ABSTRACT
Notes on the dialogue 1 The Ethiopian (Amhara and Tigrean) system of personal names
is quite different from ours. A wife does not take her husband's name but keeps her own. Also, there are no surnames or family names as we know them; everyone has their own given name, of course, which is followed by their father's given name: so Mulugeta Kebede (o^Orl? \ui&) that is, Mulugeta (the son of) Kebede, or Amarech Haile Selassie ( h ^ f 2£A H"\<V) that is, Amarech (the daughter of) Haile Selassie. Mulugeta and Amarech's children will have Mulugeta as their second name: their son is Terefe Mulugeta (+64. a*-t\r%p), and their daughter is Tsehay Mulugeta (0*fi£ o**t*1,p). Some names contain two elements, like Haile Selassie (2£(\ /**Art,), or Gebre Mikael (1-M. "ViJwA), or Welette Semayat (a>/W-A<n?t). These double-barelled names mostly have a religious origin; these last three literally mean (in Ge'ez) 'Might of the Trinity', 'Slave of Michael' and 'Daughter of Heaven', and often in ordinary usage are shortened, as for example to Hailie (2£A.) or Gebrie (1-M.). Most Christian Amhara names mean something either in Amharic, or in Ge'ez, or are names drawn from the Bible and Christian tradition or, amongst Muslims, from Islamic tradition. Amarech, for example, means 'she is beautiful' in Amharic and Mulugeta means 'complete master'. You may find this difficult at first because there are no capital letters in the Ethiopian script and so nothing to make proper names stand out from the surrounding text.
