Re: OT: Anthroponymics

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@B...>
> wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, 20:01 CEST, Tom H. Chappell wrote
> > Gatewood is a famous example of a person who had no
> > personal name.
> When did he live? Reminds me a bit of the Doctor in the
> Startrek: Voyager series.
I haven't been able to find him on-line nor in the Wikipedia.

IIRC he was discussed in a Reader's Digest article about this topic,
although I can't remember what R.D. called this topic (I doubt it was
anthroponymics or onomastics), nor the title nor date of the article.
(Sorry -- my usual bibliographic reliability strikes again.)

However I have the impression he was an early-XXth to mid-early-XXth
person; although he may have been late-late-XIXth.  Really, I'd have
to find the article again.  I assume there's a way to do that, and I
just haven't found out what it is.

> [snip]
> accordingly. I'd prefer Ingolfsson. BTW, how were Irish and
> Scottish women called if "O'" and "Mac" mean "son of"?
"O'" meant "grandson of"; and "Ni" (daughter of) was what women were
(usually?) called.

Someone else has replied to this better than I can.

> [snip]
> OBConlang: Are there special naming patterns in your
> conlangs? My Ayeri people go by happily with [family name]
> [first name(s)].
-----

BTW I understand that *here* Jewish families are not allowed to name
their children after living relatives.
(I propose such a limitation in my conlang, if I ever get it off the
ground.)

A Jewish father I spoke with said, in addition, they /must/ name
their children after a /deceased/ relative -- but simply using the
same first letter can count as "named after".
(This requirement seems a little too much for me.)

-----

Also, there are mostly-Christian or Christian-dominated countries in
which, if a child is born on a particular saint's day, it is
considerered, not so much bad luck as denying the child good luck to
which he or she is entitled, to not name the child after that saint.

This fits in with some other cultures' naming systems in which a
child's name always includes the name of the day (of the week,
maybe?) on which the child was born.  Such a system, of course, would
tie your conlang's calendrical system to its anthroponymic system.

-----

Ancient Roman, and modern Asian (at least, East Asian -- at least,
South East Asian) families have a system of generational names.

For instance, in some Ancient Roman families, there were only two or
three names which the heir could ever be named; these were used in
rotation.  It might be, e.g., that Marcus's first-born son was always
named Lucius, and Lucius's first-born son was always named Marcus, in
one of these families.

Non-first-born sons were numbered instead of named.

Daughters weren't even numbered; they had only their family name
until they were married; after marriage, their "maiden" name was
their name within their new family; while the combination of "maiden"
name with husband's-family-name was their name for public purposes.

E.g. if Julius had two daughters, they were both "Julia" until one of
them married; if they had to both be discussed at the same time, they
might be distinguished as "Julia major" and "Julia minor", or
as "Julia" and "Julilla".

Once a married woman became the mother of a son or sons who became
known outside her home, she might gain a teknonymic name.

E.g. when Cornelius's daughter (Cornelia) married into the Gracchus
family, and became the mother of two famous sons, she was "Cornelia
the mother of the Gracchi".

-----

Some cultures name a child after their birth-order and their birth-
day.  Kind of combines the "saint's day" approach with the Ancient
Roman "hell, just number 'em" approach.

-----

As for the Asian system:

I have a friend named Chang Wan-Ling ("myriad jewels") who had an
ancestor who wrote an eight-word poem.  All of Wan-Ling's brothers
and sisters have personal names beginning with the syllable Wan
("myriad"); two of her brothers, for instance, are Wan-An (?) and Wan-
Jing ("myriad armies").

Her brother's children all have names beginning with "Ho", as for
instance my "god-daughter" (her niece) Chang Ho-Ming.  (My actual god-
daughter, Wan-Ling's daughter, is not part of that system because her
family name is not Chang.)

"Ho" is the next word in the poem after "Wan".  Each generation of
Changs receives the next word in the poem as part of their personal
name; when they get to the end, they start over.

"Allison Wu", a different Chinese friend of mine, explained that this
means that if any Chang (or, in Allison's case, any Wu) meets another
Chang from the same county, they can instantly tell what their
relationship is just by hearing one another's names.

I can't remember the URL; but, in some Asian countries, one Asian
content-provider said, the generational morpheme alternates in
placement with the variable component.  If, for instance, a family
had just three (rare outside of Ancient Rome, apparently) generation-
names -- say, for lack of creativity's sake, "A", "B", and "C" --
then this could last for six, instead of three, generations, in one
of these countries.

The first generation would all be Smith A-x, where x is variable and
individual;
the second would all be Smith x-B;
the third would all be Smith C-x;
the fourth would all be Smith x-A;
the fifth would all be Smith B-x;
the sixth would all be Smith x-C;
and the seventh, like the first, would all be Smith A-x again.

If they had five names in the cycle instead of three, it could last
ten generations instead of six; etc.

This system seems a good way to have both the "not after a living
relative" and "must be after a dead relative" requirements, provided
there are enough names in the cycle.  Four would be minimum; more
than eleven would never be required.

-----

It also appears that in some Asian countries it is the grandparents,
rather than the parents, who name the child.

It is a cross-culturally common custom to designate back-up parents
for children, early in the child's life -- at christening or baptism,
e.g., for Christian families.

