The Golden Bough

1.  Personal Names tabooed

UNABLE to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of his person.  In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself and takes care of it accordingly.  Thus, for example, the North American Indian “regards his name, not as a mere label, but as a distinct part of his personality, just as much as are his eyes or his teeth, and believes that injury will result as surely from the malicious handling of his name as from a wound inflicted on any part of his physical organism.  This belief was found among the various tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and has occasioned a number of curious regulations in regard to the concealment and change of names.”  Some Esquimaux take new names when they are old, hoping thereby to get a new lease of life.  The Tolampoos of Celebes believe that if you write a man’s name down you can carry off his soul along with it.  Many savages at the present day regard their names as vital parts of themselves, and therefore take great pains to conceal their real names, lest these should give to evil-disposed persons a handle by which to injure their owners.

Thus, to begin with the savages who rank at the bottom of the social scale, we are told that the secrecy with which among the Australian aborigines personal names are often kept from general knowledge “arises in great measure from the belief that an enemy, who knows your name, has in it something which he can use magically to your detriment.”  “An Australian black,” says another writer, “is always very unwilling to tell his real name, and there is no doubt that this reluctance is due to the fear that through his name he may be injured by sorcerers.”  Amongst the tribes of Central Australia every man, woman, and child has, besides a personal name which is in common use, a secret or sacred name which is bestowed by the older men upon him or her soon after birth, and which is known to none but the fully initiated members of the group.  This secret name is never mentioned except upon the most solemn occasions; to utter it in the hearing of women or of men of another group would be a most serious breach of tribal custom, as serious as the most flagrant case of sacrilege among ourselves.  When mentioned at all, the name is spoken only in a whisper, and not until the most elaborate precautions have been taken that it shall be heard by no one but members of the group.  “The native thinks that a stranger knowing his secret name would have special power to work him ill by means of magic.”

The same fear seems to have led to a custom of the same sort amongst the ancient Egyptians, whose comparatively high civilisation was strangely dashed and chequered with relics of the lowest savagery.  Every Egyptian received two names, which were known respectively as the true name and the good name, or the great name and the little name; and while the good or little name was made public, the true or great name appears to have been carefully concealed.  A Brahman child receives two names, one for common use, the other a secret name which none but his father and mother should know.  The latter is only used at ceremonies such as marriage.  The custom is intended to protect the person against magic, since a charm only becomes effectual in combination with the real name.  Similarly, the natives of Nias believe that harm may be done to a person by the demons who hear his name pronounced.  Hence the names of infants, who are especially exposed to the assaults of evil sprits, are never spoken; and often in haunted spots, such as the gloomy depths of the forest, the banks of a river, or beside a bubbling spring, men will abstain from calling each other by their names for a like reason.

The Indians of Chiloe keep their names secret and do not like to have them uttered aloud; for they say that there are fairies or imps on the mainland or neighbouring islands who, if they knew folk’s names, would do them an injury; but so long as they do not know the names, these mischievous sprites are powerless.  The Araucanians will hardly ever tell a stranger their names because they fear that he would thereby acquire some supernatural power over themselves.  Asked his name by a stranger, who is ignorant of their superstitions, an Araucanian will answer, “I have none.”  When an Ojebway is asked his name, he will look at some bystander and ask him to answer.  “This reluctance arises from an impression they receive when young, that if they repeat their own names it will prevent their growth, and they will be small in stature.  On account of this unwillingness to tell their names, many strangers have fancied that they either have no names or have forgotten them.”

In this last case no scruple seems to be felt about communicating a man’s name to strangers, and no ill effects appear to be dreaded as a consequence of divulging it; harm is only done when a name is spoken by its owner.  Why is this? and why in particular should a man be thought to stunt his growth by uttering his own name?  We may conjecture that to savages who act and think thus a person’s name only seems to be a part of himself when it is uttered with his own breath; uttered by the breath of others it has no vital connexion with him, and no harm can come to him through it.  Whereas, so these primitive philosophers may have argued, when a man lets his own name pass his lips, he is parting with a living piece of himself, and if he persists in so reckless a course he must certainly end by dissipating his energy and shattering his constitution.  Many a broken-down debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with disease, may have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their awe-struck disciples as a fearful example of the fate that must sooner or later overtake the profligate who indulges immoderately in the seductive habit of mentioning his own name.

However we may explain it, the fact is certain that many a savage evinces the strongest reluctance to pronounce his own name, while at the same time he makes no objection at all to other people pronouncing it, and will even invite them to do so for him in order to satisfy the curiosity of an inquisitive stranger.  Thus in some parts of Madagascar it is taboo for a person to tell his own name, but a slave or attendant will answer for him.  The same curious inconsistency, as it may seem to us, is recorded of some tribes of American Indians.  Thus we are told that “the name of an American Indian is a sacred thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration.  One may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name, and the question will be met with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he cannot understand what is wanted of him.  The moment a friend approaches, the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other.”  This general statement applies, for example, to the Indian tribes of British Columbia, as to whom it is said that “one of their strangest prejudices, which appears to pervade all tribes alike, is a dislike to telling their names—­thus you never get a man’s right name from himself; but they will tell each other’s names without hesitation.”  In the whole of the East Indian Archipelago the etiquette is the same.  As a general rule no one will utter his own name.  To enquire, “What is your name?” is a very indelicate question in native society.  When in the course of administrative or judicial business a native is asked his name, instead of replying he will look at his comrade to indicate that he is to answer for him, or he will say straight out, “Ask him.”  The superstition is current all over the East Indies without exception, and it is found also among the Motu and Motumotu tribes, the Papuans of Finsch Haven in North New Guinea, the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea, and the Melanesians of the Bismarck Archipelago.  Among many tribes of South Africa men and women never mention their names if they can get any one else to do it for them, but they do not absolutely refuse when it cannot be avoided.

Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is not permanent; it is conditional on circumstances, and when these change it ceases to operate.  Thus when the Nandi men are away on a foray, nobody at home may pronounce the names of the absent warriors; they must be referred to as birds.  Should a child so far forget itself as to mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother would rebuke it, saying, “Don’t talk of the birds who are in the heavens.”  Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo, while a man is fishing and when he returns with his catch, his proper name is in abeyance and nobody may mention it.  Whatever the fisherman’s real name may be, he is called mwele without distinction.  The reason is that the river is full of spirits, who, if they heard the fisherman’s real name, might so work against him that he would catch little or nothing.  Even when he has caught his fish and landed with them, the buyer must still not address him by his proper name, but must only call him mwele; for even then, if the spirits were to hear his proper name, they would either bear it in mind and serve him out another day, or they might so mar the fish he had caught that he would get very little for them.  Hence the fisherman can extract heavy damages from anybody who mentions his name, or can compel the thoughtless speaker to relieve him of the fish at a good price so as to restore his luck.  When the Sulka of New Britain are near the territory of their enemies the Gaktei, they take care not to mention them by their proper name, believing that were they to do so, their foes would attack and slay them.  Hence in these circumstances they speak of the Gaktei as o lapsiek, that is, “the rotten tree-trunks,” and they imagine that by calling them that they make the limbs of their dreaded enemies ponderous and clumsy like logs.  This example illustrates the extremely materialistic view which these savages take of the nature of words; they suppose that the mere utterance of an expression signifying clumsiness will homoeopathically affect with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen.  Another illustration of this curious misconception is furnished by a Caffre superstition that the character of a young thief can be reformed by shouting his name over a boiling kettle of medicated water, then clapping a lid on the kettle and leaving the name to steep in the water for several days.  It is not in the least necessary that the thief should be aware of the use that is being made of his name behind his back; the moral reformation will be effected without his knowledge.

When it is deemed necessary that a man’s real name should be kept secret, it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a surname or nickname.  As distinguished from the real or primary names, these secondary names are apparently held to be no part of the man himself, so that they may be freely used and divulged to everybody without endangering his safety thereby.  Sometimes in order to avoid the use of his own name a man will be called after his child.  Thus we are informed that “the Gippsland blacks objected strongly to let any one outside the tribe know their names, lest their enemies, learning them, should make them vehicles of incantation, and so charm their lives away.  As children were not thought to have enemies, they used to speak of a man as ’the father, uncle, or cousin of So-and-so,’ naming a child; but on all occasions abstained from mentioning the name of a grown-up person.”  The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes will not pronounce their own names.  Among them, accordingly, if you wish to ascertain a person’s name, you ought not to ask the man himself, but should enquire of others.  But if this is impossible, for example, when there is no one else near, you should ask him his child’s name, and then address him as the “Father of So-and-so.”  Nay, these Alfoors are shy of uttering the names even of children; so when a boy or girl has a nephew or niece, he or she is addressed as “Uncle of So-and-so,” or “Aunt of So-and-so.”  In pure Malay society, we are told, a man is never asked his name, and the custom of naming parents after their children is adopted only as a means of avoiding the use of the parents’ own names.  The writer who makes this statement adds in confirmation of it that childless persons are named after their younger brothers.  Among the Land Dyaks children as they grow up are called, according to their sex, the father or mother of a child of their father’s or mother’s younger brother or sister, that is, they are called the father or mother of what we should call their first cousin.  The Caffres used to think it discourteous to call a bride by her own name, so they would call her “the Mother of So-and-so,” even when she was only betrothed, far less a wife and a mother.  Among the Kukis and Zemis or Kacha Nagas of Assam parents drop their names after the birth of a child and are named Father and Mother of So-and-so.  Childless couples go by the name of “the childless father,” “the childless mother,” “the father of no child,” “the mother of no child.”  The widespread custom of naming a father after his child has sometimes been supposed to spring from a desire on the father’s part to assert his paternity, apparently as a means of obtaining those rights over his children which had previously, under a system of mother-kin, been possessed by the mother.  But this explanation does not account for the parallel custom of naming the mother after her child, which seems commonly to co-exist with the practice of naming the father after the child.  Still less, if possible, does it apply to the customs of calling childless couples the father and mother of children which do not exist, of naming people after their younger brothers, and of designating children as the uncles and aunts of So-and-so, or as the fathers and mothers of their first cousins.  But all these practices are explained in a simple and natural way if we suppose that they originate in a reluctance to utter the real names of persons addressed or directly referred to.  That reluctance is probably based partly on a fear of attracting the notice of evil spirits, partly on a dread of revealing the name to sorcerers, who would thereby obtain a handle for injuring the owner of the name.

