'The child of death': Personal names and parental attitudes towards mortality in bunyoro, western uganda, 1900-2005

Journal of African History

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 361-382

  Doyle, Shane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Children; Demography; Fertility; Uganda

Indexed keywords

CHRISTIANITY; CULTURAL TRADITION; DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION; EDUCATION; FERTILITY; MORTALITY; PERCEPTION; PUBLIC ATTITUDE;

AFRICA; BUNYORO; EAST AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; UGANDA;

EID: 65749122864     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853708003678     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Male focus group discussion (FGD), 6 Aug. 2006 (transcripts are in the possession of the author). The participants were aged between 65 and 80.
2. www.unicef.org/sowc03/tables/table9.html
3. www.afro.who.int/home/countries/fact_sheets/zimbabwe.pdf
4. www.unicef.org/infobycountry/botswana_statistics.html.
5. Cf. B. Fetter (ed.), Demography from Scanty Evidence: Central Africa in the Colonial Era (London, 1990).
6. J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005);
7. M. Vaughan, 'Mr Mdala writes to the governor: Negotiating colonial rule in Nyasaland', History Workshop Journal, 60 (2005), 171-88;
8. J. Allman and V. Tashjian, I Will Not Eat Stone: A Women's History of Colonial Asante (Portsmouth NH, 2000);
9. D. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London, 2005).
10. See, for example, C. van Onselen's remarkable life history of a South African sharecropper, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (Oxford, 1996).
11. E.g. J. Willis, 'Feedback as a "problem" in oral history : An example from Bondei', History in Africa, 20 (1993), 353-60.
12. J. Beattie, 'Nyoro personal names', Uganda Journal, 21 (1957), 99-106, is valuable but does not identify trends.
13. Two studies which skilfully historicize this interaction are S. Feierman and J. Janzen, The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992);
14. and D. Maxwell with I. Lawrie, Christianity and the African Imagination. Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings (Leiden, 2002).
15. B. Fetter, 'Decoding and interpreting African census data: Vital evidence from an unsavory witness', Cahiers d'Études Africaines 27 (1987), 83-105.
16. Uganda Protectorate, Census of Uganda, 1959, 6.
17. Uganda Protectorate, Census 1959, 25, 28-9, 34, 72-7;
18. East African High Commission, 'East African general and sample censuses 1948: African fertility data' (unpublished document, Nairobi, 1955), 114. Bunyoro's general fertility rate of 144, total fertility rate of 4, and crude birth rate of 32 were the second-lowest fertility figures in Uganda. The crude death rate was 25, third-highest in Uganda.
19. W. Bazley, Bunyoro: Tropical Paradox (Durham, 1993), 6, 77, 85, 111;
20. J. McFie, 'Nutrition surveys' (TS in Makerere University Library, Kampala, 1954), 9, 23, 30;
21. Bunyoro interviews 18, 24, 26, 34, 41, 61. Interviews were conducted in 1995 and 2007. Transcripts are in the possession of the author.
22. McFie, 'Nutrition', 1-2;
23. J. Beattie, Understanding an African Kingdom: Bunyoro (New York, 1965), 13.
24. McFie, 'Nutrition', 16.
25. Uganda Government, Uganda Agricultural Census, 1963-4 (Entebbe, 1965), 27;
26. M. Low, 'Mutala survey of Buchunga, Bunyoro district, 1961' (TS in M. Perlman papers, file 123, London, School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS] archive);
27. A. Dunbar, 'Mutala survey of Bujenje Bunyoro district' (TS in Haddon Library, Cambridge);
28. G. Kitching, Class and Economic Change: The Making of an African Petit-Bourgeoisie, 1905-1970 (New Haven CT, 1980), 361, 371-4, 403.
29. Medical report, 20 June 1911, Public Record Office (PRO), CO/536/42.
