Wrong Forms of some Yorùbá Personal Names : Some Phonological and Sociolinguistic Implications

In this study, we examine the wrong forms of some Yorùbá sentences that have become personal names through compounding. The data were extracted from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) lists of candidates that were considered for admission into three Nigerian Universities between the 2005 and 2010 academic sessions. The names extracted from that source were compared with names written in the staff lists of the three Universities in Nigeria. The wrongly written names were recorded on tapes and some native speakers were asked to listen to them to determine their correctness. We argue that wrong forms of some Yorùbá sentential/personal names are common occurrences and establish that they are traceable to the freedom granted by Yorùbá orthography developers. We also argue that, the confusion that results from the different spelling forms of some Yorùbá personal names is seriously observable in social interactions, labour market, schools or Colleges of Education/Universities, Embassies and Nigerian civil service both Federal and State and that court affidavits become imperative to authenticate or reconcile both the wrong and the correct forms for the purposes of admissions, appointments and overseas travelling documents. Similarly, we show that the position of the Yorùbá orthography developers has resulted in a loss of the actual pronunciation of some Yorùbá personal names which has severe implications for the semantic contents of the names as well as implications for the rich religious, cultural and philosophical heritage of the Yorùbá people.


Father again come
The father has reincarnated.Writing on the social use of Yorùbá personal names, Solomon Oyètádé (1995: 532) reports that any Yorùbá sentential/personal name may appear in a full form, a shortened form or an initial form (cf. Lewis 2004: 311;Ìko ̣ tún 2010a: 170).For example, the name Jádesọ́ lá can be realized as follows: In support of the social use of Yorùbá personal names, Reuben Ìko ̣ tún (2010a: 175) advances four rules that can guide the shortening of Yorùbá sentential/personal names in social interactions and the rules are as follows: Rule 1 Any Yorùbá personal name that has two syllables and which has not been reduced to initials should be retained as a name.

Rule 2
Any Yorùbá personal name that has three syllables and which has not been reduced to initials can be retained or reduced to the first two syllables or the last two syllables.

Rule 3
Any Yorùbá personal name that has four syllables and which has not been reduced to initials can be retained or reduced to either the first two syllables, the last three syllables or to the last two syllables.

Rule 4
Any Yorùbá personal name that has more than four syllables and which has not been reduced to initials can be retained or reduced to either the last two syllables, the last three syllables, two syllables that have semantic/cultural meaning(s) or have the first syllable deleted.
Reuben Ìko ̣ tún (2010a: 171) also reports that some Yorùbá personal names are wrongly written in terms of present day orthography.For instance, where two syllables that have identical vowels occur together, only one syllable is written.Some examples are provided under groups A and B below.According to Reuben Ìko ̣ tún (2010a: 171), the forms under group B are used by many Yorùbá language writers whereas the forms under group A should be used.This is because the forms and the pronunciation of the names under group A agree with the current Yorùbá orthography.But it should be understood that the Yorùbá orthography has evolved over time and it has undergone reforms at different times.Our argument that A is the right form is based on the current orthography of Yorùbá language and the names under B that are not in conformity with the current Yorùbá orthography are well understood by Yorùbá speakers especially those that are conversant with the old and current Yorùbá orthographic representations.However, the questions which seemed not to have been addressed in any research work are: (1) why are some Yorùbá personal names wrongly written?(2) are there consequences for the use of some Yorùbá personal names that allow odds between spelling and the Yorùbá sound system or that have inconsistent or contradictory spelling forms in social interactions?These questions will be addressed in this research work.