2.  Names of Relations tabooed

IT might naturally be expected that the reserve so commonly maintained with regard to personal names would be dropped or at least relaxed among relations and friends.  But the reverse of this is often the case.  It is precisely the persons most intimately connected by blood and especially by marriage to whom the rule applies with the greatest stringency.  Such people are often forbidden, not only to pronounce each other’s names, but even to utter ordinary words which resemble or have a single syllable in common with these names.  The persons who are thus mutually debarred from mentioning each other’s names are especially husbands and wives, a man and his wife’s parents, and a woman and her husband’s father.  For example, among the Caffres a woman may not publicly pronounce the birth-name of her husband or of any of his brothers, nor may she use the interdicted word in its ordinary sense.  If her husband, for instance, be called u-Mpaka, from impaka, a small feline animal, she must speak of that beast by some other name.  Further, a Caffre wife is forbidden to pronounce even mentally the names of her father-in-law and of all her husband’s male relations in the ascending line; and whenever the emphatic syllable of any of their names occurs in another word, she must avoid it by substituting either an entirely new word, or, at least, another syllable in its place.  Hence this custom has given rise to an almost distinct language among the women, which the Caffres call “women’s speech.”  The interpretation of this “women’s speech” is naturally very difficult, “for no definite rules can be given for the formation of these substituted words, nor is it possible to form a dictionary of them, their number being so great—­since there may be many women, even in the same tribe, who would be no more at liberty to use the substitutes employed by some others, than they are to use the original words themselves.”  A Caffre man, on his side, may not mention the name of his mother-in-law, nor may she pronounce his; but he is free to utter words in which the emphatic syllable of her name occurs.  A Kirghiz woman dares not pronounce the names of the older relations of her husband, nor even use words which resemble them in sound.  For example, if one of these relations is called Shepherd, she may not speak of sheep, but must call them “the bleating ones”; if his name is Lamb, she must refer to lambs as “the young bleating ones.”  In Southern India wives believe that to tell their husband’s name or to pronounce it even in a dream would bring him to an untimely end.  Among the Sea Dyaks a man may not pronounce the name of his father-in-law or mother-in-law without incurring the wrath of the spirits.  And since he reckons as his father-in-law and mother-in-law not only the father and mother of his own wife, but also the fathers and mothers of his brothers’ wives and sisters’ husbands, and likewise the fathers and mothers of all his cousins, the number of tabooed names may be very considerable and the opportunities of error correspondingly numerous.  To make confusion worse confounded, the names of persons are often the names of common things, such as moon, bridge, barley, cobra, leopard; so that when any of a man’s many fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law are called by such names, these common words may not pass his lips.  Among the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, the custom is carried still further so as to forbid the use even of words which merely resemble the personal names in sound.  It is especially the name of a father-in-law which is thus laid under an interdict.  If he, for example, is called Kalala, his son-in-law may not speak of a horse by its common name kawalo; he must call it a “riding-beast” (sasakajan).  So among the Alfoors of the island of Buru it is taboo to mention the names of parents and parents-in-law, or even to speak of common objects by words which resemble these names in sound.  Thus, if your mother-in-law is called Dalu, which means “betel,” you may not ask for betel by its ordinary name, you must ask for “red mouth”; if you want betel-leaf, you may not say betel-leaf (dalu ’mun), you must say karon fenna. In the same island it is also taboo to mention the name of an elder brother in his presence.  Transgressions of these rules are punished with fines.  In Sunda it is thought that a particular crop would be spoilt if a man were to mention the names of his father and mother.

Among the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea persons who are related to each other by marriage are forbidden to mention each other’s names.  Among the connexions whose names are thus tabooed are wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, your wife’s uncles and aunts and also her grand-uncles and grand-aunts, and the whole of your wife’s or your husband’s family in the same generation as yourself, except that men may mention the names of their brothers-in-law, though women may not.  The taboo comes into operation as soon as the betrothal has taken place and before the marriage has been celebrated.  Families thus connected by the betrothal of two of their members are not only forbidden to pronounce each other’s names; they may not even look at each other, and the rule gives rise to the most comical scenes when they happen to meet unexpectedly.  And not merely the names themselves, but any words that sound like them are scrupulously avoided and other words used in their place.  If it should chance that a person has inadvertently uttered a forbidden name, he must at once throw himself on the floor and say, “I have mentioned a wrong name.  I throw it through the chinks of the floor in order that I may eat well.”

