The Anthropology of Names and Naming

Contents (v)......Page 5
Contributors (vii)......Page 7
Preface and Acknowledgments (xi)......Page 10
1. "Entangled in Histories": An Introduction to the Anthropology of Names and Naming (1)......Page 12
2. “Your Child Deserves a Name”: Possessive Individualism and the Politics of Memory in Pregnancy Loss (31)......Page 42
3. Why the Dead Do Not Bear Names: The Orokaiva Name System (51)......Page 62
4. The Substance of Northwest Amazonian Names (73)......Page 84
5. Teknonymy and the Evocation of the “Social” Among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar (97)......Page 108
6. What’s in a Name? Name Bestowal and the Identity of Spirits in Mayotte and Northwest Madagascar (115)......Page 126
7. Calling into Being: Naming and Speaking Names on Alaska’s North Slope (139)......Page 150
8. On Being Named and Not Named: Authority, Persons, and Their Names in Mongolia (157)......Page 168
9. Injurious Names: Naming, Disavowal, and Recuperation in Contexts of Slavery and Emancipation (177)......Page 188
10. Where Names Fall Short: Names as Performances in Contemporary Urban South Africa (200)......Page 211
11. Names as Bodily Signs (225)......Page 236
Bibliography (251)......Page 262
Index (271)......Page 282