NOMAREC: Nollywood Gets Virtual Media & Research Center

PRESS RELEASE: Azuh Amatus Unveils Nollywood Media And Research Centre 

          Nollywood Media And Research Centre, (www.nomarec.com), a new information resource hub that is out to provide media-driven and in-depth research on Nollywood—the globally renowned Nigerian motion picture industry, its practitioners and various publics has been unveiled. 

          According to a statement issued in Lagos by its Founder and CEO, Azuh Amatus, NOMAREC serves as a rendezvous for journalists, filmmakers, professionals, scholars, researchers, film writers, students, entertainment enthusiasts, agencies and stakeholders within and outside Nigeria to access media-related and industry data on Nollywood, virtually.

          Shedding more light on NOMAREC and the services offered at the first-of-its- kind media and research driven centre, Azuh, a leading and revered Nollywood journalist with over two decades experience, disclosed that it is a one-stop virtual shop for reliable media contents and information on Nollywood.

Bello: Nigeria's Most Ecumenical Name

(By Farooq A. Kperogi) – Hello Bello: How “Bello” Became Nigeria’s Most Ecumenical Name

This article has been in the works for months. Each week I decide to work on it, something more pressing that invites my commentary comes up. But I have bucked all temptations to abandon it this week. 

Few people realize that “Bello” is Nigeria’s most universal “ethnic” name. Fewer still give a thought to how that came to be. By “ethnic” name, I mean a name that isn’t derived from universal religions like Christianity or Islam, which most Nigerians profess and practice, and that isn’t a Western ethnic name introduced to us through colonialism. 

Bello is a Nigerian Fulani name that has, over the years, lost its ethnic rootedness. It is the only name that is borne either as a first name or a last name in all Nigerian geo-cultural groups, except in the former Eastern Region, that is, Igboland and southern minorities, minus Edo State (who doesn’t know the Bello-Osagie family?). 

If we go by Nigeria’s contemporary geo-political categories, it’s only in the southeast and in the south-south (with the exception of Edo) that you may not find a native Bello. (There are three Bellos among Nigeria’s current governors, and at least one of them has no drop of Fulani blood in him). Essentially, of Nigeria’s 36 states, only 10 states don’t have a native Bello. No other “ethnic” name even comes close to this onomastic cosmopolitanism. (Onomastics is the study of names).

Of Yoruba Names With Arabic Origins

(By Farooq A. Kperogi) – Top 10 Yoruba Names You Never Guessed Were Arabic Names

I have always been fascinated by Yoruba people’s creative morphological domestication of Arabic names. There are scores of Yoruba names that are derived from Arabic but which are barely recognizable to Arabs or other African Muslims because they have taken on the structural features of the Yoruba language. 

This is not unique to Yoruba, of course. As scholars of onomastics or onomatology know only too well, when proper names leave their primordial shores to other climes they, in time, are often liable to local adaptation. (Onomastics or onomatology is the scientific study of the origins, forms, conventions, history and uses of proper names. Anthroponomastics specifically studies personal names, so this article is an anthroponamastic analysis of Yoruba Muslim names). That’s why, for instance, there are many Arabic-derived personal names in Hausa, the most Arabized ethnic group in Nigeria, that would be unrecognizable to Arabs. Names like Mamman (Muhammad), Lawan (Auwal), Shehu (Sheikh), etc. would hardly make much sense to an Arab.

I am drawn to the onomatology of Arabic-derived Yoruba names because their morphological adaptation to Yoruba’s structural attributes seems to follow an admirably predictable, rule-governed pattern. I have four preliminary observations on this pattern.

Of Nigeria and Hausa Christian Names

(By Farooq A. Kperogi) – Hausa-Speaking Northern Christian Names: An Onomastic Analysis

… I have a scholarly fascination with the origin, form, development, and domestication of personal names—an area of inquiry linguists call onomastics. … 

I pointed out that several Arabic names “have taken on the structural features of the Yoruba language.” I said this wasn’t unique to Yoruba Muslims. “As scholars of onomastics or onomatology know only too well,” I wrote, “when proper names leave their primordial shores to other climes they, in time, are often liable to local adaptation…. That’s why, for instance, there are many Arabic-derived personal names in Hausa, the most Arabized ethnic group in Nigeria, that would be unrecognizable to Arabs. Names like Mamman (Muhammad), Lawan (Auwal), Shehu (Sheikh), etc. would hardly make much sense to an Arab.”

The personal names of Hausa-speaking Northern Nigerian Christians also have an onomastic uniqueness that is worth exploring. I use “Hausa-speaking Northern Nigerian Christians” here rather loosely to refer to a miscellany of ethnic groups primarily in Nigeria’s northwest and northeast who are nonetheless united by Christianity and the Hausa language. This geo-cultural group, for the most part, excludes northern states like Benue, Kogi, Kwara, and maybe Niger, where most Christians historically bear conventional Western Christian names, but might include Plateau and Nasarawa states.