From: mdhangton@gmail.com
Kay Shapero wrote:
> In article , mdhangton@gmail.com says...
>>
>> I will tell you something else. _The Writer's Digest Character Naming
>> Sourcebook_ is absolutely useless for anything that isn't European. In
>> a first draft, I took "Higalik" from there, and later I found out that
>> name only exists for a subtribe of Inuit on one island in Canada. That
>> was when I started downloading BIA dictionaries compiled during the
>> Fifties.
>
> The universe is boobytrapped. I believe Andre Norton did her level best
> to do her research before writing a novel with a Dineh (Navajo)
> character as protagonist. Since she didn't use one, I suspect she found
> authentic family names like Begay or Yazzie undramatic, but really
> wanted an authentic Dineh given name. The book was published in 1959,
> meaning that the research was probably done in the mid '50s, and by
> scouring library archives for any info they might have on the Navajo.
The BIA published a fairly long Navajo dictionary and phrasebook in
1953. It can be downloaded. There is another free one from the 80's
called Saad Ahaah Sinil. You can go through them and pick out any word
that could possibly be a name that is short enough to pronounce as a
name, a feminine quality or rather feminine animal, bird, flower, etc.,
or a masculine quality for a male name, or any descriptive thing like
"hairy one" or "he fights" or "he returned", and it could be a first
name. There is also a tendency to call people who resemble another
ethnic group or tribe by the name of that tribe, like Naakai for
somebody they think looks Mexican. If you do it that way, it is
somewhat similar to the process of naming in the traditional culture.
The reason Yazzie appears in so many names is that yahzi means little
or younger. Mosi or masi is cat, and mosiyahzi is kitten. Gidi is
kitty, and gidi-gidi is equivalent to the phrase here, kitty, kitty.
Gidi would be a foreign word, sort of transliterated into Navajo.
> And my bet is all the photos had European derived first names. My guess
> is after long searching, she found a photo of an elderly gent labeled
> "Hosteen" somebody or other and figured it made sense an older guy would
> have an authentic given name, and gave it to her character. Alas,
> "Hosteen" isn't a given name at all, it's a term meaning Old Man or
> Grandpa...
It means mister or man. It does not mean elderly, but mature man or
elder. Old Man is Hastiinsani. It actually could be a name. It's
usually a title of respect, perhaps how one would address a shaman.
Navajo and Indian names in general are not static. All young boys are
called haske, which means angry or warrior, and as they mature they
acquire names, which tend to be more personal and can change again
during the various stages and stations of their lives. Hosteen is a
sort of generic name for a mature man.
In this day and age, Indians interact with the US govt, and many of
them get baptised and receive Christian names, and their given and
family names, at least the public ones, tend to be static. When
missionaries began to succeed with Southwestern Indians, they would
accept baptismal names, in addition to their various clan and secret
names, with the idea that it would make them lucky with a foreign god,
as their tradtional names made them favored by their ancestral spirits
and such (in other words, add to their personal inventory of magic),
and these became legal names in their interactions with the White
government. They may give their children names from outside the
traditional system or language, or even take names from TV celebrities
they like.
>
> Which is how the hero of one of my favorite Norton tales as a child was
> named "Grandpa Storm"
That is wrong in the traditional system of naming. As I said all boys
are at first Hashke, and girls are at first Ateed. Nowadays, they
might name the boy Leonardo, and the girl Beyonce.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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