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.