These taboos can hardly be accounted for by the intermarriage of tribes speaking different languages. Differences of language between husbands and wives. Intermixture of races speaking different languages would hardly account for the taboos on the names of relations.
It will perhaps occur to the reader that customs of this latter sort may possibly have originated in the intermarriage of tribes speaking different languages; and there are some Australian facts which seem at first sight to favour this supposition. Thus with regard to the natives of South Australia we are told that “the principal mark of distinction between the tribes is difference of language or dialect; where the tribes intermix greatly no inconvenience is experienced on this account, as every person understands, in addition to his own dialect, that of the neighbouring tribe; the consequence is that two persons commonly converse in two languages, just as an Englishman and German would hold a conversation, each person speaking his own language, but understanding that of the other as well as his own. This peculiarity will often occur in one family through intermarriages, neither party ever thinking of changing his or her dialect for that of the other. Children do not always adopt the language of the mother, but that of the tribe among whom they live.”[1310] Among some tribes of western Victoria a man was actually forbidden to marry a wife who spoke the same dialect as himself; and during the preliminary visit, which each paid to the tribe of the other, neither was permitted to speak the language of the tribe which he or she was visiting. The children spoke the language of their father and might never mix it with any other. To her children the mother spoke in their father's language, but to her husband she spoke in her own, and he answered her in his; “so that all conversation is carried on between husband and wife in the same way as between an Englishman and a Frenchwoman, each speaking his or her own language. This very remarkable law explains the preservation of so many distinct dialects within so limited a space, even where there are no physical obstacles to ready and frequent [pg 348] communication between the tribes.”[1311] So amongst the Sakais, an aboriginal race of the Malay Peninsula, a man goes to a considerable distance for a wife, generally to a tribe who speak quite a different dialect.[1312] The Indian tribes of French Guiana have each their own dialect and would hardly be able to understand each other, were it not that almost every person marries a wife or a husband of a different tribe, and thus the newcomers serve as interpreters between the tribe in which they live and that in which they were born and brought up.[1313] It is well known that the Carib women spoke a language which differed in some respects from that of the men, and the explanation generally given of the difference is that the women preserved the language of a race of whom the men had been exterminated and the women married by the Caribs. This explanation is not, as some seem to suppose, a mere hypothesis of the learned, devised to clear up a curious discrepancy; it was a tradition current among the Caribs themselves in the seventeenth century,[1314] and as such it deserves serious attention. But there are other facts which seem to point to a different explanation.[1315] Among the Carayahis, a tribe of Brazilian Indians on the Rio Grande or Araguaya River, the dialect of the women differs from that of the men. For the most part the differences are limited to the form and sound of the [pg 349] words; only a few words seem to be quite distinct in the two dialects. The speech of the women appears to preserve older and fuller forms than that of the men: for instance, “girl” is yadokoma in the female speech but yadôma in the male; “nail” is desika in the mouth of a woman but desia in the mouth of a man.[1316] However such remarkable differences are to be explained, a little reflection will probably convince us that a mere intermixture of races speaking different tongues could scarcely account for the phenomena of language under consideration. For the reluctance to mention the names or even syllables of the names of persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be separated from the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter their own names or the names of the dead or of chiefs and kings; and if the reticence as to these latter names springs mainly from superstition, we may infer that the reticence as to the former has no better foundation. That the savage's unwillingness to mention his own name is based, at least in part, on a superstitious fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes, whether human or spiritual, has already been shewn. It remains to examine the similar usage in regard to the names of the dead and of royal personages.
§ 3. Names of the Dead tabooed.
The names of the dead are in general not mentioned by the Australian aborigines.
The custom of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead was observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus,[1317] and at the present day it is in full force among many savage tribes. Thus we are told that one of the customs most rigidly observed and enforced amongst the Australian aborigines is never to mention the name of a deceased person, whether male or female; to name aloud one who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their most sacred prejudices, and they carefully abstain from it.[1318] The chief motive for this abstinence appears to be a [pg 350] fear of evoking the ghost, although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead.[1319] Once Mr. Oldfield so terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man fairly took to his heels and did not venture to shew himself again for several days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion; “nor could I,” adds Mr. Oldfield, “induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign spirits.”[1320] On another occasion, a Watchandie woman having mentioned the name of a certain man, was informed that he had long been dead. At that she became greatly excited and spat thrice to counteract the evil effect of having taken a dead man's name into her lips. This custom of spitting thrice, as Mr. Oldfield afterwards learned, was the regular charm whereby the natives freed themselves from the power of the dangerous spirits whom they had provoked by such a rash act.[1321] Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a subdued voice as “the lost one” or “the poor fellow that is no more.” To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite the malignity of Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed, which hovers on earth for a time before it departs for ever towards the setting sun.[1322] Once when a Kurnai [pg 351] man was spoken to about a dead friend, soon after the decease, he looked round uneasily and said, “Do not do that, he might hear you and kill me!”[1323] If a Kaiabara black dies, his tribes-people never mention his name, but call him Wurponum, “the dead,” and in order to explain who it is that has died, they speak of his father, mother, brothers, and so forth.[1324] Of the tribes on the Lower Murray River we are told that when a person dies “they carefully avoid mentioning his name; but if compelled to do so, they pronounce it in a very low whisper, so faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their voice.”[1325] Amongst the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of the deceased during the period of mourning, unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and then it is only done in a whisper for fear of disturbing and annoying the man's spirit which is walking about in ghostly form. If the ghost hears his name mentioned he concludes that his kinsfolk are not mourning for him properly; if their grief were genuine they could not bear to bandy his name about. Touched to the quick by their hard-hearted indifference, the indignant ghost will come and trouble them in dreams.[1326] In these tribes no woman may ever again mention the name of a dead person, but the restriction on the male sex is not so absolute, for the name may be mentioned by men of the two subclasses to which the wife's father and wife's brother of the deceased belong.[1327] Among some tribes of north-western Australia a dead man's name is never mentioned after his burial and he is only spoken of as “that one”; otherwise they think that he would return and frighten them at night in camp.[1328]
The names of the dead are not uttered by the American Indians.