In the western islands of Torres Straits a man never mentioned the personal names of his father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law; and a woman was subject to the same restrictions.  A brother-in-law might be spoken of as the husband or brother of some one whose name it was lawful to mention; and similarly a sister-in-law might be called the wife of So-and-so.  If a man by chance used the personal name of his brother-in-law, he was ashamed and hung his head.  His shame was only relieved when he had made a present as compensation to the man whose name he had taken in vain.  The same compensation was made to a sister-in-law, a father-in-law, and a mother-in-law for the accidental mention of their names.  Among the natives who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain to mention the name of a brother-in-law is the grossest possible affront you can offer to him; it is a crime punishable with death.  In the Banks’ Islands, Melanesia, the taboos laid on the names of persons connected by marriage are very strict.  A man will not mention the name of his father-in-law, much less the name of his mother-in-law, nor may he name his wife’s brother; but he may name his wife’s sister—­she is nothing to him.  A woman may not name her father-in-law, nor on any account her son-in-law.  Two people whose children have intermarried are also debarred from mentioning each other’s names.  And not only are all these persons forbidden to utter each other’s names; they may not even pronounce ordinary words which chance to be either identical with these names or to have any syllables in common with them.  Thus we hear of a native of these islands who might not use the common words for “pig” and “to die,” because these words occurred in the polysyllabic name of his son-in-law; and we are told of another unfortunate who might not pronounce the everyday words for “hand” and “hot” on account of his wife’s brother’s name, and who was even debarred from mentioning the number “one,” because the word for “one” formed part of the name of his wife’s cousin.

The reluctance to mention the names or even syllables of the names of persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be separated from the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter their own names or the names of the dead or of the dead or of chiefs and kings; and if the reticence as to these latter names springs mainly from superstition, we may infer that the reticence as to the former has no better foundation.  That the savage’s unwillingness to mention his own name is based, at least in part, on a superstitious fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes, whether human or spiritual, has already been shown.  It remains to examine the similar usage in regard to the names of the dead and of royal personages.

3.  Names of the Dead tabooed

THE CUSTOM of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead was observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus, and at the present day it is in full force among many savage tribes.  Thus we are told that one of the customs most rigidly observed and enforced amongst the Australian aborigines is never to mention the name of a deceased person, whether male or female; to name aloud one who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their most sacred prejudices, and they carefully abstain from it.  The chief motive for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the ghost, although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead.  Once Mr. Oldfield so terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man fairly took to his heels and did not venture to show himself again for several days.  At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion; “nor could I,” adds Mr. Oldfield, “induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man’s name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign spirits.”  Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a subdued voice as “the lost one” or “the poor fellow that is no more.”  To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite the malignity of Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed, which hovers on earth for a time before it departs for ever towards the setting sun.  Of the tribes on the Lower Murray River we are told that when a person dies “they carefully avoid mentioning his name; but if compelled to do so, they pronounce it in a very low whisper, so faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their voice.”  Amongst the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of the deceased during the period of mourning, unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and then it is only done in a whisper for fear of disturbing and annoying the man’s spirit which is walking about in ghostly form.  If the ghost hears his name mentioned he concludes that his kinsfolk are not mourning for him properly; if their grief were genuine they could not bear to bandy his name about.  Touched to the quick by their hard-hearted indifference the indignant ghost will come and trouble them in dreams.

The same reluctance to utter the names of the dead appears to prevail among all the Indian tribes of America from Hudson’s Bay Territory to Patagonia.  Among the Goajiros of Colombia to mention the dead before his kinsmen is a dreadful offence, which is often punished with death; for if it happens on the rancho of the deceased, in presence of his nephew or uncle, they will assuredly kill the offender on the spot if they can.  But if he escapes, the penalty resolves itself into a heavy fine, usually of two or more oxen.

A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of peoples so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of Siberia and the Todas of Southern India; the Mongols of Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara; the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of Madagascar, and of Tasmania.  In all cases, even where it is not expressly stated, the fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the ghost.  That this is the real motive with the Tuaregs we are positively informed.  They dread the return of the dead man’s spirit, and do all they can to avoid it by shifting their camp after a death, ceasing for ever to pronounce the name of the departed, and eschewing everything that might be regarded as an evocation or recall of his soul.  Hence they do not, like the Arabs, designate individuals by adding to their personal names the names of their fathers; they never speak of So-and-so, son of So-and-so; they give to every man a name which will live and die with him.  So among some of the Victorian tribes in Australia personal names were rarely perpetuated, because the natives believed that any one who adopted the name of a deceased person would not live long; probably his ghostly namesake was supposed to come and fetch him away to the spirit-land.

The same fear of the ghost, which moves people to suppress his old name, naturally leads all persons who bear a similar name to exchange it for another, lest its utterance should attract the attention of the ghost, who cannot reasonably be expected to discriminate between all the different applications of the same name.  Thus we are told that in the Adelaide and Encounter Bay tribes of South Australia the repugnance to mentioning the names of those who have died lately is carried so far, that persons who bear the same name as the deceased abandon it, and either adopt temporary names or are known by any others that happen to belong to them.  A similar custom prevails among some of the Queensland tribes; but the prohibition to use the names of the dead is not permanent, though it may last for many years.  In some Australian tribes the change of name thus brought about is permanent; the old name is laid aside for ever, and the man is known by his new name for the rest of his life, or at least until he is obliged to change it again for a like reason.  Among the North American Indians all persons, whether men or women, who bore the name of one who had just died were obliged to abandon it and to adopt other names, which was formally done at the first ceremony of mourning for the dead.  In some tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains this change of name lasted only during the season of mourning, but in other tribes on the Pacific Coast of North America it seems to have been permanent.

