Meaning and poetic qualities in Hopi personal names

A name tells us who someone is. Is that all it does?

The first paragraph presents two influential ways of understanding names. For Mill, a name is a label that distinguishes one person from another. In that respect, an identifying number could do a similar job. Lévi-Strauss emphasizes social classification: a name can locate a person within a social group or category. A surname identifying an occupation would be an example of that function.

Those are real uses of names. The question is whether they exhaust what names communicate. “Semantic content” concerns meaning; we shouldn't confuse it with a sentimental story about why a parent liked a particular name. The writer thinks these influential accounts have encouraged people to overlook names whose content does more than identify or classify.

The Hopi example is meant to show what is missing. Their names can refer to historical or ritual events, locate people socially, confer identity, and evoke images with a poetic quality. That's a lot to claim at once. I'd like an example that makes the meaning visible.

Paragraph 2 starts with the naming practices. A person receives several names through ritual occasions at different stages of life. The name giver is an adult from a different clan, and the name refers to the giver's clan. Keep the two people and two clans straight. The name isn't necessarily a straightforward label for the recipient's own clan.

“Little rabbit” gives us an easy case: the child's size combines with the representative animal of the name giver's clan. We can see meaningful content rather than an arbitrary identifying mark.

The next example is harder. Lomayayva belongs to the Lizard clan and lives in Oraibi, but the name translates as “beautifully ascended.” What ascended? And where is the clan reference? The words alone don't answer either question.

Now the necessary context arrives. The name giver belongs to Badger clan, which is responsible for a ceremony in which masked representations of spirits climb the mesa supporting Oraibi. The ascent connects the giver's clan activity with the recipient's home village. The name evokes the procession's colors and movement.

So we shouldn't insist that the name literally contain the word badger. It can refer to the clan through an event associated with it. Nor should we search for a lizard simply because that is the recipient's clan. Understanding who gave the name and what the ceremony involves unlocks the reference.

Why call this poetic? Having some meaning doesn't automatically make every phrase a poem. The feature the writer emphasizes is a condensed image: a few words evoke a vivid scene. The comparison with Western Apache place names, described as “tiny imagist poems,” gives us a way to understand that quality. It isn't a claim that Hopi names must have the length, rhyme, or layout of a written poem.

The ending combines the functions rather than forcing a choice among them. Hopi names do distinguish people and indicate social relationships. But they also operate as oral texts that can give aesthetic pleasure. Being useful doesn't prevent a name from being meaningful and beautiful.

That gives us a more precise main point than simply saying the European accounts are too narrow. What do they miss? The poetic quality illustrated by the Hopi names. The final sentence also explains why a literal translation may be insufficient: interpreting their beauty and significance requires knowledge of clan structures and linguistic practices.