Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/179

 The Orig'i)i of Exoganix ami Totcuiisui. 163

{groups by the groups themselves, (at least, were not given after the superstition about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but every one knows their real names.

He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge to injure the group. But the group names or kin names being alread\- known to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all groups within a given radius. " It is a serious offence," writes Vix. Howitt, "for a man to kill [the totem] of another person," ^"^ that is, with injurious intentions towards the person.

An individual, says Mr. Howitt, "has of course his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally known lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some enem\-, who thus having it might thereby "sing" its owner — in other words, use it as an "incantation"."^^

Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imj:)l\' a m)-stic rapport between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his secret name.

This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as groups, all in possession of animal

^"^ The Journal of the Anthropological Instil ulCf vol. xviii. (iS8S), p. 53. ^^ Ibid., p. 51 ; Ike Native Tribes of South- East Australia, j). 581.