To browse Academia. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. Palgrave Studies on Children and Development, This article discusses the notion of naming as a practice which saves as an archive of culture and history. Naming is a common phenomenon across cultures in the world.
This informative onomastic practice plays a crucial role in society because we get to know better what is around us through it. The interesting feature of naming is that it is not usually done from a layman's point of view but it is endowed with wisdom which is associated with people's culture, thereby documenting peoples' history, which is a major aspect of culture. People do not normally name for the sake of naming but they artfully analyse the world around them and therefore intelligently deduce the name which will embrace their circumstances.
Therefore, this paper focuses on the intelligence associated with names given to children during and after the liberation war struggle in Zimbabwe and the occurrence of natural hazards as well as post independence experiences. Names in general, are reflective in nature, they picture the reality of a certain incident, portraying how people reacted and perceived it from various angles. One is able to trace back a peoples' history, their way of living and the challenges they encounter in their lives by just analysing peoples' names as reflective of their existential and circumstantial realities of that particular area.
The paper concludes by indicating that the art of naming plays a key role in society because through naming we get the "uncensored" voice of people, that is, their history by themselves. The main attention is drawn on the functioning of names and the topic of naming and categorizing in these texts. Cultural identity may or may not be an additional focus of these texts. My name is Maria Isabel. Personal names are connected to cultural phenomena such as personal and collective identity, social class distinctions, religious affiliations, positive and negative character traits, and practically every human virtue.
Regarding the process of naming, Lieberson and Bell indicated, The naming activity is ultimately a social process, and the resulting pattern of name usage reflects the combined influence of the imagery associated with cach name, the notions parents have about the future characteristics of their children, estimates of the response of others to the name, the awareness and knowledge of names through the mass media and other sources, parents' beliefs about what are appropriate children's names for persons of their status, and institutionalized norms and pressures.
