234 JOHN FRASER. 



tribe, as far as possible, never mention his name again, and discon- 

 tinue the use of those ordinary words which formed part of his 

 name ; other words are substituted for these common ones, and 

 become permanently established in the daily language of the clan 

 or sub-tribe to which the deceased belonged.* In this way new 

 words arise to designate those familiar objects, the previous names 

 of which have been cast aside ; and these new words are formed 

 regularly from other root-words, that describe probably another 

 quality inherent in the thing in question. Let me illustrate this 

 matter by examples. A man or a woman may get a name from 

 some peculiar physical feature, such as a large mouth, or chin, or 

 head ; or a name taken from an animal or tree, or any similar 

 object, animate or inanimate, which had some relation to his birth. 

 A Tasmanian woman was called Ramanalu, ' little gull,' because 

 a gull new by at the time of the child's birth. After her death, 

 the word rama would never be used again for 'a gull'; a new 

 name for ' gull ' would be invented, formed, it may be, from a root- 

 word meaning ' white,' because of the whiteness of the bird. This 

 new word would be used by all the kindred and acquaintances of 

 the deceased, and would ere long establish itself in the language 

 of that portion of the tribe as the right name for 'gull.' Again, 

 a boy of the Dungog tribe of blacks, in our own colony, was re- 

 ceiving instruction from the old men of the tribe ; he was required 

 to make a spear, and was sent into the bush to select a suitable 

 piece of wood ; he cut off and brought to them a piece of the kulai 

 (' cockspur ') tree; this choice was so absurd, that forthwith his 

 instructors dubbed him Kulai-kat, and that was his name ever 

 after. When he died, the word kulai would disappear, and some 

 other name be found for the cockspur tree. And the operation 

 of this principle is not confined to Australia ; it is found also in 

 Polynesia ; but there it has respect to the living, not the dead. 

 High chiefs there are regarded as so exalted personages, that com- 

 mon people must not make use of any portion of their names in 

 ordinary talk, for fear of giving offence. If, for example, a chief's 

 name contains the word pe'a, 'bat,' the tribe calls the 'bat,' not 

 pe'a, but manu-o-le-lagi, 'bird of the sky.' In languages which 

 are not subject to these influences, the derivation of such a word is 

 usually very plain; the Latin vespertilio, 'bat,' for instance, 

 bears its origin on its very face ; but if a philologist, not knowing 

 the history of the word manu-o-le-lagi, were to find it to mean 

 a 'bat' in a Polynesian tongue, he would be puzzled to explain 

 how it is that a creature so peculiar as the ' bat,' should have 

 been named by a word having so indefinite a meaning as the ' bird 



* It is possible that the discarded word resumes its place in the lan- 

 guage after a while ; this point I have not ascertained ; at all events, the 

 adopted word remains. 



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