AN ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC ARCHITECTURE OF TIV ANTHROPONOMASTICS

Anthroponomastics is a subdivision of Onomastics. It is concerned with the study of personal names. It is different from Toponomastics which is place names. The division is however an arbitrary one, as places are often named after people and vice versa. Personal name refers to the names of people assigned to them by their parents, relatives, guardians or elderly members of the family and the community. Tiv personal names have a structure that reflects the grammatical structure of the language. This structure of personal names is however, something that most of us take completely for granted. This is because, we are so used to the mentioning and understanding our native names with unselfconscious ease that we do not notice the complex linguistic architecture that underlies almost every Tiv personal name. It is in view of this that, the work is carried out to examine the various grammatical structures that are found in Tiv personal names, beginning from the smallest constituent of personal names to larger ones.