Olu317:
If the name was not given to identify Princes how come Bini had such knowledge? After all, the Igodo people didn't practice Obaship but use the word for Oranmiyan son. And again, I am one of those that believed eulogy is a key to unravelling some information. At the very tail end of Ooni's descendants eulogy(Oranmiyan's descendants) always end as Kaare O ba mi or input his name if he is an Ooni. The point is that Oba did not exist before Oyo and when Oranmiyan established her properly , O ba as a term for king took root. And from Oyo ,Yoruba begun a new contact with other set of people on trade. This is my submission.

@Olu317: What you have in the eulogy above is O ba mi or Oba kan (descriptive), which means, 'of the same father', that's pure and unadulterated Yoruba. Lifting Yoruba words for related meaning does not connotes correctness. Like igba(calabash) is different from Igba (garden egg), Igba (200), Igba (locus bean) and Igba (Period) etc.

geosegun:


@Olu317: What you have in the eulogy above is O ba mi or Oba kan (descriptive), which means, 'of the same father', that's pure and unadulterated Yoruba. Lifting Yoruba words for related meaning does not connotes correctness. Like igba(calabash) is different from Igba (garden egg), Igba (200), Igba (locus bean) and Igba (Period) etc.

I agree with you. But as you and I know,spoken yoruba words is quite different from written form because it doesn't need accent on it to perfect what one mean . Unlike when one want information to be passed across to differentiate them via typing /writing. And yes, O'bá(supreme/King over all ( King/ Ooni / Princes) was what I mean. Generally, it is used by all Yorubas but in the Eastern part of Yoruba Land ( Kaare Ba mi/ Okún Ba mi ) is more of a common form to salute,especially after a younger man salute an older man who may say such to respond to such exchange of salutation . Furthermore, this eulogy, is common with Lajamisan- Lajadoogun lineage, from, what I have seen .

lawani:


The Songhai copied it from the Phoenicians who were proto Arabs. Uropa in Phoenician means west and it was used to refer to Europe and Europeans, The Songhai being Muslims copied from the Arabs the word which has now gained another meaning of a non Islamic but advanced people.

Jon Wilson, a specialist in Indian his history, acknowledged that Phoenician called themselves as Samaritan Cushites. How were they Proto Arabs? Arabs were small in population before Muhammad came with Islam. And their procreation via One male to four wives led to their population explosion. Further more, the etymology of Yoruba remained within the Yoruba people.

In continuation and support of what Olu is saying, in Yoruba cosmology Oruko is a principal and fundamental tenet of identity and attachment, to family, to circumstance, to space, to environment, and so on...

Names like Kayode is meaningful for the state of affairs in the family unit.
Abodunrin is meaningful for space of time.
Ajayi is meaningful to circumstance of birth.
Tokunbo is meaningful for the environment.


Oriki is also meaningful for ancestral link and so is Orile. In Yorubaland a person does not need to carry an identification card to be traced to their family home. The Yoruba child amongst strangers in Norway can be linked to the family compound if we know the Orile, the Oriki and Oruko. Yoruba has a chain structure for tying a person born in any era upstream to the ancestral lineage in past records. This is an amazing feat and we are yet to see any other ethnic group in our region with similar naming structure.

For a people that developed and instituted such a complex but yet navigable structure for tracing individuals, how is it then that they will not know their own ethnic name? Absurd and unthinkable!

Yoruba indeed named itself. Again, there are ancestral Orikis and Oriles in Yorubaland that stretch back thousands of years.

Baba Ahmed could not have written about Yoruba unless Yoruba was already known in the consciousness of a reading (or literate) population. Arab and Muslim societies do not have unique name structures like I described for Yoruba. I am sure in Massina alone, where Baba Ahmed was, there would be perharps hundred or more Baba Ahmed. Ahmed is Islamic but Baba is not. What is Baba?

Baba is derived from Ba.
Ba, Bi, Bo are signatures for reproductive nature of mankind. Arabs are fond of using Bin to denote parentage. Ahmed Bin Khadija (in a matrilineal society) or Ahmed Bin Khalif (in a patrilineal one)......Ahmed child of Khadija, or Ahmed child of Khalif.

In Yoruba we use Aba or Abo to denote Male and Female gender respectively, Obi to denote parent but Bibi to denote child of... Yoruba is patrilineal society and so Fakorede Bibi Ile Agbo will mean Fakorede belonging in the compound of Agbo. We can instantly trace Fakorede to an Eso compound, Agbo being the Orile (totem) of Eso (Army Cavalry).

Baba is father in most cultures sharing semitic or proto-semitic tongue, and very common in the Sudan in particular. Baba Awo, is who Yoruba call Babalawo. Prior to the days of media news and radio broadcast not many people around the world will know what I mean if I say OSUN, except those who are already knowledgable and conversant with Yoruba deities. While some people in Africa may not know what OSUN is, people in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti and so on will know and can relate because they had preknowledge of who OSUN is. Using this analogy, Baba Ahmed had pre-knowledge of Yoruba but he was not the inventor or originator of the name, the name was already in circuit in the Sudan in similar fashion that the name Baba was in common usage amongst a people of semitic and proto-Semitic background.

Olu317:

Jon Wilson, a specialist in Indian his history, acknowledged that Phoenician called themselves as Samaritan Cushites. How were they Proto Arabs? Arabs were small in population before Muhammad came with Islam. And their procreation via One male to four wives led to their population explosion. Further more, the etymology of Yoruba remained within the Yoruba people.

All the languages of Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and etc are descended from the Phoenician tongue just like French, Portuguese, Spanish were descended from the Latin tongue. So, Romans were proto Spanish for example. that is what I mean.