Onomastics, proper names, identity, Algerian Community, Tiaret.

Abstract

The research at hand aims at investigating a sociolinguistic phenomenon, so to speak, onomastics whereby it seeks at identifying how can proper names affect the identity of Tiartian citizens. That is to say, the extent to which Tiaretian identity can be affected by modern names. To answer the problematic at hand, the researchers adopted a qualitative methodology whereby an interview is administered to random 50 participants from Tiaret city, Ksar Chellala, Serguine, and Zemalet El Amir Abdelkader mostly parents or future parents. The collected data are subjected to an onomastic study to measure the balance between adopting new modern names for Tiartian newborns and their identity as AlgerianTiartian citizens. The findings of the research indicates that Tiaretian speech community is still conservative about their identity by preserving their traditional proper names. However, this does not mean that they did not modernize/adopt new names