Tagoi Birth Names: A Historical Change from African to Islamic/Arabic Names

Among many groups of the Nuba Mountains, personal names denote birth order, i.e., whether a child is the first, second, third, etc., among his/her siblings. Tagoi, a Niger-Congo language spoken in the north-eastern part of the Nuba Mountains, shows such a naming system. In addition, Tagoi children receive another name, used in official documents and associated with certain birth practices and rituals. Due to historical socio-cultural factors, these non-order-based names have been adapted to an Islamic/Arabic naming system based on days of the week. Birth-order names were retained for some time after Islamisation and Arabicisation, but factors including urbanisation and education have led to the gradual loss of both types of names, which have been replaced by modern Arabic names. This paper describes the Tagoi naming system in its sociohistorical context and considers these names from linguistic and anthropological perspectives.