Sometimes by an extension of the same reasoning all the near relations of the deceased change their names, whatever they may happen to be, doubtless from a fear that the sound of the familiar names might lure back the vagrant spirit to its old home.  Thus in some Victorian tribes the ordinary names of all the next of kin were disused during the period of mourning, and certain general terms, prescribed by custom, were substituted for them.  To call a mourner by his own name was considered an insult to the departed, and often led to fighting and bloodshed.  Among Indian tribes of North-western America near relations of the deceased often change their names “under an impression that spirits will be attracted back to earth if they hear familiar names often repeated.”  Among the Kiowa Indians the name of the dead is never spoken in the presence of the relatives, and on the death of any member of a family all the others take new names.  This custom was noted by Raleigh’s colonists on Roanoke Island more than three centuries ago.  Among the Lengua Indians not only is a dead man’s name never mentioned, but all the survivors change their names also.  They say that Death has been among them and has carried off a list of the living, and that he will soon come back for more victims; hence in order to defeat his fell purpose they change their names, believing that on his return Death, though he has got them all on his list, will not be able to identify them under their new names, and will depart to pursue the search elsewhere.  Nicobarese mourners take new names in order to escape the unwelcome attentions of the ghost; and for the same purpose they disguise themselves by shaving their heads so that the ghost is unable to recognise them.

Further, when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some common object, such as an animal, or plant, or fire, or water, it is sometimes considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and replace it by another.  A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of change in language; for where it prevails to any considerable extent many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up.  And this tendency has been remarked by observers who have recorded the custom in Australia, America, and elsewhere.  For example, with regard to the Australian aborigines it has been noted that “the dialects change with almost every tribe.  Some tribes name their children after natural objects; and when the person so named dies, the word is never again mentioned; another word has therefore to be invented for the object after which the child was called.”  The writer gives as an instance the case of a man whose name Karla signified “fire”; when Karla died, a new word for fire had to be introduced.  “Hence,” adds the writer, “the language is always changing.”  Again, in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia, if a man of the name of Ngnke, which means “water,” were to die, the whole tribe would be obliged to use some other word to express water for a considerable time after his decease.  The writer who records this custom surmises that it may explain the presence of a number of synonyms in the language of the tribe.  This conjecture is confirmed by what we know of some Victorian tribes whose speech comprised a regular set of synonyms to be used instead of the common terms by all members of a tribe in times of mourning.  For instance, if a man called Waa ( “crow”) departed this life, during the period of mourning for him nobody might call a crow a waa; everybody had to speak of the bird as a narrapart. When a person who rejoiced in the title of Ringtail Opossum (weearn) had gone the way of all flesh, his sorrowing relations and the tribe at large were bound for a time to refer to ringtail opossums by the more sonorous name of manuungkuurt. If the community were plunged in grief for the loss of a respected female who bore the honourable name of Turkey Bustard, the proper name for turkey bustards, which was barrim barrim, went out, and tillit tilliitsh came in.  And so mutatis mutandis with the names of Black Cockatoo, Grey Duck, Gigantic Crane, Kangaroo, Eagle, Dingo, and the rest.

A similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of the Abipones of Paraguay, amongst whom, however, a word once abolished seems never to have been revived.  New words, says the missionary Dobrizhoffer, sprang up every year like mushrooms in a night, because all words that resembled the names of the dead were abolished by proclamation and others coined in their place.  The mint of words was in the hands of the old women of the tribe, and whatever term they stamped with their approval and put in circulation was immediately accepted without a murmur by high and low alike, and spread like wildfire through every camp and settlement of the tribe.  You would be astonished, says the same missionary, to see how meekly the whole nation acquiesces in the decision of a withered old hag, and how completely the old familiar words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either through force of habit or forgetfulness.  In the seven years that Dobrizhoffer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar was changed thrice, and the words for crocodile, thorn, and the slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied vicissitudes.  As a result of this habit, the vocabularies of the missionaries teemed with erasures, old words having constantly to be struck out as obsolete and new ones inserted in their place.  In many tribes of British New Guinea the names of persons are also the names of common things.  The people believe that if the name of a deceased person is pronounced, his spirit will return, and as they have no wish to see it back among them the mention of his name is tabooed and a new word is created to take its place, whenever the name happens to be a common term of the language.  Consequently many words are permanently lost or revived with modified or new meanings.  In the Nicobar Islands a similar practice has similarly affected the speech of the natives.  “A most singular custom,” says Mr. de Roepstorff, “prevails among them which one would suppose must most effectually hinder the ‘making of history,’ or, at any rate, the transmission of historical narrative.  By a strict rule, which has all the sanction of Nicobar superstition, no man’s name may be mentioned after his death!  To such a length is this carried that when, as very frequently happens, the man rejoiced in the name of ‘Fowl,’ ‘Hat’, ‘Fire,’ ‘Road,’ etc., in its Nicobarese equivalent, the use of these words is carefully eschewed for the future, not only as being the personal designation of the deceased, but even as the names of the common things they represent; the words die out of the language, and either new vocables are coined to express the thing intended, or a substitute for the disused word is found in other Nicobarese dialects or in some foreign tongue.  This extraordinary custom not only adds an element of instability to the language, but destroys the continuity of political life, and renders the record of past events precarious and vague, if not impossible.”

