Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 “Entangled in Histories”: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Names and Naming
- 2 “Your Child Deserves a Name”: Possessive Individualism and the Politics of Memory in Pregnancy Loss
- 3 Why the Dead Do Not Bear Names: The Orokaiva Name System
- 4 The Substance of Northwest Amazonian Names
- 5 Teknonymy and the Evocation of the “Social” Among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar
- 6 What's in a Name? Name Bestowal and the Identity of Spirits in Mayotte and Northwest Madagascar
- 7 Calling into Being: Naming and Speaking Names on Alaska's North Slope
- 8 On Being Named and Not Named: Authority, Persons, and Their Names in Mongolia
- 9 Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation
- 10 Where Names Fall Short: Names as Performances in Contemporary Urban South Africa
- 11 Names as Bodily Signs
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - On Being Named and Not Named: Authority, Persons, and Their Names in Mongolia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 “Entangled in Histories”: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Names and Naming
- 2 “Your Child Deserves a Name”: Possessive Individualism and the Politics of Memory in Pregnancy Loss
- 3 Why the Dead Do Not Bear Names: The Orokaiva Name System
- 4 The Substance of Northwest Amazonian Names
- 5 Teknonymy and the Evocation of the “Social” Among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar
- 6 What's in a Name? Name Bestowal and the Identity of Spirits in Mayotte and Northwest Madagascar
- 7 Calling into Being: Naming and Speaking Names on Alaska's North Slope
- 8 On Being Named and Not Named: Authority, Persons, and Their Names in Mongolia
- 9 Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation
- 10 Where Names Fall Short: Names as Performances in Contemporary Urban South Africa
- 11 Names as Bodily Signs
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Anthropologists often examine naming systems in relation to building the social, naming as a way of making connections between groups. The relation between individual persons and their names is less often studied and it is this that I shall focus on here. A moment's consideration of ethnography reveals that we are not dealing with “a relation” but with a triangulation, that is, the complex field of interactive practices between those who confer and use a name, the person named, and the connotations of name itself. The literature on naming is in broad general agreement that conferring a name (on someone or something) is a performative act that involves a subject-constituting power and takes place within a wider field of conventions and ideological relations (Austin 1962; Bourdieu 1993; Hanks 1993). One might infer that the subsequent speaking out of this name simply partakes in the authoritative aura of this initial act of definition (Althusser 1971). Yet, as the Mongolian case shows, the practices of name-usage are situational, creative and playful. Located within the triangulation just mentioned we find situations of avoidance of naming, of disguise, mimesis, emulation, mockery, and self-protection, in which particular instances throw into sharp relief the relations between the self, one's name, and the external “society” of others.
This chapter seeks to illuminate the processes whereby names have an active presence for persons' sense of selfhood.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Anthropology of Names and Naming , pp. 157 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006