CH. XI CUSTOMS OF TEE MINAHA8SEBS 281 



Of considerable importance in connection with the 

 development of marriage institutions is the strange but 

 very widely distributed custom known by the name Tekno- 

 nymy (77), or the naming of the parents after the children. 

 This is a common practice in Minahassa, and is distin- 

 guished by the very extraordinary fact that after the birth 

 of the first child, not the father only, as is usually the 

 case, but both parents take its name. If, for example, 

 the child's name is Wangko, then the father drops his own 

 name, and is afterwards known as Si-ama-ni-Wangko, the 

 father of Wangko, and the mother, Si-ina-ni- Wangko, 

 mother of Wangko (99). 



This custom can also be traced to the days when the 

 husband Uved in the house of his wife's parents. As I 

 have previously mentioned, he was not at first recognised 

 as a member of their family ; they shunned him when he 

 came to visit his wife, turned their back upon him, and 

 would not mention his name. On the birth of a child, 

 however, he became ipso facto a blood relation of a member 

 of their family (the child), and they began gradually to 

 recognise him more fully. He was thenceforth known to 

 them not by his own name, but as the father of the child. 



When in the course of generations it gradually became 

 the custom for the wife to live in her husband's family, this 

 practice remained as a survival of the older system ; and, 

 the wife being now a stranger in her husband's family, 

 the custom originated of the mother also taking the name 

 of her child. 



Divorce, which is an impossibihty amongst tribes with 

 deega marriages and a strict law of exogamy, is common 

 amongst the Minahassers, where there is no law of exogamy. 

 A man may readily obtain a divorce without any better 

 reason than that he has fixed his heart on another woman. 

 The woman, on the other hand, sometimes runs away in 



