This article explores issues related to names throughout the world: name-giving, avoidance of names, changing name, gendering, women issues, nomenclature, family names... For reasons of size, I split it into three parts.

To Give A Name

Western cultures hardly ever have a special event to mark the giving of a name, except when a saint's name is given during Christening, in the Catholic tradition. Other cultures grant more importance to names – to the Delaware one's true name is a sacred gift, and only visionary name-givers can give it. Shawnee name-givers ponder a name during a night wake and each of them offers a name to the parents, so they have two choices for their child.
In Hawaii it is the whole family that participates in the name giving. It is usually based on special events or people or places, but it can come "from heaven": in a dream, through a sign or a voice. In Samoa, the parents don't name their offspring: the grandparents handle this at a family gathering. This reflects an ideology where the grandparents are considered better suited to raise children than their young parents.
The midwife gives Akan children akeradini-name at birth, based on a day of the week. The second part is chosen by their father and given on the 7th morning after the birth.
The people of the Truk island make no ceremony about naming a child, but the name itself is carefully chosen. It is a specialist name (each clan is specialized in something such as sailing or war) chosen by the members of the mother's clan, and expressing what the child is to become. The child can pick another one later on.

In cultures that take names' meanings into consideration their meaning, the names are based on events surrounding birth, people, sacred places, and animals (this deserves a deeper study, but in another article). Christians however are doing the same when they name a child after a saint or a feast that happened around the day of birth (like in Spain Anunciación, Asunción), and so are Muslims (Ramadan, Ashur). Muslims may not have "saints" per se, but naming children after religious figures occurs as commonly as in any other religion.
Christians may hesitate to name their children Jesus (although the Hispanic have no qualms about it), but Muslims have no problem with his name or Muhammad's – which, if we count its many derivatives, is the most overwhelmingly popular name on the planet. While Hawai'ians would never do such a thing as give the unchanged name of a god to a child (saints do play the part that the old gods did), Orthodox Hindus directly name their children for incarnations of divine beings. Sometimes their second name has the meaning of "spouse" or "offspring" to create a close relationship between it and the deity. These god-names can be replaced by names of holy places or planets and signs. Sometimes, the two names are that of a goddess and her spouse, always in this order.

Many names evoke the qualities or beauty that the parents hope to see develop in the child. The Japanese give their child a balancing name: if it's too noisy, a name evoking calm, if it eats too much, one that evokes moderation. The Delaware do the total opposite -- they never try to use names to change their children.

Often a name is ordinal (reflecting the order of birth), and even more often it is determined by the day of birth, whether on a weekly or monthly cycle. Burma has a very interesting custom; the name's initial is determined by the day on which the baby is born. Some days are believed incompatible, so that people born on them cannot get married for fear of an unhappy marriage, and you'll never find a K husband with an H wife. I suspect this custom to have been designed as a way of instantly knowing if a person is compatible with you or not. Similarly, the Koreans shy away from people bearing the same family name – marriage can absolutely not occur between them, which can be problematic in the case of Kim and Park: these two last names make up over half of the population.

In Europe and many African countries, alliterations (Milly and Mary, Robert and Herbert) are a favorite way of marking the birth of twins. Twins get special names in Sesotho. Other special cases in this country are a daughter that comes after many sons, or a son after many daughters. The ideal family being half boys and half girls, a girl arrived at long last is called Ntzwaki (the mixer), a boy Modise (herdsman) or Mojafela (inheritor). Special names among the Yoruba reflect unusual births or the reincarnation of a deceased family member.

In some countries first sons form a "line" of alternating names, as each of them is named after their father's father. Sometimes there is not even an alternation and all first sons bear the same name. This transmission of name is probably the same mechanism that turned family names into what they are now, from the nicknames they used to be. In Greece, the first son is almost always named after the father's father, and the second after the mother's father; the same thing occurs with daughters and their grandmothers. This contrasts greatly with cultures who refuse to grant names of deceased relatives, or even living ones, or even a used name at all.

Name Avoidance

Westerners, who have all but lost the notion of the power of names (not to mention spirit evocation), may find the notion of name avoidance a very alien one. Yet it is very widespread, with different degrees of avoidance. If you say Rest In Peace when mentioning a deceased person, you are practicing a remains of this old custom. Arab-speaking people do not avoid names, but they will not mention a dead acquaintance without adding "May God honor him/her". Whether it's to protect the dead person or the speaker, I couldn't say.

Among the Choctaw a dead family member is never called by name. One will also, when possible, avoid using his or her name, and a wife will mention her husband by "father of so-and-so". The Delaware similarly refer to their children by their birth order to avoid disclosing their true names, which are too powerful to be mentioned outside the family. The Delaware, like the Shawnee, do not reuse names, certainly not dead people's. The name and the person are one, and the name is buried with them. Australian aborigines take it even more seriously: when a member of band dies, anyone bearing a similar name will use a conventional avoidance name so as not to call up grief or the angry spirit. But also, any vocabulary word reflecting the name needs to be changed for many years.

Yiddish-speaking Jews (the Ashkenazim), on the other hand, don't mind naming someone after a dead relative. However, they don't name children after a living older relative for the simple reason that the angel of Death, when coming to take the elder, may make a mistake. People who marry into the family may need to change their names to be safeguarded from this threat.

In Vietnam the belief in the power of names is such that a person's true name is not used even within their family. Nicknames or pseudonyms are used, the latter being the name of the person's shop, business, status etc. You could be called Mr. McDonald to protect your name. All scholars publish under pseudonyms, and deceased people get a posthumous new name. If a word used in the name of a family member comes up during conversation, it will be avoided by using a synonym or, if it's not possible to use a substitute, the word is mispronounced in order to respect the name bearer.

Similarly, Hawaiian high nobles had names too powerful to be used outside the immediate family. They had a public name for other uses, and sometimes also an honorific one denoting their public image. Tahitians beat the record by requiring that syllables used in the name of a great noble must not be used in everyday languages, so that many words must be borrowed or invented. The names lose their meaning then, becoming noble sounds instead of words.

The reverse can happen: some words can be banned from being included in a name. Early Indians considered it primitive and a bad influence on women to call a girl after "a constellation, a tree, river, mountain, bird, servant or terror". The Prophet Muhammad also forbade his followers to use unworthy names such as War or Dog. In a similar line, I am certain that generations of post-WWII Westerners have banned the name Adolf from their lists of choices.

Article © Joumana Medlej.