Paper short abstract:

In 1892 The Academy published a spirited exchange between lexicographer Murray and anthropologist Tylor about the term couvade. Their debate speaks to issues that live on, including creative inferences in science, authority and referencing, evidence, translation, and disciplinary boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

In the last three months of 1892, a spirited exchange between lexicographer J.A.H. Murray and anthropologist E.B. Tylor graced the pages of periodical The Academy. It concerned the origins of the term couvade, popularised by Tylor in 1865. Tylor proposed that couvade, or "hatching" was "an existing European name," which could be productively applied to a range of practices surrounding childbirth, including dietary and hunting restrictions, and so called "male lying-in," primarily in South America and the West Indies. The debate between Tylor and Murray includes the diverse way points of a medieval French sung story, or chantefable, a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century comic poem about childbirth, and Max Müller’s review of Tylor's 1865 work, translated into French. It concerned what could count as evidence and witnessing amidst the protracted movement and traffic of language across the channel. "People who want words will make them in their own way," Tylor told Murray. By the time they were engaged in this public debate, Tylor had already made couvade in a graphic register, using his ‘social arithmetic’ to quantify marriage and childbirth customs, presenting couvade as occurring midway in the supposed evolution from matriarchy to patriarchy. The exchange between Tylor and Murray, the Scottish editor of what would become the Oxford English Dictionary, in some ways represents a latent critique of armchair anthropology, and brings to the fore many themes that remain salient for contemporary anthropologists. Chief among them are: creative inferences in science, authority and referencing, evidence, translation, and disciplinary boundaries.