The ‘price’ of character Naming in xitsonga: An onomastic Reading of B.k. Mtombeni’s Mibya ya nyekanyeka

Abstract

The study focuses on the depiction of characters and development of themes through naming in selected two Xitsonga novels, namely; Mibya ya Nyekanyeka (Mtombeni, B.K. 2008) It explores how some Xitsonga writers use character naming as a technique to depict characters and develop themes in their novels. The descriptive theory of names has been used as a theoretical framework in this study. This study is based on the interpretivist paradigm, the descriptive case study research design, and the reader-response research approach. The population of the study was Xitsonga novels and the texts were extracted from the five different Xitsonga novels to support the analysis of the use of the naming techniques in the depiction of characters in relation to the development of themes from these novels. The documentation method as well as the note-taking method, were used to collect the data. Furthermore, content analysis as well and the comparative method were used to analyse the data