African names carry stories, not just of who you are, but who you were.  For you and others to name and “know” you, you must be able to recite your family, community, and regional affiliations; your place in society; your clan and revered ancestors.  And you may acquire many “praise names” (which can embody your and your predecessors’ vices as well as virtues).  So important is such naming that sophisticated oral art forms called praise poetry have developed in almost every African traditional society.  

 

“Two Shellini” is a traditional chant of ancestral names in the Zulu oral genre known as izibongo—here performed by Zulu ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and introduced by "Fudugazi" [Tortoise] Gcina Mhlophe.  An individual’s naming song tells the story of who s/he is by recounting the lineage that s/he comes from—that is, chanting back through the praise names of illustrious living and dead ancestors of the individual’s family, clan, and people.  Ladysmith Black Mambazo popularized in the West a cappella choral singing based on traditional Zulu call-and-response group singing styles like iscathamiya.  (Gift of the Tortoise: A Musical Journey through Southern Africa, Music for Little People-Warner Brothers, 1994; Track 12, time: 2:15).

Composing elements of the Praise Song genre:

		Praise names and epithets (descriptive substitutes for the names of persons or things)
		No connector words or transitional phrases are used to connect lines (i.e. Parataxis)
		Rhythm and sound are carefully attended to in composing a praise song (often chanted, perhaps to music and/or a percussion beat)
		In communal performance, the lines of the praise poem would be called and audience-participants would respond (Call and Response).

African praise name(s) and epithets might also typically evoke the following:

		conditions of entry into the world (e.g., a boy after three girls, birth in the midst of a terrible draught, special joy in a child who lives after a series of infant mortalities);
		unusual features of the birth (e.g., born wrapped in a caul or feet first) that are believed to denote character or spiritual affiliation;
		a spiritual force known to have interceded in the child’s conception or an ancestor “come again” (reincarnated) in the child to form part of her/his complex soul, character, and exerting influence on her/his destiny;
		genealogy or kinship group affiliations—of the individual’s people, clan, family, revered ancestors—that connect and identify the individual with the past and the community (past & present), and whose mythic and social history (key events, generalized character, special ancestors) may shape the individual’s future;
		geographical affiliations of place and region, or elements of the natural environment (past and present) that identify and influence the individual and her/his community, kinship group;
		totem (e.g., animal, plant, natural object) epithet--usually determined by divination or special revelation (e.g. a dream or vision)—of the individual and/or clan influencing the individual’s character, values, and/or destiny;
		an important past experience or unusual incident (e.g. accomplishment, tragedy, special escapade, twist of fortune or fate) with which the person is identified (has gained the person either celebrity or notoriety), which has marked the person, and/or which reveals key character trait(s)
		the (initiation) stage or social role in (spiritual and/or communal) life that the person has attained on her/his journey toward achieving full “humanness”
		special “age-mates” to whom the person is bonded by shared affinities, experiences, character traits, spiritual destiny, etc.

Here is an example of a Dogon Tige (Praise Song) to an individual
(Reprint from Judith Gleason, ed. Leaf and Bone: African Praise-Poems. New York: Penguin, 1994.)  

Ambara, The Interpreter

Ambara
Abundant cloud
Pushed up through hollow bamboo
Fatigue
Banished brothers
Men of mud
Cutter of the road.

Here is a line-by-line interpretation of "Ambara, The Interpreter"
(Judith Gleason, ed. Leaf and Bone: African Praise-Poems. New York: Penguin, 1994.)

Line 1.  Ambara (names the person)

Line 2.  Abundant cloud (greeting given primal Dogon blacksmith when he arrived on Earth with the possibility of rain, reminds Ambara he is Dogon; Dogon also associate this phrase with mystery and occult knowledge known only to high initiate in a Dogon secret society)

Line 3.  Pushed up through hollow bamboo (“hollow bamboo” is praise name of the Dyon branch & clan of the Dogon and recalls their arrival to the region of the Bandiagara cliffs)

Line 4.  Fatigue  (associated with the neighborhood of Sanga and clan history: Ambara’s ancestors wore themselves out carrying soil from the bottoms of evaporating ponds up onto the rocky terraces of Bandiagara—beginning agriculture in this inhospitable desert environment;  Also indicating the curse of the human condition)

Line 5.  Banished brothers (For a mythic seven years in the past, the Dyon clan was banished from the villages of Ogol for breaking a serious taboo)

Line 6.  Men of Mud.  (“mud” indicates a water source and identifies the quarter of Ogol villages where Ambara’s immediate family lives)

Line 7.  Cutter of the Road. (This final epithet characterizes Ambara’s personality type and social role—he has a facility of interpretation, which he has inherited from an ancestor whose life Ambara is reliving under different worldly circumstances.)