The UCLA basketball team has a player on it with the name Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
His fatherr’s name is Camille Moute a Bidas. His father’s name is Agnes Goufane Ziem.
He is from Bafia, although his hometown is listed as Yauonde.
My questions are:
What language is this young man’s surname?
How is the surname formed using the father’s surname?
UCLA has a second Cameroonian player named Alfred Aboya, although his full name is Alfred Aboya Baliaba. His father’s name is Baliaba Aboya Casimir and his mother is Kedi Kofane Angele.
I suppose the same two questions apply. This young man is from Yaounde.
Cameroon has 286 listed languages on this site. Presumably the language spoken around Bafia is Bafia, with 60,000 speakers.
As far as how it forms surnames I don’t know. I’ve worked in Gabon and visited Cameroon, and it seems as if every ethnic group has a different way to form surnames. It can be very confusing.
For the second guy the fact that he is from Yaounde may not do you much good, since I’m sure there are people from most of the different ethnic groups there.
I’m fairly sure, though not positive, that “Aboya” is the variant on the patronymic “preposition,” borrowed and cognate to “Ben”, “Ibn,” “Abu.” and the like. Alfred Aboya Baliaba, would be Alfred, son of Baliaba, who in turn is, Baliaba Aboya Casimir, meaning Baliaba son of Casimir.
I assume that Agnes is actually his mother, and not a second father. Based on this, I’d guess that this man’s son’s name will be of the form Something Something a Mbah, and that his grandfather’s name was Something Bidas a Something.
Yeah, I goofed there on the first man’s parents. The second person is his mother. I was confused when originally typing this because I originally typed Camille as “mother”.