That a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut at the very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other workers in this field.  “The Klamath people,” observes Mr. A. S. Gatschet, “possess no historic traditions going further back in time than a century, for the simple reason that there was a strict law prohibiting the mention of the person or acts of a deceased individual by using his name. This law was rigidly observed among the Californians no less than among the Oregonians, and on its transgression the death penalty could be inflicted.  This is certainly enough to suppress all historical knowledge within a people.  How can history be written without names?”

In many tribes, however, the power of this superstition to blot out the memory of the past is to some extent weakened and impaired by a natural tendency of the human mind.  Time, which wears out the deepest impressions, inevitably dulls, if it does not wholly efface, the print left on the savage mind by the mystery and horror of death.  Sooner or later, as the memory of his loved ones fades slowly away, he becomes more willing to speak of them, and thus their rude names may sometimes be rescued by the philosophic enquirer before they have vanished, like autumn leaves or winter snows, into the vast undistinguished limbo of the past.  In some of the Victorian tribes the prohibition to mention the names of the dead remained in force only during the period of mourning; in the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia it lasted many years.  Among the Chinook Indians of North America “custom forbids the mention of a dead man’s name, at least till many years have elapsed after the bereavement.”  Among the Puyallup Indians the observance of the taboo is relaxed after several years, when the mourners have forgotten their grief; and if the deceased was a famous warrior, one of his descendants, for instance a great-grandson, may be named after him.  In this tribe the taboo is not much observed at any time except by the relations of the dead.  Similarly the Jesuit missionary Lafitau tells us that the name of the departed and the similar names of the survivors were, so to say, buried with the corpse until, the poignancy of their grief being abated, it pleased the relations “to lift up the tree and raise the dead.”  By raising the dead they meant bestowing the name of the departed upon some one else, who thus became to all intents and purposes a reincarnation of the deceased, since on the principles of savage philosophy the name is a vital part, if not the soul, of the man.

Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear.  If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard.  Among the Khonds a birth is celebrated on the seventh day after the event by a feast given to the priest and to the whole village.  To determine the child’s name the priest drops grains of rice into a cup of water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor.  From the movements of the seed in the water, and from observations made on the person of the infant, he pronounces which of his progenitors has reappeared in him, and the child generally, at least among the northern tribes, receives the name of that ancestor.  Among the Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of Ifa, the god of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul has been reborn in the infant.  As soon as this has been decided, the parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if, as often happens, they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the necessary information.  The child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in him.

4.  Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed

WHEN we see that in primitive society the names of mere commoners, whether alive or dead, are matters of such anxious care, we need not be surprised that great precautions should be taken to guard from harm the names of sacred kings and priests.  Thus the name of the king of Dahomey is always kept secret, lest the knowledge of it should enable some evil-minded person to do him a mischief.  The appellations by which the different kings of Dahomey have been known to Europeans are not their true names, but mere titles, or what the natives call “strong names.”  The natives seem to think that no harm comes of such titles being known, since they are not, like the birth-names, vitally connected with their owners.  In the Galla kingdom of Ghera the birth-name of the sovereign may not be pronounced by a subject under pain of death, and common words which resemble it in sound are changed for others.  Among the Bahima of Central Africa, when the king dies, his name is abolished from the language, and if his name was that of an animal, a new appellation must be found for the creature at once.  For example, the king is often called a lion; hence at the death of a king named Lion a new name for lions in general has to be coined.  In Siam it used to be difficult to ascertain the king’s real name, since it was carefully kept secret from fear of sorcery; any one who mentioned it was clapped into gaol.  The king might only be referred to under certain high-sounding titles, such as “the august,” “the perfect,” “the supreme,” “the great emperor,” “descendant of the angels,” and so on.  In Burma it was accounted an impiety of the deepest dye to mention the name of the reigning sovereign; Burmese subjects, even when they were far from their country, could not be prevailed upon to do so; after his accession to the throne the king was known by his royal titles only.

Among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his tribe or the names of the progenitors of the chief, so far as he can remember them; nor will he utter common words which coincide with or merely resemble in sound tabooed names.  In the tribe of the Dwandwes there was a chief called Langa, which means the sun; hence the name of the sun was changed from langa to gala, and so remains to this day, though Langa died more than a hundred years ago.  Again, in the Xnumayo tribe the word meaning “to herd cattle” was changed from alusa or ayusa to kagesa, because u-Mayusi was the name of the chief.  Besides these taboos, which were observed by each tribe separately, all the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the king who reigned over the whole nation.  Hence, for example, when Panda was king of Zululand, the word for “a root of a tree,” which is impando, was changed to nxabo. Again, the word for “lies” or “slander” was altered from amacebo to amakwata, because amacebo contains a syllable of the name of the famous King Cetchwayo.  These substitutions are not, however, carried so far by the men as by the women, who omit every sound even remotely resembling one that occurs in a tabooed name.  At the king’s kraal, indeed, it is sometimes difficult to understand the speech of the royal wives, as they treat in this fashion the names not only of the king and his forefathers, but even of his and their brothers back for generations.  When to these tribal and national taboos we add those family taboos on the names of connexions by marriage which have been already described, we can easily understand how it comes about that in Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself, and that the women have a considerable vocabulary of their own.  Members, too, of one family may be debarred from using words employed by those of another.  The women of one kraal, for instance, may call a hyaena by its ordinary name; those of the next may use the common substitute; while in a third the substitute may also be unlawful and another term may have to be invented to supply its place.  Hence the Zulu language at the present day almost presents the appearance of being a double one; indeed, for multitudes of things it possesses three or four synonyms, which through the blending of tribes are known all over Zululand.

