Faculty of Arts and Design
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Item Terminology development in Zulu avian nomenclature(NISC (Pty) Ltd, 2018) Turner, Noleen S.; Koopman, AdrianTwo interlinking threads run through this article: one is a broader framework of terminology development in South African languages; the other a narrower, more focused description of a particular terminology development project, namely the deriving of isiZulu names for birds found in the KwaZulu-Natal region, where no names have previously been recorded. The broader thread contains a theoretical look at terminology development; the narrower thread documents the background and the execution of five isiZulu bird name workshops conducted between 2013 and 2017. At the beginning of the 21st century ornithological literature in South Africa had long contained species-specific names in English and Afrikaans for all species of southern African birds. The situation for isiZulu, as for the other Bantu languages in southern Africa, was that many birds shared the same name, many birds had several names, and many species had no name at all. The goal of the workshops, and the project as a whole, was to develop individual names for all species of birds in the KwaZulu-Natal region. The article looks in detail at the linguistic processes involved in developing these names, placing this within the broader thread of terminology development, and then concludes by evaluating the value of having isiZulu species-specific names for birds in the isiZulu-speaking region.Item Zulu bird names : a progression over the decades (I) [Part one : the first hundred years, from Delegorgue to Samuelson](NISC (Pty) Ltd, 2018) Koopman, AdrianFor nearly 250 years, beginning with Linnaeus in 1758 and continuing through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, birds have been given scientific and vernacular names created by deliberate, conscious, and methodological taxonomical naming processes. On the other hand, Zulu names for birds, for centuries only residing in oral tradition, have only found their way into print through being recorded in writing. In this process, oral knowledge is recast as written knowledge. This article looks at the first hundred years of such recording of Zulu names, beginning with the first settlers and explorers in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and continuing through to the publication of Samuelson’s dictionary in 1923. The article, and its planned follow-up article, looks at the contribution of various lexicographers, including Bishop Colenso, the Reverend AT Bryant, and CM Doke and BW Vilakazi, and then interfaces their dictionaries with various works on southern African birds, beginning with Layard’s 1867 Birds of South Africa, looking closely at Woodward and Woodward’s 1899 Natal Birds, and ending with the seventh edition of Roberts Birds of Southern Africa, published in 2005. The primary focus is on how the Zulu oral tradition of bird knowledge has increasingly been revealed to the Western world through the efforts of naturalists and lexicographers. The article concludes with a brief look at recent developments in Zulu bird names between 2013 and 2017.Item Surname dynamics in avian nomenclature(NISC (Pty) Ltd, 2017) Koopman, AdrianThis article begins by explaining the roles surnames play in formal scientific nomenclature, where surnames may appear in both the vernacular names (Wahlberg’s Eagle) and the scientific names (Aquila walbergi) of birds, as well as in the descriptions of the formal naming process found in ornithological publications. The article explains the former usage as honouring someone in the ornithological world, while the latter usage refers to the person who first identified and named a new species of bird. The article goes on to note that both those who do the naming of new species of birds and they who are honoured for their contribution to ornithology by having new species of birds named after them belong to the same closed world, with the result that often the same surnames crop up in both onomastic roles: honouree and namer. Looked at diachronically, such surname usage creates distinct dynamics. The second half of the article looks at other types of surname dynamics: immigrants changing their surnames on arriving in a new country, the rebranding of film stars and singers, the use of noms-de-plume, and surname change (or exchange) on marriage. The article concludes by situating surname usage in avian nomenclature within a wider context of surname dynamics, and suggests that ornithologists and onomasticians see these surnames from considerably different perspectives.Item Toponyms in Poetry(Taylor and Fancis, 2016) Koopman, Adrian; Jenkins, ElwynThe authors examine the way a number of poets have used toponyms (place names) in their poems. The many diverse uses of toponyms include using them as vehicles for humour and satire, for their historical connotations, for their political import, to express pride in the motherland, to mark the routes of journeys, to map landscapes, and frequently simply for their musicality and sensuousness. A wide range of poets has been chosen – South African, British, and American – from the famous to the obscure. The toponyms in the poems come from many parts of the world, and also from a variety of languages. Two of the poems are written in Afrikaans and Zulu. The poems selected range from “high-density” poems, with one consisting entirely of place names, to “low-density” poems, one of them featuring a single name and one that does not mention a single one. Most of the poems discussed in this article were written as poems, while two were written originally as songs, and one sequence of place names is taken from the Old Testament.