550 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY fBull. 175 



VS. Hispan Himith Tcilyetcilye) or is a compression of several frag- 

 mentary words into one word. Indeed, the great length of the aver- 

 age Mohave name automatically leads to the gradual erosion of that 

 name. Thus, the habitually used name Sahaykwisa turned out to 

 be a compression of Masahay Matkwisa Manye : while the full name 

 of the person always spoken of as Toskinyil is actually Kamtoska 

 lluanyeily. During this process of erosion, syllables and even words 

 are dropped, stresses and vowel lengths are displayed, vowels are 

 changed (Hispan Taruu:ly becoming Pantarauly), consonants are 

 modified (s turns into th^ especially in the case of toothless informants, 

 but also vice versa; A, k and t are used interchangeably, etc.) and 

 words, or fragments of words, are run together. 



The position taken here is that the effective and functional "real" 

 name of, e.g., Kamtoska Huanyeily is actually "Toskinyil," precisely 

 the way the "real" (spoken) name of Cholmondeley is Chumley. 

 "V^Hien this problem was discussed with Prof. John Lotz, of Columbia 

 University, he suggested that these abbre\dated names be designated 

 as allonoms, a term patterned upon such linguistic terms as allophons 

 and allologs. 



Unfortunately for the etymologist, the exclusive use of an allonom 

 tends to obliterate the full name whose contraction it represents. As 

 a result, especially in the case of deceased persons, the reconstruction 

 of the (forgotten) full name from the abbreviated allonom is some- 

 times entirely impossible. In other instances two equally competent 

 informants reconstruct the full form of an allonom in two different 

 ways, which sometimes causes one to assume that the two differently 

 reconstructed full names are the names of two different persons. 



The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the new and 

 striking name of individual A may cause individual B to select for 

 himself a similar name. Moreover, when both of such paired names 

 are quite long, the process of erosion to which both are subjected some- 

 times causes the final (abridged) allonoms to resemble each other 

 even more than the two full paired names did. 



A further source of doubt as to whether one is dealing with one 

 individual having several names or else with two distinct individuals, 

 each of whom has one name, is the fact that one and the same indi- 

 vidual may, successively or else simultaneously, have more than one 

 name, two of which may actually resemble each other. 



A curious, but not unique, variety of the latter type of double names 

 is a certain man's name which means "elephant's anus." In Moliavc, 

 this name is used in two forms. One is Elefant Iliwey. In the other 

 form the borrowed word "elefant" is replaced by the made-up Mohave 

 name for the elephant : "strong enough to stop a train." In this 

 instance, a special inquiry was needed in order to ascertain that these 

 paired names were those of one person, rather than the names of two 



