THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF URHOBO NAMES OF PERSONS

This study presents a morpho-syntactic analysis of the internal structure of Urhobo personal names. While existing scholarship has often focused on the cultural and semantic significance of these names, a significant gap remains in the systematic description of their grammatical architecture. This research, therefore, aims to examine the morphological processes and syntactic patterns that underlie the formation of Urhobo personal names. The study is framed within the Item-and-Process model of morphology and the Principles and Parameters theory of syntax. Data comprising 100 personal names were collected from native speakers in Jesse town and school registers in Delta State, Nigeria, and were subjected to linguistic analysis. The findings reveal that Urhobo names are predominantly complex linguistic constructions rather than simple labels. Morphologically, they are formed primarily through compounding and the productive use of nominalizing prefixes (e.g.,Á-, Ò-, È-). Syntactically, a majority of names are shown to be desententialized forms, originating as full clauses (e.g., Óghènéguédjókè meaning "We give account to God") that conform to the Subject-Verb-Object word order of the language. The analysis also identifies governed morpho-phonological processes like vowel elision at morpheme boundaries. The study concludes that Urhobo personal names are rule-governed, systematically generated from the language's grammatical system. It recommends further research into the sociolinguistics of naming, comparative Edoid onomastics, and detailed phonological analysis. This work contributes to African linguistics by providing a formal grammatical account of naming practices and serves as a resource for Urhobo language education and preservation.