Zambezia (1983), XI (il).ESSAY REVIEWSHONA NOMENCLATURESINCE INDEPENDENCE WE have all been urged to work towards a trulyZimbabwean culture free from colonial distortion. To achieve this we need afirm, objective knowledge of Shona and Ndebele culture that must inform anew Zimbabwean identity; but such knowledge is not readily available and canbe discovered only by the usual processes of careful academic research; in thisprocess there may be considerable differences of opinion, as I demonstrated inthe reviews on Shona sculpture (ante (1982), X, 49-57). Therefore, it is not amatter of regret but a healthy sign that Dr A.J. C. Pongweni's recent study ofShona nomenclature has provoked the following hostile review by ProfessorG.P. Kahari Š and an equally vigorous rejoinder by the author which isappended to the review.R.S.R.Dr Alec Pongweni's What's in a Name: A Study of Shona Nomenclature1comes in the wake of similar studies which have been undertaken by a numberof interested people since 1955. By way of example, one needs to refer to anumber of articles in the Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs DepartmentAnnual, NAD A.2 The authors of these articles were Europeans who could notbe expected to have the cultural background and recognize the implications,aptness and significance of the names that they tried to analyse.However, in 1972 in-The Novels of Patrick Chakaipa3 I pioneered thestudy of Shona nomenclature in which I outlined five categories of Shonatraditional names; and this study was followed up three years later by my bookon Paul Chidyausiku.4 There is ample evidence that Pongweni's study hasbeen influenced by these precursors, and, as he says in his concluding remarks,'a study of such material has of necessity to have a multi-disciplinary approachto the extent that a single scholar espousing one specialism cannot cope'(p. 87). What Pongweni brings to the study of Shona nomenclature is hisformal linguistic training and expertise and his study heralds an important stepforward in the field; certainly any work that stimulates discussion of Shona as adeveloping language must be welcomed.In the event, Pongweni's study is disappointing. It is a piece of work whichwas full of promise but which is full of mistakes, both of omission andcommission. The study is marred by his inability to quote correctly from his1 A. J.C. Pongweni, What's In a Name? A Study of Shona Nomenclature (Gweru, MamboPress, 1983). 98 pp., Z$3.90.2S.A. Sandes, 'Zwenyika remembers' NADA (1955), XXXII, 31-40; S.K. Jackson, 'Thenames of the VaShona', NADA (1962), XXXIX, .55-^9; J. Chidzima, 'The history of theVashawasha', NADA (1964), IX, i, 16Š33; T.J, Hemans, 'A note on Amandebele names',NADA. (1968), IX, v, 74; Regulus, 'Native names as whereabouts of native places', NADA(1969), X, i, 81-8.3G.P, Kahari, The Novels of Patrick Chakaipa (Salisbury, Longman, 1972), 37-8.4G.P. Kahari, The Imaginative Writings of Paul Chidyausiku (Gwelo, Mambo Press,1975),'35-8.161sources; by inconsistencies, sloppy translations, contradictions, inconclusivestatements, use of slang language in a work of scholarship; by lack ofknowledge on the Ł structure of the Shona verb, the meaning of the Shonaprefixes and generally his. lack of knowledge of the culture surrounding Shonanomenclature. He is clearly out of his depth. For example, Pongweni states(p. 2) that there are six categories. This is not true as there are only five, as Istated in 1972. He fails to see (p. 3) that (f) is in fact (d). An adopted namebecomes a nickname and is any one of these.It is in Chapter 2 that Poegweni's study really falls below the expectedstandard of linguistic analysis. For example, of the twenty-one linguisticanalyses only one is correct. The subject concord is inconsistently entered as{t-} (see, for example, (a) and (b) at p. 8) and {t-1} (see (c), (h), (i), (j) at pp.9-10) and the verb radical is always put together with the terminative {-a}; thusfara and muka (p. 8) instead of far-a and muk-a. Complicated morpho-phonemic changes have been left unexplained. For instance, Munyaradzi isgiven as mu - nyaradza - dzl and Varaidzo as varaidza - dzo instead of:mu + nyar + ya = nyaradz cause to be quiet + agentive morpheme {-i}= munyaradzi;varir +- ya = varaidz + agentive ending {-o}.5Similarly the