Critiquing the meaningfulness of Sukuma Cattle names: A non Philosophical semantic stance

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