I could probably save myself a lot of time if I asked all the questions I need answered at once (in different threads). Oh, well … .
In a story I am writing, I have a character whose grandfather imigrated to the USA from somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 22nd century. The last name I chose for my character was M’Boto.
However, after a little research, the only people I found named M’Boto were fictional characters. One was in a politically incorrect cartoon.
So, is M’Boto a real African name? I would like to use a name which is not connected to any scancal, political controversy, etc.
It looks like you get more hits, some of them apparently for real people, if you remove the apostrophe. I know it looks unpronounceable to most English speakers, but that’s just a matter of not being used to it.
Thanks, Chronos. Searching for M’Boto brought back various entries with different punctuation between the “M” and “B.” It never occurred to me that I was not seeing anything with no punctuation there.
Of course, if it’s just one name in one story, it doesn’t really matter. But if Mr Masomakali were ever to meet a Mr Masopakyindi, he could be from the same town, but Mr Matsimela would be from somewhere else entirely.
Doesn’t such an apostrophe usually denote an click?
I have a Shona friend from Zimbabwe whose surname is N’Cube, where the ’ is a “tick” sound made with the tip of the tongue. According to her I’m the only non-African person she knows who can say it right.
Usually, it’s a glottal stop - not quite a click, more of a … voiced pause? Like in Hawai’i
Ncube isn’t really a Shona surname, though, it’s actually anNdebele one, the click being a dead giveaway. Shona doesn’t have any clicks in the way languages like Nama, !Kung and Xhosa & Zulu do.
It’s usually spelled Ncube, though, just the fact that it’s a “c” means it’s a click.
I don’t know anyone specifically named MBoto, but the MXxxx is a construction used for last names by the Hehe tribe in Tanzania. Sometimes the leading M sounded as “em” and sometimes as a cross between the mu in mud and the me in met.
Hmm. Looks like Bizango Mboto from Zaire was a 1999 All-Africa gamesbronze winner in Heavyweight boxing.
You also mentioned that the grandfather which passed on the name lived in the late 22nd century, so it could stand to reason that the name doesn’t have to match a real family name today, as it could come into existence in the future, for example if someone living in the days between now and then decides to change their name for whatever reason and decides to come up with a new name based on languages that are known at that time, or mutates their name from something else due to linguistic drift or immigration to a culture that speaks a different language? (are you up to creating a conlang that could represent a future evolution of Zulu, or a creole based on a mixture of Amharic and Swahili?) so I would think that it would be passable to come up with something that could conceivably evolve out of languages and cultures that are found in Africa or that might form in or move to Africa in the future.
Does your grandfather character come out of a specific linguistic or cultural group (for example, a Kenyan whose native language is Swahili?)
If your story is SF, the sky’s the limit as exotic and novel content is expected.
Some African-American comedian was on Comedy Central, talking about growing up in the ghetto in the 70’s. He relates this story: one day he was walking down the street and he saw his friend Willie sitting there.
COMEDIAN: Hey Willie!
WILLIE: Yo my name ain’t Willie man. That’s my slave name. Don’t call me by that slave shit. My new name is M’butu Yata.
Well, not quite:
[ul]
[li]It’s true that the apostrophe is used in some written languages, or transliterations into the Latin alphabet thereof, to represent a glottal stop.[/li][li]A glottal stop isn’t voiced. It’s the unvoiced consonant you hear in the middle of the English word “uh-uh”.[/li][li]There’s no apostrophe in “Hawaiʻi”; it’s a typographically distinct character called a ʻokina. However, the ʻokina does represent a glottal stop in Hawaiian.[/li][/ul]
