EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 299 



of the women, who also partake of these honors, in en. These sylla- 

 bles you must add even to substantives and verbs in talking with 

 them." Again, " the Samoan language contains ' a distinct and per- 

 manent vocabulary of words which politeness requires to be made use 

 of to superiors, or on occasions of ceremony.' " Among the Javans, 

 "on no account is any one, of whatever rank, allowed to address his 

 superior in the common or vernacular language of the country." And 

 of the ancient Mexican language we are told by Gallantin that there is 

 "a special form called Reverential, which pervades the whole language, 

 and is found in no other. . . . this is believed to be the only one 

 [language] in which every word uttered by the inferior reminds him of 

 his social position." 



The most general of the indirectnesses which etiquette introduces 

 into forms of address appears to have its root in the primitive super- 

 stition respecting proper names. Conceiving that a man's name forms 

 part of his individuality, and that possession of his name gives some 

 power over him, savages almost everywhere are reluctant to disclose 

 names, and consequently avoid that use of them in speech by which 

 they are made known to hearers. Whether this is the sole cause, or 

 whether, apart from this, utterance of a man's name is felt to be a kind 

 of liberty taken with him, the fact is that among all races names 

 acquire a kind of sacredness, and taking a name in vain is interdicted: 

 especially to inferiors when addressing superiors. One curious result 

 is that, as, in early stages, personal names are derived from objects, the 

 names of objects have to be disused and others substituted. Among 

 the Caffres " a wife may not publicly pronounce the i-gama [the name 

 given at birth] of her husband or any of his brothers ; nor may she use 

 the interdicted word in its ordinary sense. . . . The chief's i-gama is 

 withdrawn from the language of his people." Again, " the hereditary 

 appellation of the chief of Pango-Pango [in Samoa] being now Maunga, 

 or Mountain, that word must never be used for a hill in his presence, 

 but a courtly term . . . substituted." And then, where there exist 

 proper names of a developed kind, there are still kindred restrictions 

 on the general use of them ; as in Siam, where " the name of the king 

 must not be uttered by a subject : he is always referred to by a peri- 

 phrasis, such as ' the master of life,' ' the lord of the land,' ' the supreme 

 head;' " and as in China, where "the 'old man of the house,' 'excel- 

 lent honorable one,' and ' venerable great prince,' are terms used by a 

 visitor to designate the father of his host." 



Allied with avoidance of the proper name in addressing a superior, 

 there is, as sundry of the above instances show, avoidance of the per- 

 sonal pronouns ; which also establish with the individual addressed a 

 relation too direct to be allowed where distance is to be maintained. 

 In Siam, as already exemplified, when asking the king's commands the 

 pronominal form is, as much as possible, evaded ; and that this usage is 

 general among the Siamese is shown by the remark of Pere Bruguiere, 



