The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M203) When it is deemed necessary that a man’s real name should be kept
secret, it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a surname
or nickname. As distinguished from the real or primary names, these
secondary names are apparently held to be no part of the man himself, so
that they may be freely used and divulged to everybody without endangering
his safety thereby. Sometimes in order to avoid the use of his own name a
man will be called after his child. Thus we are informed that “the
Gippsland blacks objected strongly to let any one outside the tribe know
their names, lest their enemies, learning them, should make them vehicles
of incantation, and so charm their lives away. As children were not
thought to have enemies, they used to speak of a man as ‘the father,
uncle, or cousin of So-and-so,’ naming a child; but on all occasions
abstained from mentioning the name of a grown-up person.”(1248) Similarly
among the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea, grown-up persons who are related by
marriage may not mention each other’s names, but it is lawful to mention
the names of children; hence in order to designate a person whose name
they may not pronounce they will speak of him or her as the father or
mother of So-and-so.(1249) The Alfoors of Poso, in Celebes, will not
pronounce their own names. Among them, accordingly, if you wish to
ascertain a person’s name, you ought not to ask the man himself, but
should enquire of others. But if this is impossible, for example, when
there is no one else near, you should ask him his child’s name, and then
address him as the “Father of So-and-so.” Nay, these Alfoors are shy of
uttering the names even of children; so when a boy or girl has a nephew or
niece, he or she is addressed as “Uncle of So-and-so,” or “Aunt of
So-and-so.”(1250) In pure Malay society, we are told, a man is never asked
his name, and the custom of naming parents after their children is adopted
only as a means of avoiding the use of the parents’ own names. The writer
who makes this statement adds in confirmation of it that childless persons
are named after their younger brothers.(1251) Among the land Dyaks of
northern Borneo children as they grow up are called, according to their
sex, the father or mother of a child of their father’s or mother’s younger
brother, or sister,(1252) that is, they are called the father or mother of
what we should call their first cousin. The Caffres used to think it
discourteous to call a bride by her own name, so they would call her “the
Mother of So-and-so,” even when she was only betrothed, far less a wife
and a mother.(1253) Among the Kukis and Zemis or Kacha Nagas of Assam
parents drop their own names after the birth of a child and are named
Father and Mother of So-and-so. Childless couples go by the names of “the
childless father,” “the childless mother,” “the father of no child,” “the
mother of no child.”(1254) A Zulu woman may not utter her husband’s name;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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