names given (at p. 16) are not adequately explained and so onlythe root equivalents should be given: (h) -nyarara-a (verb); (i) -nyany-a(verb); (j) -nyoro (adj.); (k) pa+ai+d+a+moyo (sentence construction); (1)ma+chiv+a+ini (machiveni, you covet me. not 'you envy me*).The author's inefficient analysis is continued in Chapter 3 but here it iscompounded by his ignorance of the cultural background 'encapsulating' thenames. The fact that the author has failed to deal with the structure of the nameChabayanzam, has led him to mislead us as to the significance of this name (p.19). The name comes as a response to the question: Chabaya chii? (What haskilled (destroyed) your family?). The full response is thus: Chabayainzara(chi+a+bay+a+i+nzara) (What has killed (destroyed) my family is famine).In the same manner Maenganise and Maengamhuru (p. 24) are short formsfor Mavenganise (ma-veng-a-nis-e) and Mavengamhuru (ma-veng-a-mhuru) Š the latter is entered correctly (at p, 25)» another case of the author'sinconsistency. A typical example would be Mashongaika from Mashonga-nyika. The author translates class 21 prefix {zi-} (p. 26) and morpheme fnyaf(pp. 20,27) as 'the5 and 'Mr' respectively. The former refers to size, e.g. 'huge',and the latter to 'possessor of.In the next two chapters (4 and 5) the author demonstrates further his lack ofunderstanding of the Shona morpheme, for example, dzimbanhete. He doesnot show us what is involved and how nhete = tete (adj., thin) is arrived at. Theprefix with {ru-}, class 11, with its Karanga {gw-}, and Zezura variant {rw-},refers to rufu (death) and not just 'if (death) (see pp. 32, 33, 37) and similarlythe fri} inRisinamhodzi refers tobudzi(squash, plant) (see p. 35). The {zv-( 1 )|in Zvamada (p. 38) refers to the 'things' while the object prefix f-hu-} refers(p. 40) to ushe (chieftainship). The author shows no understanding of the signi-ficance of the noun prefix either in its primary or secondary function (p. 46).There is virtually no distinction between the prefix ma- in makudo and that inmapenzi. The example that he ought to have provided in order to give thederogatory tone is Makaranga (the Karangas) or Mazezuru (the Zezuras) to3See G. Fortune, .,4/J Analytical Grammar of Shona (Cape Town. Longmans Green, 1955),212-13.162contrast with VaKaranga and FoZezuru, respectively. The three categoriesthat the author comes up with (p. 54) are all nicknames which belong to type(d) which he deals with earlier (p. 2). The author talks (p. 63) of'the rule ofEnglish word-formation whereby the ending -ity is added only to adjectives toform abstract nouns'. The author does not need to be reminded of at least onesuch word which is formed from a noun Š authority.In Chapter 7, entitled 'The Not-so Fictional Names in Kurauone', theauthor has actually gone on to demonstrate the fictional aspect of thecharacters. The names demonstrate this: Gariramo (beer is staying in there),Ndingoveni (I should be the only one), Nhamoinesu (Plight is with us). Twosentences (after the eighth paragraph on p. 70) amply illustrate the fictionalaspect of the noun.One other disturbing feature of this study is its sloppy and slangytranslations Š Nhamoinesu akasimuka ndokuisa mutsago wababa vakenegudza ravo sen kwomusana wavo is translated as 'Nhamoinesu obeyed.There was dead silence in the house, The tension was tangible' (p. 68, para. 4);Seizve kuda kurova imbwa makaviga mupini? as 'Why is he beating aboutthe bush*' (p. 71, para. 11); Siya waroodza .mwana wangu chete, Ndizvozvandinoda. Iko kutya kufa, sen'anga as 'You must pay for my son's bridebefore you kick the bucket [slang]. You have no choice. Look at you, coward'(p. 72, para. 11); and Zvino vaNdingoveni vakati as 'Ndingoveni had an axeto grind' (p. 86, para. 38). These translations bear no resemblance to theoriginal and are thus misleading. Similarly the translations of the names whichappear in the appendices give the study a feeling of lack of scholarship and a'political-rally5 atmosphere. For instance, Teurai Rop'a. is translated as '[Wemust] spill blood, [in order to free ourselves]';-Farai Tichatonga as '[Restassured and]-be happy; [we cannot but win]';.'Zvido zvavanhu' as 'Thepeople's, wishes [are priority No. If. I have enclosed the imposed phrases insquare-brackets;- I do not