Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

126 Forbidden Words
In the early twentieth century, Frazer wrote (in terms that would no longer be
acceptable):
Unable to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly
fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is
not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond which
unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily
through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of his
person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself and
takes care of it accordingly. (Frazer 1911: 318)
Personal names may be used by a few intimates, but are not given out to the
general public. This is true even today for the Gullah-speaking African
Americans who live on the Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina,
USA. 2 In parts of Papua New Guinea,
[t]o say a tabooed name is to assault the owner of the name, and requires sanctions to
be brought against the offender. Punishment for violation of a taboo can be in the
form of religious propitiation of an offended spirit, payment of goods to an offended
party, exchange of goods to restore harmony between the guilty and the injured.
Breaking the taboo can lead to death by murder, or suicide due to shame. An old man
in Waritsian village in the Amari dialect area of Adzera told me that his father had
broken a very strong name taboo in front of his father-in-law. The shame caused him
to run off into the mountains where enemy groups lived; he deliberately put himself
in their way and was killed. (Holzknecht 1988: 45)
As we have said, the name was often believed to capture the very essence of a
person, so that ‘he who possessed the true name possessed the very being of
god or man, and could force even a deity to obey him as a slave obeys his
master’. 3 In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis gained power over the sun god
Re (or Ra) because she persuaded him to divulge his name. In the European
folktales about the evil Rumpelstiltskin, 4 the discovery of the villain’s name
destroyed his power. In some societies, it is acceptable to know a personal
name provided the name is never spoken (perhaps for fear of evil spirits
overhearing). In others, the name can never be uttered by its bearer, but is
freely used by others. In many Austronesian societies, the names of affines
and some cross-kin may not be used. 5 In some, no two people may bear the
same name: ‘I know one example of a child’s name that had to be changed
because an old woman came down from the mountains to a refugee settlement
and this child had the same name as hers.’ 6 Not only are personal names
tabooed; for the same reasons, in some societies, the names of communities
were not divulged to strangers.
What applies to the names and naming of ordinary folk applies a fortiori
to rulers and to gods, because any threat to their power endangers the
entire society they dominate. Taboos on the names of gods seek to avoid