30. Annual medical reports 1910-25, PRO, CO/685/1-8.
31. R. Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, vol. II (London, 1949), 265-71, 304. Vital registration records from the 1940s to the 1970s have disappeared. Later records have survived unevenly and, being largely hospital-derived, are potentially unrepresentative.
32. Cf. V. Notkola, I. Timaeus and H. Siiskonen, 'Mortality transition in the Ovamboland region of Namibia, 1930-1990', Population Studies, 54 (2000), 153-67.
33. E.g. T. Ternan, Diaries, MSS Afr. R. 128, 20-23 Apr. 1895, Rhodes House Oxford;
34. Miss Attlee, 'Letter', Uganda Notes, 10 (July 1910), 111.
35. Bunyoro interviews 39, 16, 15, 41 and 10a;
36. G. Schweinfurth et al. (eds.), Emin Pasha in Central Africa: Being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, 1888), 84-9;
37. R. Fisher, Twilight Tales of the Black Baganda (London, 1911), 52;
38. J. Beattie, 'Nyoro mortuary rites', Uganda Journal, 25 (1961), 171-83;
39. J. Mukasa-Balikuddembe, 'The indigenous elements of theatre in Bunyoro and Tooro' (unpublished MA dissertation, Dar es Salaam, 1973), 166;
40. A. Byaruhanga-Akiiki, Religion in Bunyoro (Nairobi, 1982), 23-33.
41. Beattie, Understandingi, p.11;
42. J. Beattie, 'Sorcery in Bunyoro', in J. Middleton and E. Winter (eds.), Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa (London, 1963), 29, 45, 53.
43. Some interesting material can be found in, e.g., J. Beattie, 'Homicide and suicide in Bunyoro', in P. Bohannan (ed.), African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton, 1960), 148;
44. J. Roscoe, The Soul of Central Africa (New York, 1969 [1922]), 194, 201;
45. Beattie, Understanding, 11, 19.
46. S. Benson, 'Injurious names: Naming, disavowal, and recuperation in contexts of slavery and emancipation', in G. vom Bruck and B. Bodenhorn (eds.), The Anthropology of Names and Naming (Cambridge, 2006), 181-6;
47. H. Gengenbach, 'Naming the past in a "scattered" land: Memory and the powers of women's naming practices in southern Mozambique', International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33 (2000), 523-42;
48. Z. Leyew, 'Amharic personal nomenclature: A grammar and sociolinguistic insight', Journal of African Cultural Studies, 16 (2003), 181-211.
49. Iliffe, Honour, 261, 302, 167.
50. D. Scott Smith, 'Child-naming practices as cultural and familial indicators', Local Population Studies, 32 (1984), 17-27;
51. E. Tebbenhoff, 'Tacit rules and hidden family structures: Naming practices and godparentage in Schenectady, New York 1680-1800', Journal of Social History, 18 (1985), 567-70.
52. C. Cody, 'There was no "Absolom" on the Ball plantations: Slave-naming practices in the South Carolina Low Country, 1720-1865', American Historical Review, 92 (1987), 563-96.
53. Contrast T. Burnard, 'Slave naming patterns: Onomastics and the taxonomy of race in eighteenth-century Jamaica', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 31 (2001), 325-46.
54. R. Fryer and S. Levitt, 'The causes and consequences of distinctively black names', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119 (2004), 767-805.
55. A. Iteanu, 'Processes of naming', Anthropology Today, 16 (2000), 24-5.
56. J. Beattie, The Nyoro State (Oxford, 1971), 35-9.
57. P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge MA, 1991).
58. E.g. female FGD, Kyesiga, 6 Aug. 2007;
59. J. Nyakatura, Aspects of Bunyoro Customs and Traditions (Nairobi, 1970), 11.
60. J. Roscoe, The Northern Bantu: An Account of Some Central African Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate (London, 1966 [1915]), 44, indicates that naming practices among the Huma pastoralists differed somewhat from those of the majority of Nyoro.
61. Female FGD, Kyesiga, 6 Aug. 2007;
62. male FGD, Bucunga, 4 Aug. 2007.