know, where.Pongweni gets them from. Themorpheme {sa-} in Samushonga.aiid.Savanhu stands for 'the owner of and sothe translations (at. p. 92)'are, therefore,-misleading.Thus, as a work of a scholarship in pursuit of excellence, Pongweni's studyleaves very much to'be desired. It does not even follow the accepted StandardShona spelling and word division; for instance, see Wunganayi for Wunganai(p. 90) and Teurai Ropa for Teurairopa (p. 91 );,but see correctly Muramba-hama (p. 9 i). It makes no attempt to give the origins of names like Chamboko,(p. 90), for example, which comes from Afrikaans sjambok; nor does it attemptto tone-mark the names. It is a great pity that a book with so much potential in itshould turn out to have so little value. Certainly the last word has not been saidOD the subject of Shona nomenclature;University of ZimbabweG.P. KAHARITHE REVIEW by Professor Kahari of my book* What's in a Name: A Study^ ofShona Nomenclature, is characterized by that "enthusiastic acerbity whichsometimes enlivens debate in academia. In Ms opening paragraph he refers thereader to a series of NAD A articles published betweeni955 and 1969. Thisapproach is open to two interpretations. Ł ŁThe first is that What's in a Name is not breaking new ground in the studyof Shona culture. But in my study I do not make such a claim; rather I observe163that the study of Shona nomenclature is not, at the present time, being pursuedas actively as it is in other cultures. That is why I urge colleagues in the field todo 'more and better' (p. 87).Secondly, it is stated repeatedly that I am largely ignorant of Shona culture.Reference to the NAD]A articles, coupled with the reviewer's criticism of theirauthors for being unfamiliar with Shona culture, leaves the reader with noalternative but to equate my effort with that of those Europeans. I leave thisassertion to the readers of What's in a Name to assess.But there are several criticisms of my work that I wish to challenge on purelyacademic grounds. Kahari accuses me of failing 'to quote correctly from [my]sources', in spite of the fact that I acknowledge (pp. 2-3) that my source of theclassification of Shona names is Kalian's half-page (in a 110~page book)devoted to the subject1 Š the half-page that forms the basis of his claim to have'pioneered' the study of Shona nomenclature. The very use of the word'pioneer' in the review is unfortunate, because Kahari has opened his review byreferring us to NAD A articles that predate his 1972 book. It cannot be arguedthat, merely because one disagrees with one's predecessors in a field of study,their work does not exist. Furthermore, it is important to point out that beyondlisting the name-types his publication contains no systematic analysis of thefunction of names in Shona literature.2 My chapter on Kurauone is probablythe first attempt by anyone to do this.Prefacing his examples of my alleged sins of'omission and commission'with the cryptic statement 'He [Pongweni] is clearly out of his depth', Kaharisays that I fail to see that the name-type (i)zita rekudzandura is the same as(d) zita remadunhurirwa (Pongweni, 1983, pp. 2-3). Now the fact is that thestructure of the second parts (the verbal endings) of (f) and (d) above indicate adifference in the origin of the respective name-types: in (f) the person whobears that name is the subject of the verb dzandura; he chooses the name.Whereas in (d) dunhurirwa, the name-bearer is the indirect object Š someoneelse, the community, imposes the name on him. In the former case, (f), the newname replaces the old, embarrassing one by becoming the family's officialname. In the latter, the new name is additional, and subsidiary, to the first andis used particularly when discussing some characteristic action or behaviour ofthe person which prompted the observers to nickname him in the first place.Finally, on this point, Kahari makes the assertion of identity between (f) and(d) without acknowledging the fact that category (f) is not mentioned in his1972 classification. For me, this is an unfortunate omission in Kahari (1972)since (f) zita rekudzandura represents an interesting cultural mechanism towhich our ancestors reverted whenever the conditions for its use were satisfied.When he turns to the second chapter of my book, the reviewer makes