Even Herbert Spencer sees the correspondence of the blood-covenant and the exchange of names. He says: “By absorbing each other’s blood, men are supposed to establish actual community of nature. Similarly with the ceremony of exchanging names.... This, which is a widely-diffused practice, arises from the belief that the name is vitally connected with its owner.... To exchange names, therefore, is to establish some participation in one another’s being.”[747] Hence, as we may suppose, came the well-nigh universal Oriental practice of inter-weaving the name of one’s Deity with one’s name, as a symbolic evidence of one’s covenant-union with the Deity. The blood-covenant, or the blood-union, idea is at the bottom of this. Another custom, having a peculiar bearing upon this thought of a new name, or a new identity, through new blood, is the rite of initiation into manhood, by the native Australians. During childhood the Australian boys are under the care of their mothers, and they bear names which designate the place and circumstances of their birth. But when the time comes for them to put away childish things,[748] they are subjected to a series of severe and painful tests, to prove their powers of physical and mental endurance, preparatory to their reception of a new name, as indicative of a new life. A rite resembling circumcision is one step in their progress. During these ceremonies, there is selected for each lad a sponsor (or godfather) who is a representative of that higher life into which the lad seeks an entrance. One of the latest steps in the long series of ceremonies, is the choosing and conferring, by the sponsor, of the lad’s new name, which he is to retain thenceforward during his life. With a stone-knife, the sponsor opens a vein in his own arm, and causes the lad to drink his warm-flowing blood. After this, the lad drops forward on his hands and knees, and the sponsor’s blood is permitted to form a pool on his back, and to coagulate there. Then the sponsor cuts, with his stone-knife, broad gashes in the lad’s back, and pulls open the gaping wounds with the fingers. The scars of these gashes remain as permanent signs of the covenant ceremony.[749] And encircling tokens of the covenant[750] are bound around the neck, each arm, and the waist, of the young man; who is now reckoned a new creature[751] in the life represented by that godfather, who has given him his new name, and has imparted to him of his blood.[752]