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Title The anthropology of names and naming / edited by Gabriele vom Bruck, Barbara Bodenhorn
Published Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 290 pages)
Contents "Entangled in histories" : an introduction to the anthropology of names and naming / Barbara Bodenhorn and Gabriele vom Bruck -- "Your child deserves a name" : possessive individualism and the politics of memory in pregnancy loss / Linda Layne -- Why the dead do not bear names : the Orokaiva name system / André Iteanu -- The substance of northwest Amazonian names / Stephen Hugh-Jones -- Teknonymy and the evocation of the "social" among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar / Maurice Bloch -- What's in a name? : name bestowal and the identity of spirits in Mayotte and northwest Madagascar / Michael Lambek -- Calling into being : naming and speaking names on Alaska's north slope / Barbara Bodenhorn -- On being named and not named : authority, persons, and their names in Mongolia / Caroline Humphrey -- Injurious names : naming, disavowal, and recuperation in contexts of slavery and emancipation / Susan Benson -- Where names fall short : names as performances in contemporary urban South Africa / Thomas Blom Hansen -- Names as bodily signs / Gabriele vom Bruck
Summary This book is about personal names, something of abiding interest to specialists and lay readers alike. Over a million people have checked the American Name Society website since 1996, for instance. Many philosophers and linguists suggest that names are 'just' labels, but parents internationally are determined to get their children's names 'right'. Personal names may be given, lost, traded, stolen and inherited. This collection of essays provides comparative ethnography through which we examine the politics of naming; the extent to which names may be property-like; and the power of names themselves, both to fix and to destabilize personal identity. Our purpose is not only to renew anthropological attention to names and naming, but to show how this intersects with current interests in political processes, the relation between bodies and personal identities, ritual and daily social life
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-269) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Anthropology.
Names, Personal -- Social aspects
Names, Personal.
Anthropology
anthropology.
REFERENCE -- Genealogy & Heraldry.
Anthropology.
Names, Personal -- Social aspects.
Personenname
Anthropologie
Naamgeving.
Antropologische aspecten.
Identité.
Noms de personnes -- Anthropologie.
Genre/Form Conference papers and proceedings.
Form Electronic book
Author Vom Bruck, Gabriele
Bodenhorn, Barbara, 1946-
LC no. 2005019527
ISBN 0511168667
9780511168666
0511169094
9780511169090
9780511499630
0511499639
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9781280449345
0521848636
9780521848633
9780521121712
052112171X
1107153077
9781107153073
0511167679
9780511167676
0511312288
9780511312281
0511168217
9780511168215