Section 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. 1
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. 2
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. 3
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. 4
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. 5
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. 6