Social values and beliefs

This study investigates Ẹdo personal names from a morpho-semantic perspective to show how the internal structure of names and the cultural context of the Ẹdo people work together to create meaning. Data for the study were collected through oral interviews with native speakers and from published sources. The names were analyzed using basic morphological description and the Principle of Compositionality, which states that the meaning of a complex word is derived from the meanings of its parts.
The findings reveal that Ẹdo names are not mere labels but meaningful expressions that reflect the people’s worldview, beliefs, and social values. The study shows that Ẹdo names come from several sources, including kinship, birth circumstances, personal traits, religious beliefs, and the cultural understanding of destiny and reincarnation. Each category of names carries messages about identity, family structure, moral behavior, spirituality, and the historical pride of the Ẹdo people. The analysis demonstrates that Ẹdo names serve as tools for preserving cultural heritage, transmitting values, and reinforcing the social structure of the community. This work contributes to existing knowledge by providing a detailed linguistic analysis of Ẹdo anthroponyms and by showing how language encodes cultural knowledge. It also emphasizes the need to document and preserve Ẹdo names for future generations, as they remain an important part of the people’s linguistic and cultural identity.