In Madagascar a similar custom everywhere prevails and has resulted, as among the Zulus, in producing certain dialectic differences in the speech of the various tribes.  There are no family names in Madagascar, and almost every personal name is drawn from the language of daily life and signifies some common object or action or quality, such as a bird, a beast, a tree, a plant, a colour, and so on.  Now, whenever one of these common words forms the name or part of the name of the chief of the tribe, it becomes sacred and may no longer be used in its ordinary signification as the name of a tree, an insect, or what not.  Hence a new name for the object must be invented to replace the one which has been discarded.  It is easy to conceive what confusion and uncertainty may thus be introduced into a language when it is spoken by many little local tribes each ruled by a petty chief with his own sacred name.  Yet there are tribes and people who submit to this tyranny of words as their fathers did before them from time immemorial.  The inconvenient results of the custom are especially marked on the western coast of the island, where, on account of the large number of independent chieftains, the names of things, places, and rivers have suffered so many changes that confusion often arises, for when once common words have been banned by the chiefs the natives will not acknowledge to have ever known them in their old sense.

But it is not merely the names of living kings and chiefs which are tabooed in Madagascar; the names of dead sovereigns are equally under a ban, at least in some parts of the island.  Thus among the Sakalavas, when a king has died, the nobles and people meet in council round the dead body and solemnly choose a new name by which the deceased monarch shall be henceforth known.  After the new name has been adopted, the old name by which the king was known during his life becomes sacred and may not be pronounced under pain of death.  Further, words in the common language which bear any resemblance to the forbidden name also become sacred and have to be replaced by others.  Persons who uttered these forbidden words were looked on not only as grossly rude, but even as felons; they had committed a capital crime.  However, these changes of vocabulary are confined to the district over which the deceased king reigned; in the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be employed in the old sense.

The sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia naturally extended also to their names, which on the primitive view are hardly separable from the personality of their owners.  Hence in Polynesia we find the same systematic prohibition to utter the names of chiefs or of common words resembling them which we have already met with in Zululand and Madagascar.  Thus in New Zealand the name of a chief is held so sacred that, when it happens to be a common word, it may not be used in the language, and another has to be found to replace it.  For example, a chief of the southward of East Cape bore the name of Maripi, which signified a knife, hence a new word (nekra) for knife was introduced, and the old one became obsolete.  Elsewhere the word for water (wai) had to be changed, because it chanced to be the name of the chief, and would have been desecrated by being applied to the vulgar fluid as well as to his sacred person.  This taboo naturally produced a plentiful crop of synonyms in the Maori language, and travellers newly arrived in the country were sometimes puzzled at finding the same things called by quite different names in neighbouring tribes.  When a king comes to the throne in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name in sound must be changed for others.  In former times, if any man were so rash as to disregard this custom and to use the forbidden words, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death.  But the changes thus introduced were only temporary; on the death of the king the new words fell into disuse, and the original ones were revived.

In ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might not be uttered in their lifetime.  To pronounce them was a legal offence The pedant in Lucian tells how he fell in with these august personages haling along to the police court a ribald fellow who had dared to name them, though well he knew that ever since their consecration it was unlawful to do so, because they had become anonymous, having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred titles.  From two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea; probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, which were then thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis.  The intention doubtless was to keep the names a profound secret; and how could that be done more surely than by sinking them in the sea? what human vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim depths of the green water?  A clearer illustration of the confusion between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised Greece.

