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- Convenors:
-
Bree Blakeman
(Australian National University)
Frances Morphy (The Australian National University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Piers Kelly
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Vitality
- Location:
- WPE Paraparap
- Sessions:
- Friday 25 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
Naming systems and naming practices are deeply embedded within broader cultural systems and yet the study of personal names has largely remained the domain of onomastics. This panel seeks to give life to this much-understudied field in anthropology.
Long Abstract:
Names mark out individuals, they classify people into pre-existing groups, and they are used as tools in social interaction. They are also far more than their indexical or pragmatic functions. Naming systems and naming practices are deeply embedded within broader cultural systems: they are anchored in cultural theories of creation and being, they offer insights into the way personhood is conceived, and they are inextricably linked to social structures and relations of power.
Alford's (1998) large scale cross-cultural study failed to find a cultural group that did not use personal names and yet the study of personal names has largely remained the domain of onomastics. This panel seeks to give life to this much-understudied field in anthropology.
We invite papers on personal names from all regions and cultural groups. We recognise that personal names are not synonymous with terms of reference or terms of address so we also welcome papers that explore the latter in cases where they are used as substitutes for personal names.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 24 November, 2022, -Bree Blakeman (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will review the literature on First Nations' personal names in Australia drawing out the key themes in this writing. I will then situate the Yolŋu naming system within this literature highlighting similarities and differences in origin, use, meaning and significance.
Paper long abstract:
There has been little written about First Nations' personal names in Australia. This is attributed to the sacred nature of names, the fact that they are often not used as terms of address, and bias in research. This paper will review the literature on First Nations personal names in Australia (Stanner 1937; Thomson 1946, Dussart 1988, McIntosh 2004, Barber 2005, Tamisari 2009, Wilkinson et al. 2009, Bradley & Kearney 2009, Garde 2014) drawing out the key themes in this writing. I will then situate the Yolŋu naming system within this literature highlighting similarities and differences in origin, use, meaning and significance.
Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Marcel Mauss used Arandic ancestral names to trace the development of the concept of person from an agentless "personnage". Exploring the dynamic landscape of Lander Warlpiri naming practices, my paper reexamines the issue of how naming practices relate to the cultural construction of the person.
Paper long abstract:
In his seminal article on the concept of person, Marcel Mauss (1985) used data on the Arandic system of naming to trace the development of the concept from its historical beginnings. He viewed the Aranda “personage” as inhabiting an agentless and inherited role associated with a set of rights and duties that socially subsumed the individual, whose identity was fixed by ancestral name. Since Mauss formulated these ideas, anthropological interest in personal names has increased beyond the use of personal names to denote or classify persons or things in the world. For example, scholars have addressed the multiple functions and evocative nature of names in discourse (for example, Basso, 1988, Silverstein, 1976, 1981, Wagner, 1986, Sansom, 1988). Yet, the question of how personal naming practices relate to the cultural construction of the person in Aboriginal societies has received little attention. My paper explores the dynamic landscape of Lander Warlpiri personal names and naming practices in relation to this issue. Discussing examples of the meanings, use and the giving of names—including gendered “bush” or Dreaming names, nicknames, names acquired at different stages of life, European surnames, Christian names and “no-name”—I trace shifts and continuities in Warlpiri naming processes over time and show how they reveal differing and entangled notions of personhood. Finally, I describe how Lander Warlpiri people’s engagement in a cultural mapping project has revitalized interest in the power of names to relate people to places and potentiate embodied social and property relations.
Harry Walker (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Paper short abstract:
Names are properties of the other for Amazonian Urarina: impositions from without to be endured or ignored. National identity cards work in similar ways, facilitating forms of recognition that are at once desired and dangerous, which helps to explain the ambivalent local meanings of ‘citizenship’.
Paper long abstract:
Naming can be a fraught political and ethical practice for the Urarina people of Amazonian Peru. The various types of names in use all work to stabilize personal identity, but are typically properties of the other, rather than the self. Thought to be materialized in the form of tiny, invisible darts bestowed by shamans in infancy, “true” personal names are widely seen as necessary impositions, or even intrusions, to be endured and, where possible, ignored. This colours Urarina peoples’ quests to obtain identity documents, widely seen as crucial tools in their struggle for recognition as Peruvian citizens with legitimate claims to state resources. Identity cards objectify people in similar ways, facilitating forms of recognition that are both desired and dangerous, mediating the relationship between individuals and the state. Both names and cards objectify and interpellate individuals in order to make them legible to authority, while opening up new possibilities for action. Yet people also find ways of undermining the effectiveness of this process, subverting the power of names to freeze identities in place. Transformations of onomastics thus constitutes a useful starting point for assessing the ambivalent meanings of ‘citizenship’ for indigenous peoples in the region, and its articulation with local frameworks of value.
Frances Morphy (The Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Ancestral beings form Yolŋu Country through the act of naming. In an analogue of ancestral action, relatives 'place' names from Country onto infants. Thus persons are constituted through names, while Country is continually renamed and reconstituted through intergenerational networks of persons.
Paper long abstract:
In Yolngu ontology, ancestral beings are not so much creators as namers: they give form and meaning to Country through naming it and the things that they find there – flora, fauna, winds, weather and clouds, and in the case of sea Country, currents, waveforms and underwater features. They put people into Country – or find them there – and give them language and law, to become rirrakay yirralka 'the voice of Country'. Country and its associated names, in their thousands, are voiced through the song cycles of Yolŋu ceremony, and personal names are, in turn, drawn from this stock of names. In an analogue of ancestral action, particular adult relatives of a child 'place' or 'put' names onto them, giving them form as Yolngu persons who are at once unique (in terms of the set of names that each person 'stands with'), but also inextricably woven into the social and spiritual fabric of Yolngu life. The paper will briefly outline the enduring features of the Yolngu 'system' that structure the placing of names onto people. It will argue that this particular way of naming has powerful recursive properties: while persons are constituted through their names, Country is also continually renamed and reconstituted through intergenerational networks of persons.
Neerja Pathak (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
A Sindhi/ Marathi bride in India is ritually married to a groom and as part of the rituals her first name is replaced by a new name by the groom- changing her first, middle and last names. I explore what it means to be named from the experiences of women in a heteronormative gender context.
Paper long abstract:
The question that I intend to deal with in this paper is to understand what it means to be named by someone. As argued by Lambek (2006), our names are largely bestowed upon us by others and that they say something about the name-giver. In this paper, I try to capture this moment of bestowal and what it does or does not do to the one named. I raise this in the context of the first name change practice of women at marriage amongst the Sindhis and Marathi Brahmins, where the groom re-names his bride as part of the marriage rituals. The name, then is legally recognised and the bride is thereby known as her new name, leaving behind her old name and perhaps a part of her older self. I zoom in in this moment and draw from my ethnography with the two communities in Vadodara to navigate through the name narratives of these women. From the choice of a new name by her husband, to her consent (or absence of that) to it, these narratives are rich in their complexities and indicate the various manifestations of gender power relations in an aspect as everyday as names. Names here not only behave as portals to enter a new phase for women but also as words loaded with expectations and frameworks on which she must stand tall. My aim then is to materialise these stories on paper and bring forth names (dis)continued, and yet dear to my participants.