Abstract:
The article critiques the meaningfulness of Sukuma cow names
as the answer to theoretical contribution within the frameworks
of linguists and philosophy in assessing the semantics of cattle
names. The exertion used Descriptive, Indirect Reference and
Onomastics Theories. The former describes names as identical
to the objects’ descriptions; the latter indicates that names are
more than simply the object to which they refer. The last refers
to the theory, which shows the origin of names they came from.
The study used structured interviews with 4 sukuma speakers
from Mwamashimba village of Tanzania who were selected
purposively via snowballing technique. It was found that Lunya,
Nyankole, Mabhú, Mkala, and Shilungu are Sukuma cow names
whose meaning is meaningless as they have no symbiotic
relations with the semantic content, they refer to rather than just
labelling of objects, places, colour and structure. Based on the
findings, it was concluded that Sukuma cow names are
meaningless and not rigid designators as claimed in the
philosophy of language rather than identification labels, which
are very important in any speech community in stirring
emotion, cultural awareness as well and historical connection
between the present and the past
