Decoding the Practices and Beliefs of a People through their System of Naming: The Case of the Oku People in the North West Region of Cameroon

This article is conceived to state what is enclosed in a name in the Oku language. It analyses Oku names, their origins and meanings with intent to illustrate how the lexical choices of the Oku people determine their role relationships and suggest their patterns of life. It also examines the implications that follow and may follow from such a system of naming. Lyons (1977: 207) posits: Every utterance occurs in a culturally determined context-of-situation, and the meaning of the utterance is the totality of its contributions to the maintenance of (…) the patterns of life in the society in which the speaker lives and to the affirmation of the speaker’s role and personality within the society. The meaning of a word is greatly determined by the context-of-situation. The participants involved in communication, their intentions of communication as well as their environment matter a lot for words and expressions to be meaningful and to achieve the goals of interlocutors. The same message, said in different contexts, will or may produce different effects. This is evident in the literal translation of words from Oku to English. Findings show that Oku people are a peculiar people with a peculiar language that was created by their founding ancestors to serve immediate and specific purposes and this language has kept on evolving with the evolution of time so as to meet contemporary needs. In the course of evolution, neologisms have been coined and integrated into the language system, and words and expressions have been borrowed from neighbouring languages and even from the English language to handle new realities. A critical exploration of the names in Oku shows that the culture of the Oku people is embedded in their system of naming.