Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/203

 Their method of giving names. 10

��ARGUMENT XXII.

��When the Ifraelites gave names to their children or others, they chofe fuch appellatives as fuited belt with their circumftances, and the times. This cuftom was as early as the Patriarchal age ; for we find Abram was changed into Abraham j Sarai into Sarah, Jacob into Ifracl ; and after wards Ofhea, Jofhua, Solomon, Jedidiah, &c. &c. This cuftom is a (land ing rule with the Indians, and I never obferved the leaft deviation from it. They give their children names, exprefiive of their tempers, outward ap pearances, and other various circumftances ; a male child, they will call Choola, " the fox ;" and a female, PakaUe^ " the bloffom, or flower." The father and mother of the former are called Choollingge, and Cboollijbke, " the father and mother of the fox ;" in like manner, thole of the latter, Pa- kallingge^ and Pakahlijhke ; for Ingge fignifies the father, and IJhke the mother. In private life they are fo termed till that child dies ; but after that period they are called by the name of their next furviving child, or if they have none, by their own name : and it is not known they ever mention the name of the child that is extinct. They only faintly allude to it, faying, " the one that is dead," to prevent new grief, as they had before mourned the appointed time. They who have no children of their own, adopt others, and -aflume their names, in the manner already mentioned. This was of divine appoint ment, to comfort the barren, and was analogous to the kindred method of counting with the Hebrews : inflead of furnames, they ufed in their genea logies the name of the father, and prefixed Ben, " a fon," to the perfon's name. And thus the Greeks, in early times. No nation ufed furnames, except the Romans after their league and union with the Sabines. And they did not introduce that cuftom, with the lead view of diftinguifhing their families, but as a politic feal to their flrong compact of friendfhip ;. for as the Romans prefixed Sabine names to their own, the Sabines took Roman names in like manner. A fpecimen of the Indian war-names, will illu- ftrate this argument with more clearnefs.

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