Yorùbá Orthography
Several attempts have been made by governments, organizations and scholars to design and bring Yorùbá orthography in line with actual speech (cf.Crowther 1852; Bowen 1858; Bámgbóṣé 1967Bámgbóṣé , 1990;;Afọlayan 1969;Oyèlárán 1971;Awóbùlúyì 1978;Akinlabí 1985;Owólabí 198;Ajíbóyè 2005Ajíbóyè , 2007)).For example, in 1844, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) played a significant role through Bishop Ajayi Crowther to develop an orthography for the Yorùbá language (cf.Okediji et al. 197;Aróhunmo ̣́ làṣe 1987).In 1963 also, a seminar was organised at Ìbàdàn to address the problems that faced languages in Africa.Participants at the conference included some UNESCO members and they agreed that authors should use the spellings of the words written below in their writings (cf.However, it must be pointed out that, in order to distinguish ayé 'world' from 'àyè' 'space' the committee recommended ayié for 'world'.But, they forgot that tones can do that.They also endorsed àiyà for 'chest' and aya for 'wife' for the same reason. In January 1966, a committee was set up by the Western State of Nigeria to look into the possibility of recommending a Yorùbá orthography that would be standard for the whole region.In its recommendations, the committee resolved the linguistic ambiguity raised in question (b) and left the question (a) unanswered.The above recommendations should not necessarily apply to the spellings of personal names, not to poetry, dialectal transcriptions, dictionaries, grammars, and other technical writings, where authors should have the freedom to depart from the generally accepted orthography if the nature of their material or presentation compels them to do so.(JCC 1974/75: 8) But, we can say that adherence to this clause in relation to personal names has resulted in a loss of the actual pronunciation of some Yorùbá personal names.Writing represents a permanent feature and whatever is written would remain for generations just as we now see wrongly written names in relation to modern Yorùbá orthography in books and official documents that have been written either in the past or now.It must be emphasized that the clause is totally at variance with accuracy; one of the principles of a good orthography.
According to Kay Williamson (1984: 7), accuracy means that "an orthography must agree with the sound system of the language for which it is intended".Although, there are languages like English and French in which the spelling and pronunciation norms are at odds with this principle, this is not the case with Yorùbá.The Yorùbá spelling and the sound system must agree.For example, the Yorùbá spelling and the sound system endorse Ọládipúpo ̣ , Oládiípo ̣ , Ládipúpọ , Ládiípo ̣ and Diípọ (Riches have become many) as already discussed in the introductory section of this paper and not Ọládipọ , Ládipo ̣ , and Dipọ which are commonly written and commonly used.The commonly written forms are not in agreement with the actual speech of the speakers of the language and therefore do not have lexical meaning.
Similarly, we are of the view that we should not trade freedom for accuracy and, even if the clause has not been revised or abrogated, the onus is on scholars to point out the negative effects of the freedom on the history of the Yorùbá language and Yorùbá culture.It would amount to a serious dereliction of duty if we just close our eyes to the confusion that results from the freedom granted by the JCC 1974/75.The confusion is seriously observable in social interactions, labour market, schools or Polytechnics/Colleges of Education/Universities, Embassies and Nigerian civil service both Federal and State.For example; there are instances of those who make serious attempts at correcting their names when wrongly pronounced by others, especially by Yorùbá youths whose competence in Yorùbá is not profound enough, based on the wrong forms in social interactions or in offices.Sometimes, the accusers (when older than the accused) may want to intimidate the accused by saying "Ìwọ ò kì í ṣe Yorùbá ni?" 'Are you not a Yorùbá person?'.Other people who may be around during the time of address will also show their disagreement.Some will laugh at the addressee.Some will pronounce the name correctly and expect the addressee to learn from such pronunciation and follow suit.Some will hiss and shake their heads and look at the addressee with disappointment.Some will even start to condemn the school system that kò sí ìwé mo ̣ (there is no learning any more) while some will say: a ò tie ̣ mọ ohun tí wọ ̣́n ń kọ ̣́ ní school mọ ̣́ 'we do not know what they are learning in the school any more'.
In addition, during registration exercise in the university, some newly admitted students are denied registration because of the inconsistencies in the spelling forms of their names or when the spelling forms of their names in their certificates do not tally with the spelling forms of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) lists.For example, if an applicant's name on his certificate reads Adékàḿbí and that of the JAMB list reads Adékàńbí as they have been approved by Yorùbá orthography developers (though the correct spelling form is {Adékànḿbí} from Adé kàn mí bí? ('Am I also entitled to the throne/crown?'),after the deletion of vowel [i] and contraction), the registration officer will insist that Adékàḿbí is not Adékàńbí because of the difference in the two consonants [m] and [n].Questions such as: báwo ni orúkọ ẹ ṣe yàto ̣ séyìí tó wà lórí certificate ẹ? ('why is it that your name is different from the one that appears on your certificate?') are normally asked.The usual reply would be Ọ gá tó register wa fún WAEC ló kọ ̣́ be ̣ ̣́e ̣ ('The master/teacher that registered us for WAEC wrote it like that').There have been occasions where such candidates have been asked to either go to their former schools to get a letter correcting their names or to swear to an affidavit in a court that Adékàḿbí is also Adékàńbí.
Similarly, Yorùbá candidates seeking admissions to higher institutions are not the only ones that face the problem of spelling errors.Yorùbá civil servants and Yorùbá travelers at Embassies too face the problem of spelling errors.For example, in the Nigerian Civil Service, verification exercise is done periodically by the Federal and State Ministries to determine ghost workers and ghost pensioners.Therefore, workers and pensioners who have the wrong forms of their names on their certificates tend to be complacent with the wrong forms for fear of being accused of falsification of certificates.There are also some who say Yorùbá òde òní kò tie ̣ yé àwọn ('The Yorùbá that is taught today is not clear to them').Some of the people who claim ignorance of contemporary Yorùbá studies insist that the incorrect forms of their names should be used even when attempts to write the correct forms are put in place.Yorùbá travelers at Embassies also insist on the wrong forms that appear on their certificates and applications for visa otherwise the Embassies may turn down their applications or they may be asked to produce a court affidavit to support the differences in the spelling forms of their names.
Furthermore, it can be observed from the above review that the odds between the spelling and sound system of some Yorùbá personal names are caused by different Yorùbá orthographic representations that are not in agreement with the actual speech.In fact, wrong forms of some Yorùbá personal or sentential names occur right from the primary school level where the Yorùbá orthography that was in use then was not in conformity, in some cases, with actual speech.At the primary school, registration officers or teachers were, in the past, especially before independence, either Standard Six, Modern Three, Grade III or Grade II certificate holders, or in recent times, are either Grade II or NCE holders.These teachers learned the old Yorùbá orthography which was later revised.In the secondary school also, especially between the 60s and early 80s, secondary school principals would always deploy graduates of History and Geography to teach Yorùbá.The principals used to say "Ṣe bí Yorùbá ni" ('Afterall, it is just Yorùbá'), meaning that the teaching of Yorùbá does not require special training.So, the teachers' knowledge of Yorùbá phonological processes is very limited and this is as a result of the shortcomings identified in the Yorùbá orthography that was in use then.Some of those whose names have been wrongly written at the primary school level, based on the old orthography, later frowned at such spellings or forms after they have acquired sufficient training in Yorùbá at the University level especially after the 1974 revision of the Yorùbá orthography.Those who feel particularly worried about the wrong spellings or forms are the few ones who took their degrees in Yorùbá language at the University.The 1974/75 committee which had the opportunity of removing the odds between the spelling and sound system did not do so.Instead, the committee encouraged it.In the course of this paper, we will show also that the use of the wrong forms of Yorùbá personal names has severe implications for the semantic contents of the Yorùbá personal names as well as for the religious belief and philosophy of the Yorùbá people.

