The anthropological study of personal names (or anthroponyms), ethnonyms and toponyms aroused little interest before the 1960s. This field seemed of secondary importance when compared with themes such as kinship, social organization and religion. Several pioneers of anthropology had indeed studied certain aspects of it. L.H. Morgan, for example had investigated the use of personal names among Native Americans, B. Malinowski had examined cosmology and reincarnation among the Tro-brianders, and M. Mauss had compared the notion of person and ‘self’ amongst various indigenous peoples (in Carrithers et al. 1985), and there were many others. It was not until the publication of Levi-Strauss’s Savage Mind (1966 [1962]), however, that the importance of a comparative theoretical study of the classifica-tory functions of personal names, as a point of intersection between the social and the religious, became apparent.
Research and reflection on this subject has increased since then, as is evidenced by the number of seminars, symposia and publications which have been devoted to it. Nevertheless the subject is no easier to study in the field, because it requires a good knowledge of the language and the local culture studied, and also because it is often the case that personal names are not used outside specific social contexts. Although there is no standard methodology for this kind of enquiry, a good inventory of personal names and of naming processes should be made in the initial stages of all social anthropological field-work, because it enables one to perceive a group’s social and symbolic relationships with others in time and space. Combined with the study of genealogies and systems of naming/ reference, such an inventory permits a more general investigation of all aspects of social and religious life.
The success of studies carried out using this perspective, in non-Western as well as Western societies, allows us to predict interesting future developments in this field. For instance, C.J. Crocker and several other specialists on Amazonia have been able to show that clan membership among certain groups was based on a stock of shared names rather than on unilineal descent groups, and that the system of names and the system of descent reinforced one another (Tooker and Conklin 1984). Among Inuit, Guemple and Saladin d’Anglure have demonstrated how names noticeably affect the use of kinship terms and the conduct associated with them due to the identical nature of homonyms (Mills and Slobodin 1994). In Southeast Asia, a substantial secondary literature has developed on the implications of teknonyms (e.g. father of Clifford’, ”mother of Hildred’) and birth-order names, both for systems of kinship and concepts of personhood (Geertz and Geertz 1964). Names of persons, like names of groups and places, are used in all known societies to define a group’s identity, while also demarcating its otherness, i.e. the boundary separating it from other groups.
All these systems also bear the mark of dia-chrony. In the absence of descendants personal names can be lost, while others are introduced, often the nicknames of deceased ancestors. Clans can merge, clan names become tribal names, whereas others may disappear for demographic reasons. Toponymy also bears the mark of history, event and individuals.
If the attribution of personal names has been recorded in all known human societies, and thus considered as a universal by G.P. Murdock, the nature and forms of naming processes are extremely varied across the world, as shown by Alford’s (1988) comparative study in the Human Relations Area Files. Alford distinguished four aspects of ‘naming’, the first of which is the initial naming process, usually taking place at birth, and sometimes having a provisional or private character (the ‘umbilical name’ described by Levi-Strauss would fall into this category, as would the provisional name given by the midwife in some Amazonian groups). The second aspect is the way in which personal names individualize and classify people. Names can be chosen to match the child’s sex, birth rank or clan. They can create a bond of homonymy or have a sacred character. Third, there are changes of name — nicknames as well as new names given after birth, during the main transitions in the life cycle, during an illness, or after an exploit. The final aspect mentioned by Alford is the use or non-use of names and role terms: avoidance of a name, symmetrical or asymmetrical usage for certain relations, and a distinction between usage in address and usage in reference. This work far from exhausts the subtlety of the classificatory or religious functions of personal names; its objective — the quantification of selected traits present in diverse monographs and articles, restricts its field, mainly due to the absence of a standard methodology of data collection.
On the other hand, to approach naming systems using the concept of ‘reincarnation’ (Mills and Slobodin 1994) as happens customarily in religious studies, is to run another risk, namely that of attaching greater importance to the content of the belief than to its social construction. In fact, conceptions of the person, of identity and of the psychic principle associated with the name, in societies such as those of the Amerindians and the Inuit, are so polymorphous and different from what we usually understand by the term ‘reincarnation’, that there is a danger of a certain reductionism. Fruitful debates are still possible, however, on this central theme of social life, its practices and its representations.