63. Sometimes one of the parents, most often the mother, would lack a Christian name, indicating that he or she had not yet been baptized.
64. Over time the parish shrank in size as new mission centres were established to serve Bunyoro's growing Roman Catholic population.
65. This figure is calculated by dividing the number of baptisms of babies born in 1924, 283, by half the total number of births registered in western Bunyoro in that year, 755. The vital registration figures, which indicate a crude birth rate of around 14 per 1,000, almost certainly underestimated real fertility levels.
66. A gradual increase from the 1950s in the frequency with which children inherited a surname from their father may simply be a superficial example of imitative westernization, but it is tempting to relate it to the concomitant rise of a more nuclear type of family.
67. While almost all Nyoro names are situational, there are some exceptions, such as those particular to the ruling Bito clan or to twins and the children born after them.
68. O. Beaudoin, 'Affaire "Nyangire"' (MS, Kampala, Rubaga archives), 31-2;
69. Hoima Mission Diary, May 1907, White Fathers' Archive, Rome (WFAR).
70. E.g. 21 Feb. 1914, WFAR.
71. For the melding of Christian and indigenous spiritual concepts, see J. Beattie, 'The ghost cult in Bunyoro', Ethnology, 3 (1964), 127-51.
72. Missionaries attempted to purify their converts through both confrontation and the Christianization of non-offensive indigenous beliefs. See S. Doyle, 'The Cwezi-Kubandwa debate: Gender, hegemony and pre-colonial religion in Bunyoro, western Uganda', Africa, 77 (2007), 571-3.
73. Some of the new devotional names mimic those associated with particular piety in seventeenth-century Kongo. J. Thornton, 'Central African names and African-American naming patterns', William and Mary Quarterly, 50 (1993), 734.
74. Beattie, 'Mortuary', 181, notes that the character of death is also discussed through a number of proverbs, such as 'Death is ignorant: It takes the young and leaves the old'. Cf. Beattie, 'Personal names', 101-2.
75. See, e.g., Benson, 'Injurious names', 182, 186.
76. To be more precise, this figure refers to the period from 1900 to 1959, rather than 1962, because the data were grouped into five-year periods.
77. Medical Department Annual Reports 1917-19, PRO, CO/685/3.
78. S. Doyle, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro: Population and Environment in Western Uganda, 1860-1955 (Oxford, 2006), 134-56, 216-47.
79. Medical Department Annual Report 1921, PRO, CO/685/4. Of course maternal death would often have resulted in infant death as well. Recent estimates indicate that around 1 per cent of Ugandan fathers die between conception and naming. Uganda Bureau of Statistics and ORC Macro, Uganda Demographic and Health Survey, 2000-2001 (Calverton MD, 2001), 197.
80. Doyle, Crisis, 216-17. Bunyoro had the highest per capita attendances at medical centres, including infant welfare centres, in 1930s Uganda.
81. Thanks to Megan Vaughan for this suggestion.
82. The average delay between birth and baptism was 436 days in Bujumbura, 661 days in Mparo and 696 days in Butema.
83. www.unicef.org/infobycountry/uganda_statistics.html.
84. Male FGD, Bucunga, 4 Aug. 2007.
85. J. Beattie, 'Bunyoro through the looking glass', Journal of African Administration, 12 (1960), 88-9;
86. Doyle, Crisis, 174-7.
87. Female FGD, Buswekera, 7 Aug. 2007.
88. Female FGD, Bucunga, 5 Aug. 2007.
89. Female FGD, Kyesiga, 6 Aug. 2007.
90. Bunyoro interviews 88 and 89. For the Creator, see A. Byaruhanga-Akiiki, 'Religion in Bunyoro' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Makerere University, Kampala, 1971), 1.
91. Cf. B. Meyer, 'If you are a devil, you must be a witch', Journal of Religion in Africa, 22 (1992), 98-132.
