Trends in Personal Names of Šäwan Royal Family from Nǝguś Śahlä Śǝllase to Nǝguśä Nägäst Ḫaylä Śǝllase I, c.1810s-1970s

Abstract

This article is an attempt to analyse trends in the personal names of “Šäwan royal families” with a particular reference to the seven consecutive generations of Nǝguś Śahlä Śǝllase’s descendants to the period of Nǝguśä Nägäst Ḫaylä Śǝllase I, as one aspect of sociocultural history. The available literature on the issue gave more emphasis to the meaning, naming practices, classifications, and reasons of personal names and naming among different Ethiopian societies than trends. The data was obtained from both primary and secondary historical sources. The major primary source was “ኁልቁ፡ ትውልድ፡፡ ዘ ንጉሥ፡ ሣህለ፡ ሥላሴ፡፡”, “the number of Nǝgus Śahlä Śǝllase’s descendants,” collected by Mahtämä Śǝllase Wäldä Mäsqäl and published in 1965 EC. He organized the list in a sequential order from the first to the seventh generation. The personal names of about two thousand descendants were taken from the list and classified into five themes: place, religious, economic, hegemony, and “miscellaneous”.  The finding reveals that more than sixty percent of the personal names of the descendants were associated with hegemony in the first half of the 19^th century and gradually declined to thirty percent in the second half of the 20^th century. Similarly, gradual changes took place in the other themes: places from Šäwa to Ethiopia, religion from prefix to direct Biblical, and economic from gold and silver to diamond.  Finally, personal names identified as “miscellaneous” are also becoming “modern”.