5.  Names of Gods tabooed

PRIMITIVE man creates his gods in his own image.  Xenophanes remarked long ago that the complexion of negro gods was black and their noses flat; that Thracian gods were ruddy and blue-eyed; and that if horses, oxen, and lions only believed in gods and had hands wherewith to portray them, they would doubtless fashion their deities in the form of horses, and oxen, and lions.  Hence just as the furtive savage conceals his real name because he fears that sorcerers might make an evil use of it, so he fancies that his gods must likewise keep their true name secret, lest other gods or even men should learn the mystic sounds and thus be able to conjure with them.  Nowhere was this crude conception of the secrecy and magical virtue of the divine name more firmly held or more fully developed than in ancient Egypt, where the superstitions of a dateless past were embalmed in the hearts of the people hardly less effectually than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of the divine menagerie in their rock-cut tombs.  The conception is well illustrated by a story which tells how the subtle Isis wormed his secret name from Ra, the great Egyptian god of the sun.  Isis, so runs the tale, was a woman mighty in words, and she was weary of the world of men, and yearned after the world of the gods.  And she meditated in her heart, saying, “Cannot I by virtue of the great name of Ra make myself a goddess and reign like him in heaven and earth?” For Ra had many names, but the great name which gave him all power over gods and men was known to none but himself.  Now the god was by this time grown old; he slobbered at the mouth and his spittle fell upon the ground.  So Isis gathered up the spittle and the earth with it, and kneaded thereof a serpent and laid it in the path where the great god passed every day to his double kingdom after his heart’s desire.  And when he came forth according to his wont, attended by all his company of gods, the sacred serpent stung him, and the god opened his mouth and cried, and his cry went up to heaven.  And the company of gods cried, “What aileth thee?” and the gods shouted, “Lo and behold!” But he could not answer; his jaws rattled, his limbs shook, the poison ran through his flesh as the Nile floweth over the land.  When the great god had stilled his heart, he cried to his followers, “Come to me, O my children, offspring of my body.  I am a prince, the son of a prince, the divine seed of a god.  My father devised my name; my father and my mother gave me my name, and it remained hidden in my body since my birth, that no magician might have magic power over me.  I went out to behold that which I have made, I walked in the two lands which I have created, and lo! something stung me.  What it was, I know not.  Was it fire? was it water?  My heart is on fire, my flesh trembleth, all my limbs do quake.  Bring me the children of the gods with healing words and understanding lips, whose power reacheth to heaven.”  Then came to him the children of the gods, and they were very sorrowful.  And Isis came with her craft, whose mouth is full of the breath of life, whose spells chase pain away, whose word maketh the dead to live.  She said, “What is it, divine Father? what is it?” The holy god opened his mouth, he spake and said, “I went upon my way, I walked after my heart’s desire in the two regions which I have made to behold that which I have created, and lo! a serpent that I saw not stung me.  Is it fire? is it water?  I am colder than water, I am hotter than fire, all my limbs sweat, I tremble, mine eye is not steadfast, I behold not the sky, the moisture bedeweth my face as in summer-time.”  Then spake Isis, “Tell me thy name, divine Father, for the man shall live who is called by his name.”  Then answered Ra, “I created the heavens and the earth, I ordered the mountains, I made the great and wide sea, I stretched out the two horizons like a curtain.  I am he who openeth his eyes and it is light, and who shutteth them and it is dark.  At his command the Nile riseth, but the gods know not his name.  I am Khepera in the morning, I am Ra at noon, I am Tum at eve.”  But the poison was not taken away from him; it pierced deeper, and the great god could no longer walk.  Then said Isis to him, “That was not thy name that thou spakest unto me.  Oh tell it me, that the poison may depart; for he shall live whose name is named.”  Now the poison burned like fire, it was hotter than the flame of fire.  The god said, “I consent that Isis shall search into me, and that my name shall pass from my breast into hers.”  Then the god hid himself from the gods, and his place in the ship of eternity was empty.  Thus was the name of the great god taken from him, and Isis, the witch, spake, “Flow away, poison, depart from Ra.  It is I, even I, who overcome the poison and cast it to the earth; for the name of the great god hath been taken away from him.  Let Ra live and let the poison die.”  Thus spake great Isis, the queen of the gods, she who knows Ra and his true name.

From this story it appears that the real name of the god, with which his power was inextricably bound up, was supposed to be lodged, in an almost physical sense, somewhere in his breast, from which Isis extracted it by a sort of surgical operation and transferred it with all its supernatural powers to herself.  In Egypt attempts like that of Isis to appropriate the power of a high god by possessing herself of his name were not mere legends told of the mythical beings of a remote past; every Egyptian magician aspired to wield like powers by similar means.  For it was believed that he who possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and could force even a deity to obey him as a slave obeys his master.  Thus the art of the magician consisted in obtaining from the gods a revelation of their sacred names, and he left no stone unturned to accomplish his end.  When once a god in a moment of weakness or forgetfulness had imparted to the wizard the wondrous lore, the deity had no choice but to submit humbly to the man or pay the penalty of his contumacy.

The belief in the magic virtue of divine names was shared by the Romans.  When they sat down before a city, the priests addressed the guardian deity of the place in a set form of prayer or incantation, inviting him to abandon the beleaguered city and come over to the Romans, who would treat him as well as or better than he had ever been treated in his old home.  Hence the name of the guardian deity of Rome was kept a profound secret, lest the enemies of the republic might lure him away, even as the Romans themselves had induced many gods to desert, like rats, the falling fortunes of cities that had sheltered them in happier days.  Nay, the real name, not merely of its guardian deity, but of the city itself, was wrapt in mystery and might never be uttered, not even in the sacred rites.  A certain Valerius Soranus, who dared to divulge the priceless secret, was put to death or came to a bad end.  In like manner, it seems, the ancient Assyrians were forbidden to mention the mystic names of their cities; and down to modern times the Cheremiss of the Caucasus keep the names of their communal villages secret from motives of superstition.

If the reader has had the patience to follow this examination of the superstitions attaching to personal names, he will probably agree that the mystery in which the names of royal personages are so often shrouded is no isolated phenomenon, no arbitrary expression of courtly servility and adulation, but merely the particular application of a general law of primitive thought, which includes within its scope common folk and gods as well as kings and priests.