the Yoruba publishing community (or what’s left of them) as the orthography of syllabic nasals. This piece helps with some explanation, but not enough. Creating a dictionary compels these kinds of interesting observations as, I realize, what users see more often over time will usually become their perception of what is appropriate for future everyday use.

“Ireke Onibudo” by D.O. Fagunwa (Nelson: 1949-2008)

In the pictured text above, from a play Aare-Ago Arikuyeri by Lawuyi Ogunniran (published in 1977), the conventions have been retained, so only current literature can offer a better explanation. For all we know, I may have just been reading the wrong texts. On the other hand, looking through each of the five classic novels by D.O. Fagunwa published by Nelson (pictured left) showed another extreme instance: none of the vowels were marked at all, except the special ẹ and ọ, and sometimes an occasional ̃ playing the part of a caron or circumflex. How people, particularly students, managed to get through the text (that have remained popular with the Yoruba over the years) without breaking a sweat will, for a while, remain a mystery.

in Lexicography 0 comments