Findings
The data that were extracted from our findings are presented below.They are just some examples of the wrongly written names and they are sufficiently representative of the wrongly written Yorùbá personal names.However, as this discussion progresses we will show that the names listed above are sentences and that, at word boundary, they are wrongly derived and therefore, their semantic contents are not in consonance with Yorùbá cultural worldview.

Analysis
Deletion is a process in which a segment is lost, it is a robust phonological process in the Yorùbá language and Yorùbá language scholars that include Ayo ̣ Bámgbóṣé (1967Bámgbóṣé ( : 6, 1990: 43): 43), Ọládélé Awóbùlúyì (1978:149) and Francis Oyèbádé (1998: 63) among others have documented the process.In normal speech a vowel, a consonant or a lexical item may be deleted, e.g.18(i) Olú kò lọ → Olú ò lọ ('Olú did not go') 18(ii) Adé wá sí ilé → Adé wálé ('Adé came home') The example in (18i) shows that the consonant [k] of the negative marker [kò] is deleted.The example in (18ii) indicates that the preposition [sí] is deleted and the vowel [i] of [ilé] (house) is also deleted.Despite the deletion of the items mentioned above, the surface forms in (i) and (ii) are grammatical and acceptable to native speakers.With regard to Yorùbá Personal Names (YPNs) also, one can observe deletion in both written and speech forms.Consider in this regard the following data.However, in the analysis that will follow we will show that the names that are grouped into five sections below are not correctly derived.Even where the bearers of the names and others write the names as wrongly derived above, the fact of the spoken form of the language clearly demonstrates that the wrongly derived forms do not accurately represent the spoken forms.