Biologically, the most common back-up parents (for non-humans, at
least) are;
siblings and half-siblings of a parent of the child;
a parent of a parent of the child;
siblings and half-siblings of the child.

It seems reasonable that any such back-up parent should be allowed to
provide a (not necessarily "the") name for the child.

In my conculture, if I ever get it ready for publication, I am
considering having all persons who have at least one-eighth of their
variable genes in common with the child -- (which will include all of
the above categories) -- and who are "of age" at the time the child
is (whatever my concultural equivalent for "christened" will be),
will stand forth and vow to be a "back-up parent" for the child, at
the same time providing the child with one name.

(BTW That will mean a person with lots and lots of names is probably
dangerous to be mortally unjust toward.)

-----

Their are sociologically (anthropologically?) three different stable
systems of Unilineal Descent Groups.

In one system (patriclans or patrilines?) every person belongs to the
same U.D.Group his or her father belonged(belongs) to.

In another system (matriclans or matrilines?) every person belongs to
the same U.D.G. his or her mother belongs (or belonged) to.

In the third system, called "the Rope" among some of the Pacific
Island cultures that use it, every person belongs to the same U.D.G.
the parent of the opposite sex belonged to -- boys inherit membership
from their mothers, while girls inherit membership from their fathers.

The "fourth system" -- everyone inheriting from the parent of the
same sex -- is (said by experts to be) unstable; however, I
personally do not know whether it is unstable for statistical
reasons, for group-theoretic reasons, for other mathematical reasons,
for biological reasons, or for sociological and anthropological
reasons.

At any rate, each of the above systems is attested.  Not only that,
but many cultures use both of two systems in parallel; for instance,
some cultures have both patriclans and matriclans.

I plan on having all three systems.  Thus a person is born with
three "family names"; the name of his/her patriclan, the name of
his/her matriclan, and the name of his/her "rope".

--

People typically feel a loyalty to any U.D.G. a parent belonged to,
even if they did not inherit membership in that group.  For instance,
if my mother's maiden name had been Gardner, I would feel a loyalty
to the Gardner patriclan.

I plan, in my conlang, to have people, on legal documents, or when
formally introduced, to list the U.D.G.s to which their parents
belonged, as well as their own.

--

If their are only three U.D.G.s of each type -- three patriclans,
three matriclans, and three "ropes" -- and nobody can marry anyone
who belongs to any of the same U.D.G.s as any of his or her own
parents, or, to put it differently, no-one can acquire a parent-in-
law within any of his or her own U.D.G.s -- then the result is a
Prescriptive Marriage System, in which a man must marry a girl who is
(classified with) his Mother's Father's Mother's Brother's Daughter's
Son's Daughter.

About that "classification".  Listing your own and your parents' UDGs
will tell you your marriage-class, your "skin", as some Australian
languages call it.  There will be 216 skins; 108 for men and 108 for
women.  Two persons belonging to the same "skin" will have "the same"
relationship to you.  In particular, in the Prescriptive Marriage
System discussed above, a man's Mother's Brother's Wife's Brother and
his Wife's Father's Wife's Brother will always belong to the
same "skin".

Prescriptive Marriage Systems are a kind of Classificatory Kinship
System.  Classificatory Kinship Systems are a kind of kinship system
in which any male relative's brother is called by the same kin-term
as that male relative; and any female relative's sister is called by
the same kin-term as that female relative.  In Classificatory Kinship
Systems, no distinction is made between younger brother and older
brother; nor between full-brother, half-brother, and step-brother;
nor between brother and Father's Brother's Son and Mother's Sister's
Son.

Of course, in real-life C.K.S.'s, there are modifiers to the kinship
terms that can distinguish, in ordinary conversation, whether
the "Father" you are talking about is what someone in a different
culture would also call your "Father"; or one of your father's
brothers; or one of your mother's sisters' husbands; or one of your
father's father's brothers' sons or father's mother's sisters' sons;
etc.

-----

Well, that's nearly a complete answer to what general kind of naming
conventions my eventual conlang might use; I've also distinguished
between those I've already decided on, and those I'm just considering.

It pretty much amounts to this;
1. What was your birth-order?
2. When was your birth-day?
3. What three U.D.G.s do you belong to -- patriclan,
matriclan, "rope"?
4. What three U.D.G.s did your parents belong to?
5. What were your parents' answers to questions 1. and 2.? (Thus
giving a patronymic and a matronymic.)
6. Each U.D.G. may have a separate list of "generation names" -- not
necessarily the same length of list for any two of them.  Which
generation do you belong to, of each U.D.G.?

The above 6 rules will give each person 15 names to be his or
her "nomen";

Own birth-order (so twins won't have the same name)
Own birth-day
Own patriclan name
Own patriclan generation-designator
Own matriclan name
Own matriclan generation-designator
Own "rope" name
Own "rope" generation-designator
Father's birth-order
Father's birth-day
Father's matriclan name
Mother's birth-order
Mother's birth-day
Mother's patriclan name
Father's "rope" name for a man, Mother's "rope" name for a woman

7. Each individual will also have at least one personal "cognomen"
or "agnomen".  Every "godparent" of each child will give him or her
one "cognomen".

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And, if that still doesn't specify who you mean, give their address
and occupation (and university degree, if any) as well.
Honest, that really ought to pin them down.

----------

Tom H.C. in MI

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