Naming Conventions
- "Nya" (née ya) meaning "daughter of", is the standard prefix used for female names. "Gat" meaning "son of", is a common prefix for male names.
- Children are commonly given names to mark historical events ("Domaac" meaning "bullet", or "Mac" meaning "fire or gun" given to a child born during times of war or from another man in the name of the deceased father who legally married the mother ).
- "Nhial" means "rain", and is a common name for males.
- Many Nuer have been exposed to missionaries and carry a Christian first name. Their second name is a given name and always in Nuer. The father's given name follows the child's given name, which is then followed by the grandfather's name, and so on. Many Nuer can easily recount ten generations of paternal lineage because they carry those names themselves.
- When a Nuer comes to the Western world, which wants a first and last name, it is their custom to give their name as their first name followed by their father's name as their middle name and their grandfather's name as their last name.
Read more about this topic: Nuer People
Famous quotes containing the words naming and/or conventions:
“See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
“Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole—so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)