BOLL. 30] 



NAMES AND NAMING 



17 



thus resulted that names individually 

 acquired became in time hereditary and 

 were added to the list of conunon names 

 owned by the clan. 



The second name, or title, was some- 

 times, as has been said, bestowed on 

 account of some Ijrave or meritorious 

 action. Thu.s a Pawnee " was permitted 

 to take a new name only after the per- 

 formance of an act indicative of great 

 ability or strength of character," and it 

 was done during a public ceremonial. 

 Among the Siouan tribes a similar cus- 

 tom seems to have prevailed, but among 

 the Maidu of California entrance into the 

 secret society took its place as a reason 

 for the bestowal of new titles. On the 

 N. W. coast a man adopted one of the 

 potlatch, or sacred, names of his pred- 

 ecessor when he gave the mortuary 

 feast and erected the grave post. At 

 every subsequent potlatch he was at 

 liberty to adopt an additional title, either 

 one used by his predecessor or a new 

 one commemorative of an encounter with 

 a supernatural being or of some success in 

 war or feast-giving. Along with his place 

 in a secret society a Kwakiutl obtained 

 the right to certain sacred names which 

 had been received by the first holder of 

 his position from the spirit jiatron of the 

 society and were used only during the 

 season of the ceremonial, like the titles 

 employed in the fraternal and other 

 societies of civilized life. The second 

 name among this people also marks indi- 

 vidual excellence rather than the attain- 

 ment of an hereditary position, for the 

 person did not succeed to the office, but 

 had to pass through a long period of 

 training and labor to be accepted. After 

 a man died his name was held in abey- 

 ance for a longer or shorter period, and 

 if it were taken from the name of some 

 familiar object, the name of that object 

 often had to be altered, but the taboo 

 period was not longer than would allow 

 the person's successor to collect his prop- 

 erty and give the death feast, and a sim- 

 ple phonetic change often satisfied all 

 scruples. Changes of this kind seem to 

 have been carried to greater extremes by 

 some tribes, notably the Kiowa, where, 

 on the death of any mem])er of a family 

 all the others take new names, while all 

 the terms suggesting the name of the 

 dead person are dropped from the lan- 

 guage for a period of years. Among the 

 coast Salish a single name was often 

 used by successive chiefs for four or 

 five generations. Among the Iroquois 

 and cognate tribes, according to Hewitt, 

 the official name of a chieftaincy is also 

 the official name of the officer who may 

 for the time being become installed in it, 

 and the name of this chieftaincy is never 

 changed, no matter how many persons 



3456— Bull. 30, pt 2—07 2 



may successively become incumbents of 

 it. Unlike the Indians of most tribes, a 

 Pueblo, although bearing several names, 

 usually retained one name throughout 

 life. In many tribes a curious custom 

 prohibited a man from directly address- 

 ing his wife, his mother-in-law, and 

 sometimes his father-in-law, and vice 

 versa. 



Names of men and women were usually, 

 though not always, different. When not 

 taken from the totem animal, they were 

 often grandiloquent terms referring to the 

 greatness and wealth of the bearer, or they 

 might commemorate some special triumph 

 of the family, while, as among the Navaho, 

 nicknames referring to a personal charac- 

 teristic were often used. The first name 

 frequently refers to something which es- 

 pecially impressed the child's mother at 

 the time of its birth. Often names were 

 ironical and had to be interpreted in a 

 manner directly opposite to the apparent 

 sense. A failure to understand this, along 

 with faulty interjiretation, has brought 

 about sti-ange, sometimes ludicrous, mis- 

 conceptions. Thus the name of a Dakota 

 chief, translated ' Young-man-afraid-of- 

 his-horses,' really signifies 'Young man 

 whose very horses are feared." Where 

 the clan system did not flourish, as 

 among the Salish, the name often in- 

 dicated the object in nature in which 

 a person's guardian spirit was supposed 

 to dwell. Names for houses and canoes 

 went by families and clans like personal 

 names and property in general. 



Names could often be loaned, pawned, 

 or even given or thrown away outright; 

 on the other hand, they might be adopted 

 out of revenge without the consent of the 

 owner. The possession of a name was 

 everywhere jealously guarded, and it was 

 considered discourteous or even insulting 

 to address one directly by it. This reti- 

 cence, on the part of some Indians at least, 

 appears to have been due to the fact that 

 every man, and every thing as well, was 

 supposed to have a real name which so 

 perfectly expressed his inmost nature as 

 to be practically identical with him. 

 This name might long reuiain unknown 

 to all, even to its owner, but at some crit- 

 ical period in life it was confidentially 

 revealed to him. It was largely on ac- 

 count of this sacred character that an In- 

 dian commonly refused to give his proper 

 designation, or, when pressed for an an- 

 swer, asked someone else to speak it. 

 Among the IMaidu it was not customary, 

 in addressing a person, to use the name 

 descriptive of his personal characteristics. 



In modern times the ]irol)lem of satis- 

 factorily naming Indians for purposes of 

 permanent record has been very puz- 

 zling owing to their custom of changing 

 names and to the ignorance on the part 