Group
There is a deletion of the negative marker [kò] thereby giving wrong written and used forms as compared with the spoken forms in sentences 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 below.The sentences below show a deletion of the vowel of [ní].There is also a relinking of the high tone of the deleted vowel to the initial vowel of the noun that occurs after the preposition [ní].However, Ayo ̣ Bámgbóṣé (1990: 46) reports that there is an assimilated low tone in Yorùbá which occurs where there is a deletion of one of two vowels at word boundary where the vowels bear H and L tones respectfully.The assimilated low tone is often disregarded in the written form, even when the spoken form reveals it; e.g.

General Overview
This paper has acknowledged the view of the 1974 committee on Yorùbá orthography in the area of freedom to write names as bearers deem fit.The concern of the present paper is the difference between the pronounced forms of Yorùbá personal names and the written forms.
No doubt, this paper has demonstrated that linguistic items that are articulated in the spoken forms are omitted in the written forms.The question is: does the omission have any significant implication for the language?The answer is yes.The wrong forms have severe implications for the semantic contents of the names which in turn have implications for the religious belief and philosophy of the Yorùbá people.Talking about the religious implications, the rendering of the names in 23 where the good deeds. of Ifá (the Yorùbá god of wisdom) are misrepresented calls for serious concern.For example, we are told that Fáòbàlúje ̣̣́ or Fáàbàlúje ̣̣́ 'Ifá did not destroy the town' but the Yorùbá orthography developers endorse Fábùlúje ̣̣́ 'Ifá destroyed the town'.The Yorùbá people see their gods as good intermediaries between them and their God.So, the Yorùbá people see the gods as reliable, responsible, efficient and always ready to assist in times of need.But, the freedom granted by the Yorùbá orthography developers presents the gods as unreliable and irresponsible.In fact, there may be a greater justification, apart from Christianity, for some Yorùbá people who change the noun phrases (NPs) of their names because of the bad image endorsed by the Yorùbá orthography developers.
Similarly, the underlying representations of names in 29 and 35 confirm previous findings that Yorùbá personal names, like other African names, are known to have elaborate linguistic structure and semantic contents (cf. Ẹkúndayo ̣ 1977: 55-77;Akínnásò 1980: 275-304, Adéníyì 2004: 149-157;Ìko ̣ tún 2010a: 169-186, 2013: 68-73).For example, names like Akínmọ ọ ̣́n rìn 'A valiant person has come at the right time' and Adéníkẹ̀e ̣ ̣́ 'Crown has care' have linguistic structure and semantic contents.However, the surface representations or the wrongly derived forms of the data endorsed by the Yorùbá orthography developers are not in harmony with what African or Yorùbá personal names are known for and this position which shows odds between the spelling and sound system is not the best for understanding the linguistic structure and the rich cultural values contained in Yorùbá personal names.

Conclusion
We have examined the wrong forms of some Yorùbá sentences that have become personal names through compounding.We have argued that the wrong forms of some Yorùbá personal names are common occurrences and we have established that the wrong forms are traceable to the freedom granted by Yorùbá orthography developers.It has been argued also that the spelling and sound system of Yorùbá personal names are not at odds as it is the case in some other languages of the world and that the endorsement of the odds between the spelling and sound system of the wrong forms by Yorùbá orthography developers has resulted in a loss of the actual pronunciation of some Yorùbá personal names.This position whereby there are odds between the spelling and sound system of some Yorùbá personal names is not in harmony with what African or Yorùbá personal names are known for and it is not the best for understanding the linguistic structure and the rich cultural values contained in Yorùbá personal names.

Underlying Form Correct Surface Form Wrong Surface and used Form
However, the correctly derived forms in sentences 29 and 30 show the use of nasal vowel[ͻ]after the deletion of consonants[r] and [w]and assimilation between [ͻ]and[i].The reason is that the consonant that occurs before the oral vowel [ͻ] is a nasal consonant.In sentence 31, it is only contraction that occurs after the deletion of the consonant [t] while it is the case of assimilation between the vowels [e] and[in]in sentence 32 and [e] and [i] in sentence 33 and contraction after the deletion of consonants [y] and[k].