Abstract
This article examines the deployment of naming as a structural principle in Night of Intruders and Other Stories. Moving beyond sociolinguistic readings of African anthroponyms as cultural residue, the study proposes the concept of onomastic semiotics to describe how culturally encoded names function as narrative devices within Clement Odia’s short fiction. Through close textual analysis, the essay demonstrates that names in the collection operate as thematic architecture, cosmological inscription, and ethical horizon. Drawing on African linguistic philosophy and folklore theory, the article argues that Odia institutionalizes indigenous naming practices as narrative technology, embedding Benin cosmology-divine sovereignty, moral causality, ancestral continuity, and destiny - within character construction and plot development. However, rather than enforcing rigid determinism, the stories dramatise what this study terms indigenous compatibilism: a worldview in which destiny provides structural orientation while human agency negotiates fulfilment. By theorizing naming as narrative strategy rather than decorative ethnography, this article contributes to African literary studies and expands critical understanding of how indigenous epistemologies generate formal innovation in contemporary prose fiction.
Keywords: African Prose Fiction, Benin Cosmology, Indigenous Epistemology, Onomastics, Semiotics
DOI: 10.36349/alqajolls.2026.v01i02.021
author/Ugonma Uba Kalu-Bazuaye
journal/AL-QALAM JLLS 1(2) | June 2026
