Morphosemantic Analysis of Oromo Personal Names

A morphosemantics analysis of Oromo personal names was examined in order to show the Oromo norms and values as expressed in their naming pattern. A sample of 110 samples of 128 names for both male and female were used for the analysis. The data was derived from native speakers of Oromo and lists of Oromo students’ names that come to attend Haramaya University, Department of Oromo language and Literature. Qualitative research design was used to analyze the data. The purpose of this study was to determine the structure and meaning of Oromo personal names. The objective of this paper is to describe features of the Oromo Personal names as a subcategory of word. In this article, morphological features, semantic interpretations and referential meaning of Oromo personal names are analyzed. The finding indicates that Oromo personal names are derived from nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs.  It was also found that suffixes that are attached to the names are gender indicative marking morphemes. Oromo personal names have meaning. The meanings could be descriptive, associative or referential meaning.