UNIVERSITY OF UYO JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

The craft deployed by Chukwuemeka Ike in naming his comic characters and the impact that the names have on their behaviours and roles is the crux of this study. The study adopted qualitative research since the data involved is narrative data harvested from four novels and was subjected to content analysis using relational analytic tools to unveil the intricate synergy between the characters' grotesque names and their predilection for comic absurdities. The theoretical framework drew upon Martyna Gibka's work, "The Humorous Functions of Proper Names in the Literary Work of Art" (2015) and Henri Bergson's (1980) seminal work, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic. By employing these frameworks, the study elucidated Ike's naming pattern, which manifests in two distinct forms: the creation of onomastic names imbued with symbolism and the semantic process of fashioning names replete with linguistic peculiarities. The paper concluded that there is a harmonious interplay between the grotesque names of the characters and the cardinal roles that they play in the selected novels.

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