The Basimba people culture of naming their children, the way of their life, general custom and belief can be differentiated by way of a particular Basimba sub-division group or clan at a particular time.
Basimba (Big Lion) people refers to a network of families with their surnames names of family, and history. It serves Basimba people as a constant chant to remind them of histories they are tied to within their culture. Basimba people know a lot about a Musimba of a Basimba (Big Lion) particular group through his clan, and family names. This often allows for certain protocols to be followed. In the culture of Africa, when one comes upon someone with a certain Basimba Clan group name you automatically know where they are from. The Basimba people clan naming is a cultural science perfected by the Clan thousands of years ago. In the Basimba (Big Lion) people culture even individuals have totems. These totems may be related to something within their destinies, some historical event that they were a seminal part of, a call upon them by the spirits, the taking on of a new responsibility or title, a wish by the Basimba people ancestors.
Basimba (Big Lion) People Sub-divisions
Among the Basimba people, settlement sub-divisions were created called "new settlements" (Muwuluko). The connection is that the originator of a particular Basimba group was separated from the main body and built a new settlement.
These Basimba (Big Lion) people new settlements arose from various reasons, such as:
If a Musimba Clan member leaves his fathers family and settles in a new area, but keeps contact with his father's family. The Basimba founder of a new settlement becomes after several generations its head and not the clan head as he would be if he has severed all connections with his father's original home. When a Basimba (Big Lion) people clan group grows too big it is found practicable to divide the members into smaller family units for easier dealing with such matters as inheritance, maintenance of female descendants, etc. The senior member of each of these new sub-divisions became the Muwuluko head. If quarrels break out among the Basimba clan members and relatives take sides, each side constitutes itself as a sub-division with its senior member as its Muwuluko head and either adopts a new totem.
Totem
The Basimba people's primary and secondary totems are looked upon in entirely different lights. The primary totem is real taboo among the Basimba people, it may not be killed, eaten, touched and in some cases not even looked upon, but the secondary totem is a friendlier thing altogether and is often described by the Basimba people as the brother of the clan .
For example, the Omugurusi of the Basimba Dog totem Clan is Mauwe. On the day of his birth a dog also had puppies. The dog often cleaned the child by licking it. Mauwe later, out of gratitude, ordered his Basimba descendants to consider the dog as their friend and the dog became the secondary totem of the clan.
The Basimba (Big Lion) people's clan system is central to their culture. A clan represents a group of people who can trace their lineage to a common ancestor, in some distant past. In the customs of the Basimba, lineage is passed down along patrilineal lines. The clan essentially forms a large extended family and all members of a given clan regard each other as brothers and sisters regardless of how far removed from one another in terms of actual blood ties.
The Basimba (Big Lion) people take great care to trace their ancestry through this clan structure. A formal introduction of a Musimba includes his own names, the names of his father and paternal grandfather, as well as a description of the family's lineage within the Basimba sub-division Clan group that he or she belongs to.
The clan has a social structure with the clan leader at the top (great lineal ancestor), followed by successive subdivisions of the lineal ancestors and finally at the bottom the individual family unit (house). Every Musimba is required to know where he falls within each of these subdivisions and anyone who could not relate his ancestry fully is suspected of not being a true Musimba.
The Basimba (Big Lion) people's sub-division Clans are not known by the names of the respective Clan founders. Totems were adopted by the seven Basimba Sub-division Clan groups and the names of these totems came to be synonymous with the Basimba sub-division clans themselves. Each Basimba sub-division clan has a main totem and a secondary totem.