furthercontestable assertions. And this, because he missed a crucial statement ofmine (pp. 1-2): 'The linguistic structure of the names will also be discussed,but only to the extent that it throws some light on the meaning of the names'[emphasis now added]. In view of this, the isolation of verb roots from theterminative vowel, which he would have me do, has no contribution to makehere. I correctly separate the subject concord [t-] from the following vowel, [-a]or [-i], whose function is to indicate tense. This separation is crucial because ittells us when the experience encapsulated in the name occurred: in the past,]G.P. Kahari, The Novels of Patrick Chakaipa (Salisbury, Longman, 1972) 37-2Ibid, 37164whether the name promises or threatens the community with some action in thefuture, or whether the name expresses an on-going experience. Further, andarising from the omission to read a crucial sentence, Kahari urges me tocommit two mistakes.In the first place I am criticized for not following Fortune3 and not informingmy reader that, in Kahari's words, the name munyaradzi has the structure mu-nyar + ya = nyaradz (cause to be quiet) + agentive. In fact, however, Fortunedid not place '+ agentive' after the gloss but after mu-nyar + ya. Be that as itmay, both Kahari and Fortune leave the strange animal ya unexplained. If it isthe one that changes the final' f in mu-nyar- to the dz of'nyaradz-, how does itdo that? We need a scientific explanation. The second error that I am urged tocommit is to regard the namepaidamoyo, as a 'sentence construction'. In factit is a relative clause.In the midst of all this confusion, however, Kahari gives a plausible meaningof the name chabayanzara, namely that it originates from a response to aquestion chabaya chii? Hence chabaya inzara. But my own interpretation (p.19) of the name is equally plausible. The question is, are we to .stick stubbornlyto our own views without opening our minds to alternative or parallel solutionsto problems? This head-in-the-sand approach leads the reviewer into makingsome unwarranted generalizations about names such as maenganise vsmavenganise; maengamhuru vs mavengamhuru: that in each pair the firstspelling is a shortened version of the second. But this is patently untrue. Thedifference in spelling reflects a difference in pronunciation, which originatesfrom dialectal variation ŁŠ Zezura and Manyika in the first of each pair, on theone hand, and Karanga in the second of both pairs, on the other.The strangest aspect of Kahari's review of my book is his ill-advisedabandonment of his own field of interest, literature and literary criticism, andhis assumption of the garb of linguistic analyst. And so he criticizes me for notshowing that in the name dzimbanhete, the nhete is derived from the adjectivetete. This is his own example and it is not tone-marked. Later in his review helambasts me for not tone-marking my examples. There is, however, no need tomark tones on examples in a book that is going to be read by people who speakdifferent dialects, unless all the examples are taken from one dialect. Markingthe tones would then assist readers who do not speak the particular dialect. Asfor the name dzimbanhete and the reviewer's criticism of my analysis of it, Irefer readers to my recent article on word-formation in Shona.4 What's in aName is not a textbook on Shona morphology and the intelligent reader knowsthat. Also the section of the review in which Kahari 'explains' the significanceof gw- vs rw-, hu~ and zv, as they appear in the namesgwatipedza/rwatipedza,matohushaya and zvamada in my book is uncalled for. It simply repeatswithout acknowledgement what I myself said in my book (pp. 32ff).His subsequent criticism that I do not understand 'the significance of thenoun prefix both in its primary and secondary function' is also uncalled for.What is the purpose of including this distinction in my study, unless it is only toboast that I, too, have read Fortune's An Analytical Grammar of Shona, fromwhich Kahari has taken it? This pretence of competence in linguistic analysisassumes absurd proportions when I am criticized for saying (p. 63) that theEnglish nominal ending -ity is added only to adjectives to form abstract nouns.3G. Fortune, An Analytical Grammar of Shona (Cape Town, Longman Green, 1955),212-13."AJ.C. Pongweni, 'Some word derivational processes: The case of the class 9/10 (N) prefixof Shona', Journal of Asian and African Studies (1982), XXIV, 106-19.165Kahari writes 'The author does not need to be reminded of at least one suchword which is formed from a nounŠauthority'I That authority is not derivedfrom author can be established by consulting any English dictionary.Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1972) has separate entries forthese two words, each followed by a series of different words derived from it.Further, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles(1933) tells us tkatauthor came into English from French au tor and authorityfrom French autorite. Finally, on this point, the most 'authoritative' modernpublication on English grammar states that-jYy is added only to adjectives.51thought it was a matter of common knowledge that some people exerciseauthority although they may have authored nothing!When the reviewer turns to my chapter on Kurauone, he fails to grasp themeaning of some of the most obvious statements in the book. The title of thechapter is misconstrued as suggesting that the names in Kurauone are notfictional. How could I make such a blunder when I took the names from a workof fiction? 'The Not-so Fictional Names in Kurauone' is meant to foregroundthe fact that although these names are, indeed, from a novel, they neverthelessare plausible, bearing a close resemblance in structure and meaning, to thenames of flesh-and-blood people discussed in the preceding chapters of thebook. I conclude that chapter by stating (p. 86): 'There is ... a chain ofplausibility between the names and implied character of the personae recordedin the telephone directory, the University graduation lists, and the names andcharacter of the dramatis personae in Kurauone.'Finally, the last critical statements in the review which I wish to reply to arethose directed at my translations. The reviewer's misgivings arise from myalleged additions (exaggerations) to the Shona texts. This difference seems tohave a bearing on one's answer to the question 'What is translation?' For me,as for other professionals, it is the replacement of textual material in onelanguage (the source language) with textual material in another (the targetlanguage). This is the guideline. But the very difference in idiom between anytwo languages calls for resourcefulness on the part of the translator.Translation thus becomes what my Latin teachers used to call a 'rendition' oimeaning. A word-for-word translation leads one into writing a strangelanguage which those teachers used to call 'Translationese'. Therefore, ?paraphrased the meaning of expressions in order to contextualize what woukotherwise have been elliptic, uniformative and even nonsensical expressions.Names, particularly those of ex-combatants, are short statementssummarizing long experience. If my translations, as Kahari observes, tongue-in-cheek, create 'a political-rally atmosphere', then let them do. Politicalrallies are part and parcel of our political culture. And I used a slangexpression, because the context, a family dispute, and the speaker, a jiltedwife, justify such a translation.Kahari's conclusion to his review is 'Certainly the last word has not beensaid on the subject of Shona nomenclature'. But I made no claim to beingdefinitive and in fact myself said:What we have done in this study is, among other things, to draw theattention of colleagues in the Humanities and compatriotsgenerally, to what is decidedly a fertile area for research. Our hopeis, further, that our comments will galvanise them into doing moreand better (p. 87).5R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik,/! Grammar of Contemporary English(London, Lorgman, 1972), 1000.166But in further research and criticism I am compelled to emphasize theimportance of Roman Jakobson's observation that'a linguist deaf to the poeticfunction of language, and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problemsand unconversant with linguistic methods, are equally flagrant anachronisms'.6University of ZimbabweA.J.C. PONGWENI6R, Jakobson, 'Linguistics and poetics', in R. and F, DeGeorge (eds), The Structuralistsfrom Marx to Levi-Strauss (Garden City NY, Anchor Books, 1972), 120.167