The same reluctance to utter the names of the dead appears to prevail among all the Indian tribes of America from Hudson's Bay Territory to Patagonia. Among the [pg 352] Iroquois, for example, the name of the deceased was never mentioned after the period of mourning had expired.[1329] The same rule was rigidly observed by the Indians of California and Oregon; its transgression might be punished with a heavy fine or even with death.[1330] Thus among the Karok of California we are told that “the highest crime one can commit is the pet-chi-é-ri, the mere mention of the dead relative's name. It is a deadly insult to the survivors, and can be atoned for only by the same amount of blood-money paid for wilful murder. In default of that they will have the villain's blood.”[1331] Amongst the Wintun, also of California, if some one in a group of merry talkers inadvertently mentions the name of a deceased person, “straightway there falls upon all an awful silence. No words can describe the shuddering and heart-sickening terror which seizes upon them at the utterance of that fearful word.”[1332] Among the Goajiros of Colombia to mention the dead before his kinsmen is a dreadful offence, which is often punished with death; for if it happen on the rancho of the deceased, in presence of his nephew or uncle, they will assuredly kill the offender on the spot if they can. But if he escapes, the penalty resolves itself into a heavy fine, usually of two or more oxen.[1333] So among the Abipones of Paraguay to mention the departed by name was a serious crime, which often led to blows and bloodshed. When it was needful to refer to such an one, it was done by means of a general phrase such as “he who is no more,” eked out with particulars which served to identify the person meant.[1334]
Many other peoples are reluctant to mention the names of the dead. This reluctance seems to be based on a fear of the ghosts, whose attention might be attracted by the mention of their names.
A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of peoples so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of Siberia and the Todas of southern India; the Mongols of Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara; the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi of central Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of Madagascar, and of Tasmania.[1335] In all cases, even where it is not expressly stated, the fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the ghost. That this is the real motive with the Tuaregs of the Sahara we are positively informed. They dread the return of the dead man's spirit, and do all they can to avoid it by shifting their camp after a death, ceasing for ever to pronounce the name of the departed, and eschewing everything that might be regarded as an evocation or recall of his soul. Hence they do not, like the Arabs, designate individuals by adding to their personal names the names of their fathers; they never speak of So-and-so, son of So-and-so; they give to every man a name which will live and die with him.[1336] So among some of the Victorian tribes in [pg 354] Australia personal names were rarely perpetuated, because the natives believed that any one who adopted the name of a deceased person would not live long;[1337] probably his ghostly namesake was supposed to come and fetch him away to the spirit-land. The Yabims of German New Guinea, who believe that the spirits of the dead pass their time in the forest eating unpalatable fruits, are unwilling to mention the names of the deceased lest their ghosts should suspend their habitual occupation to come and trouble the living.[1338] In Logea, one of the Samarai Archipelago, off the south-eastern end of New Guinea, no custom is observed so strictly as the one which forbids the naming of the dead in presence of their relations. To say to a person “Your fathers are dead,” is considered a direct challenge to fight; it is an insult which must be avenged either by the death of the man who pronounced these awful words, or by the death of one of his relatives or friends. The uttering of the names of the dead is, along with homicide, one of the chief causes of war in the island. When it is necessary to refer to a dead man they designate him by such a phrase as “the father of So-and-so,” or “the brother of So-and-so.”[1339] Thus the fear of mentioning the names of the dead gives rise to circumlocutions of precisely the same sort as those which originate in a reluctance to name living people. Among the Klallam Indians of Washington State no person may bear the name of his deceased father, grandfather, or any other direct ancestor in the paternal line.[1340] The Masai of eastern Africa are said to resort to a simple device which enables them to speak of the dead freely without risk of the inopportune appearance of the ghost. As soon as a man or woman dies, they change his or her name, and henceforth always speak of him or her by the new name, while the old name falls into oblivion, and [pg 355] to utter it in the presence of a kinsman of the deceased is an insult which calls for vengeance. They assume that the dead man will not know his new name, and so will not answer to it when he hears it pronounced.[1341] Ghosts are notoriously dull-witted; nothing is easier than to dupe them. However, according to another and more probable account, the name of a Masai is not changed after his death; it is merely suppressed, and he or she is referred to by a descriptive phrase, such as “my brother,” “my uncle,” “my sister.” To call a dead man by his name is deemed most unlucky, and is never done except with the intention of doing harm to his surviving family, who make great lamentations on such an occasion.[1342]