The Hausa are one of the many peoples of West Africa, inhabiting mainly the northern states of present-day Nigeria. The population of Hausa is more than 15 million people. The Hausa ethnic community was formed as a result of the mixing of the local black population with various Sudanese peoples who migrated from the north and east.

A. S. VEREZEMSKAYA

ISAAMGU

V. M. KOROSTELEVA

ISAAMGU

In the Hausa language, there are three types of names: sunan yanka - the Koranic name given at birth; sunan rana - the name given to the child by the family and which is sometimes used more often than the Koranic name, and sunan wasa, i.e. a nickname that a person can get both from relatives and from friends, classmates, acquaintances. Throughout a person's life, they can be called either by one name (for example, sunan rana), or by all three, depending on the situation.

NAMES AND ADDRESSES

There is no concept of "last name"in House society: instead of surnames, the father's name is used as a middle name for men and girls, or the husband's name is used for married women. A fairly common phenomenon is the coincidence of names for different people. Traditional prejudice that people with the same name are and are essentially the same person leads to the emergence of additional names, or sunan wasa.

These names are nicknames that a person can get based on a professional attribute that characterizes their occupation, physical characteristics, etc. Sometimes the nickname replaces the middle name given by the father or husband. For example: Ibrahim mai wankin hula - Ibrahim, washing caps "hula"; Gambo mai yankan farce - Gumbo, cutting nails, i.e. doing a manicure; Musa mai neman yamaha-Musa, dreaming of a Yamaha motorcycle.

Sunan wasa originates from such a widespread Hausa concept as Alkunya - the name of a particular member of the family or society is usually avoided when referring to him or in conversation about him. There are six main categories of such people: 1) parent; 2) older relatives; 3) husband; 4) first-born child; 5) religious (traditional) teacher; 6) any person who bears the name of the speaker's parent, traditional teacher or ruler, for example "sarki", i.e. emir.

Traditionally avoiding calling her husband by his first name, most Hausa women don't call their firstborn either. If, for example, a boy is named Muhammadu, the mother can call him yaro - "boy", mai sunan maza - "called by a man's name", or simply use the personal pronoun of the third or second person singular-kai, shi.

In a domestic setting, no one in the Hausa family - whether old or young-will call the eldest person in the family by their Quranic or even household name sunan rana. Usually, kinship terms are used in this case, for example, baba - "father", yaya - " older brother (or sister)", iya - "mother", kawu - "maternal uncle". To some extent, these terms are also sunan wasa.

On the other hand, older family members can safely use sunan yanka and sunan rana when addressing their children, grandchildren, wives, etc.The exception is when parents name a child after a grandparent. In this case, they also try to avoid the child's real names out of respect for the older generation and use sunan wasa. For a boy, these names can be Baba, Babalele, Abba, Alhaji, Maigida, Mai'iyali; for a girl - Iya, Mama, Ummi, Uwani, Babani, Hajiya, etc.

In addition to the three types of names listed above (sunan rana, sunan yanka, and sunan wasa), there are also names that are based on stable references.

Lakabin sarauta - an address to a person based on their position in the social hierarchy, such as Sarki. Such addresses also include all traditional and modern political titles related to the title holder, as well as intra-family addresses.

Lakabin Malanta - an address or greeting that corresponds to his education: Arabic, Western or Quranic, for example, Alkali - a judge, Alaramma - a person who perfectly knows how to interpret the Koran, Malam - an educated person.

Lakabin dukiya - an appeal related to the financial situation of the addressee. For example, Alhaji and Hajiya, which means

"made a pilgrimage to Mecca", and this can afford a fairly well-off person. There is an expression "Mai sajen naira", which literally means "a person who has saved naira"*, i.e. a rich person.

In many cases, a person chooses the message that, in his opinion, will suit his addressee. For example, an old person may respectfully be called "baba" - "father", and a kola nut merchant - "sarkin goro" - "lord of kola nuts".

JOKING RELATIONSHIPS

Joking relationships among the Hausa include teasing, the right to appropriate things that belong to the other party, or even direct insults and noisy, sometimes rude, games. This can be a symmetrical relationship, where both parties tease and insult each other, or an asymmetric one, which leaves only humility and sometimes good-natured banter to one of the relatives.

Information on the humorous attitudes of the Hausa people can be found in Mary F. Smith's The Woman of Karo.

Joking relationships are widespread among Hausa, they exist both between blood relatives (between grandparents and their grandchildren, children of a brother and children of a sister), and between relatives, for example, between a man and the wife of his older brother.

In the relations between grandfathers and their grandchildren, the differences between such opposite phenomena as joking relationships and the custom of avoidance are very clearly visible.

Parents and their children do not play or joke with each other. A mother is ashamed of her first child, avoids it, does not speak to it in public; for some time after the birth of her first child, she refuses to look at it or breastfeed it. Children never call their parents by their first names; when they meet them, they only bow and greet them politely. Only the youngest child in the family can play with their parents and behave more freely with them.

Grandfathers, on the other hand, can be joked with and laughed at; they are teased, made faces at them, begged for money and food. When they return from the market, the children cling to their clothes and hang on until they are given something they have bought.

If the grandfather is unhappy, wants to drive away the grandchildren and does not give them money, they can sing him a teasing song, for example:

  
  
  
 Malom Bava from Karo 
 Always comes laughing, 
 In a hurry, stooped, 
 Always comes scolding, 
 Malom Bava from Karo! 
  
 

One of Baba's grandfathers, Bava, was an angry, strict man; he shouted to the children: "Come here, or I'll beat you!" But the children sang this song, after which the grandfather threw money on the ground. They grabbed them and ran away.

A grandmother often performs the duties of a mother to a child; this is especially true for the first-born, who often lives and is brought up with her until the mother gets used to it. Sometimes this does not happen, and the grandmother adopts her grandson, keeping him with her. If the grandmother is tired, the grandfather plays with the child. At the same time, he can call him "ugly" or "big-headed". Grandparents often give a child a nickname that stays with them for life.

House marriages are often made between people who are in a joking relationship. Such marriages (auren zumunci or auren dangantaka) include all forms of cross-family marriages (i.e., between children of siblings) and those between members of different professional or ethnic groups. With a fairly complex system of playful relationships, difficulties may arise when entering into such marriages.

Joking relationships can also be acquired or lost upon marriage. For example, the wedding ceremony, which includes a variety of banter and chases, is attended not only by the native grandparents, but also by the grandparents of the future spouse. At the moment when the bride wants to enter her new home, her path is blocked by the groom's grandmothers sitting there (they are not only the parents ' mothers, but also their sisters). They demand a ransom. Now everyone is in a joking relationship. At the same time, if the husband of the bride's older sister is also the older brother of her husband, after her wedding, their playful relationship disappears, since now he becomes her older brother as well.

Some relatives may perform the functions of others in traditional rites and ceremonies, on the basis that both are in a joking relationship with the person who plays a central role in the ceremony. For example, during the wedding ceremony, the bride is usually washed by one of her grandmothers, but if none of them is already dead, this can be done by any woman who is in a joking relationship with the bride.

One of the purposes that the mechanism of joking relationships serves is to prevent conflicts, since it allows you to express all the bad things that you think about a person at the level of banter: tear off the turban from your head, steal some small thing, i.e. such relationships sometimes replace real quarrels, swearing, fights and beatings.

Playful relationships exist in the kinship system of many peoples of Africa, Asia, and Oceania.

* Naira is the national currency of Nigeria.

** Smit Mery F. Baba of Karo. A Woman of the Muslim Наша. London, 1954.

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