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Yoruba Baby Names

The Yoruba people are an ethnic group of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language which is a tonal Niger-Congo language.

Yoruba is a Nigerian language spoken in West Africa mainly in Nigeria. The number of speakers of Yoruba was estimated at around 20 million in the 1990s. The native tongue of the Yoruba people is spoken principally in Nigeria and Benin, with communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas.

Yoruba names are primarily used by the Yoruba people and Yoruba language-speaking individuals in Benin, Togo, and the Nigerian.

By custom, Yoruba children are named in a ceremony that takes place 7 days after their birth. The names of the Yoruba children are traditionally found by divination performed by a group of Babalawo, traditional Ifa priests, but in recent times names can also come from those of ranking members of the family, including the father, mother, grandparents, or next of kin. Both the mother and father and other next of kin can give their own favorite names to the child. Yoruba Baby names often come from the grandparents and great grandparents of the child to be named.

Yoruba names are traditionally classified into two categories:

Modern Christian parents use the form of traditional names but substitute the Orisa name with Olu or Oluwa, meaning Lord or My Lord, which indicates the Christian concept of God and Jesus Christ. Muslim parents tend to give their children Arabic names.

                            

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