Étude morphosémantique des anthroponymes chez les peuples Boo du Bénin et du Nigéria
A Morphosemantic Study of Anthroponyms at the Boo Peoples of Benin and Nigeria

Summary/Abstract: Traditional African communities have cultural values that are difficult for African intellectuals to access because of their essentially oral literature. Anthroponymy is one of these values. The boo endogenous anthroponyms have been influenced by expansionist religions, neighboring African peoples and Western peoples, which is causing their gradual disappearance: the Boó no longer attribute to their children the anthroponyms marking their cultural identities. Moreover, no research has hitherto focused on boo anthroponyms. What are the context-situations that determine boo anthroponyms? How are they structured in each category? What are the messages conveyed by these anthroponyms? We therefore analyze the morphosemantic of Benin and Nigeria's boho anthroponyms in order to grasp them in their dimensions of space and time, in the sense of ENGEL Pascal (1990) and GARRY-PRIEUR Marie-Noëlle (1994). To this end, we stayed in boo villages, had interviews, took notes, recorded data that we transcribed and analyzed according to the method of analysis of enunciation. The anthroponyms are attributed according to several circumstances like the order of birth by sex, the appearance of twins, the painful deliveries, the day and the month, the gratitudes towards invisible beings, the networks of belonging, the types of initiation, the physical and moral traits, the social statuses. There are simple and complex anthroponyms. Complex anthroponyms are phrastic compounds or noun phrases, some verb phrases, derived by prefixation, suffixation, and duplication. But, they all convey messages in the image of statements. Even simple anthroponyms do so much and are considered condensed phrasing or syntagmatic.

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