Section 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. 1
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." 2
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. 3
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. 4