"A Survey of Name Changes in the last 50 years in Boukan: A Socio-Onomastic Study"

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Foreign Languages, University of Payam-e-Noor, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Investigating the diachronic changes of names during the last fifty years and acknowledging the relationship between social transformations and name changes, this study aimes at demonstrating how these changes have influenced the selection of names for children in Boukan from1973 to 2023 and to find an appropriate answer for these questions: 1.which language(s) dominate the names chosen by Boukani parents in the last fifty years in general and in each decade in particular? 2.What gender-based differences emerge in name selection in the last 50 years in general and across decades? 3.How did the names chosen from each language changed over these years? And 4.What social, political, and ethnic implications are revealed through these naming choices? Using civil registry data, the names are first categorized in to Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish and Foreign and their relevant frequencies were tabulated and then their frequency patterns were analyzed against socio-political conditions. Research as such were done in other Kurdish cities and the gap for Boukan names was felt and this study is a step to fill it.

Keywords

Main Subjects


 
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