Section 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. 1
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. 2
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. 3
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. 4
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. 5
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. 6
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." 7
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?" 8
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. 9
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. 10