92. The Catholic Church's campaign to venerate the Uganda Martyrs rather than the ancestors had a limited impact, if naming practices are any indication. Only 2 babies out of 36,839 were given the names of the Nyoro Catholic martyrs. Cf. R. Kassimir, 'Complex martyrs: Symbols of Catholic Church formation and political differentiation in Uganda', African Affairs, 90 (1991), 370.
93. T. Barnett and P. Blaikie, AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact (London, 1992), 42-53;
94. E. Hooper, 'AIDS in Uganda', African Affairs, 86 (1987), 471.
95. F. Ciantia, 'HIV seroprevalence in northern Uganda: The complex relationship between AIDS and conflict', Journal of Medicine and the Person, 2 (2004), 174;
96. J. Ntozi, Y. Lubaale and I. Nakanaabi, 'AIDS mortality in Uganda: circumstances, factors and impact of death', Health Transition Review 7 (1997), 214. Bunyoro has shared in the wider marked change in funerary practices in Uganda, with burials becoming less drawn out, sexualized and expensive, and widow inheritance becoming extremely infrequent.
97. Ntozi, 'AIDS', 14.
98. R. Gray, M. Wawer, D. Serwadda et al., 'Population-based study of fertility in women with HIV-1 infection in Uganda', Lancet, 351 (1998), 98-103;
99. J. Ntozi, I. Nakanaabi and Y. Lubaale, 'Fertility levels and trends in the face of the AIDS epidemic in Uganda', Health Transition Review 7 (1997), 145-55.
100. The accuracy of popular perceptions of AIDS in Uganda in 1995 was far greater than that in South Africa, for example, three years later. Department of Statistics, Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (Entebbe, 1995), 150-4;
101. Department of Health, South Africa Demographic and Health Survey, 1998 (Pretoria, 1999), 79-80.
102. Female FGD, Bucunga, 5 Aug. 2007.
103. Female FGD, Buswekera, 7 Aug. 2007.
104. Male FGD, Bucunga, 4 Aug. 2007.
105. Informants were adamant, though, that death-related names in Bunyoro, unlike some other African societies, should be interpreted literally, and do not allude to various other difficulties. Male FGD, Kyesiga, 6 Aug. 2006. Nyoro possess a wide repertoire of names which refer directly to other types of trouble, such as Mainaro (poverty), Majara (hunger) or Miteto (paternity doubts).
106. Doyle, Crisis, 238.
107. Bunyoro interview 10b.
108. Bunyoro interviews 34, 49, 73, 84, 85, 86.
109. The birth interval data exclude intervals of greater than 120 months, which are assumed to be unreliable.
110. Thanks to Robert Ross for this point. Parents who baptized multiple children brought their babies to be baptized much more quickly (137 days) than the overall average of 678 days. The reasons for this are unclear.
111. See, e.g., J. Hobcraft, J. McDonald and S. Rutstein, 'Demographic determinants of infant and early child mortality: A comparative analysis', Population Studies, 39 (1985), 374. In any case, census data showing a decline of 13 per cent in infant mortality from the 1940s to the 1950s cannot sufficiently account for a ten-month reduction in birth intervals between 1935-9 and 1955-9.
112. E.g. D. Schoenbrun, A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1998).
113. Personal communication, Kevin Ward.
114. N. Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, 1992).
115. K. Davis, 'The world demographic transition', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 237 (1945), 1-11.
116. T. Dyson and M. Murphy, 'The onset of fertility transition', Population and Development Review, 11 (1985), 399-403, 410.
117. See the discussion of this literature in M. Montgomery, 'Perceiving mortality decline', Population and Development Review, 26 (2000), 795-819.
118. Compare J. Caldwell, 'The social repercussions of colonial rule: demographic aspects', in A. Adu Boahen (ed.), UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII (London, 1985), 458, 476-80,
119. and D. Cordell and J. Gregory, African Population and Capitalism: Historical Perspectives (London, 1987).