Taboos on Animal Names

Taboo zoonyms: What do 'bear', 'lynx' and 'wolf' have in common?

“…Frazer (1911: 190) refers to "savage" hunters and fishermen who concealed the names of animals they intended to kill. This coincides with the taboo on animal names in various societies (Emeneau 1948;Patyal 1980;Smal-Stocki 1950). While Frazer sees the repression of animal names as a "hunters' taboo", Emeneau points to religious and mythical motivations as part of ancient animism combined with word magic, of which abundant evidence exists in various lan-guages (Ogden and Richards 1927;Izutsu 1956;Tornaghi 2010).…”

“…According to Rawson's (1981) classification, it can be assumed that all these euphemisms were negative and defensive in nature, and their purpose was to weaken and reduce the risk posed by these animals. Tabooization can be explained by the animistic past of human societies and hunters' taboo (Frazer 1911: 190), which can also be linked to religious and mythical motivations within ancient animism combined with word magic (Emeneau 1948). The fact that in Indo-European languages there are several words for 'bear', 'lynx' and 'wolf' proves that these animals were widespread throughout the Indo-European territory and had cult and ritual significance, which is confirmed by the oldest Indo-European traditions.…”

Ǝrəxša’s self-sacrifice: Tradition or Innovation?

“…In fact, a taboo works in any case with regard to names of animals or things that make fear or that are considered dangerous or ominous. The taboo on the name of the bear and on its figure can be seen also outside of the Indo-European area (see, for instance, PETROV, 1989), although the semantic distribution in its determination can reflect different reasons (EMENAU, 1948). On the problem cf.…”

Loan and Inheritance Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Ethnobiological Systems

“…Furthermore, items that are culturally salient can also be subject to cultural borrowing, which is frequently accompanied by lexical borrowing (e.g., psychotropic substances like hashish and coffee). Items of high cultural salience can be subject to linguistic taboo; dangerous animals, for example, can be both mythologically important and prized prey (see Burridge [2012]; Emeneau [1948]; and Simons [1982]; amongst others, for the phenomenon and its implications for reconstruction). Finally, culturally salient items are also subject to terminological specialization and differentiation.…”

“…This was a sufficient confound for unique beginner terms that we were unable to investigate them systematically.11 Outside the survey area, the term warrij 'freshwater crocodile' has also been borrowed from a Mirndi language into Pama-Nyungan languages of the region.12 Bonferroni corrections would indicate that at the 5% error level we should be looking for significance values at ,0.0065. However, since these tests are dependent, the level is probably higher.13 As noted byEmeneau (1948), protective euphemisms have several motivations, including the desire not to call up something dangerous and not warning prey animals during a hunt.14 This follows work by Epps (in press) that investigates patterns of etymological asymmetries involving cultivated plant species in the Nadahup language family of 2014 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY…”