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Among many tribes of South Africa men and
women never mention their names if they can get any one else to do
it for them, but they do not absolutely refuse when it cannot be
avoided.
Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is not permanent; it is
conditional on circumstances, and when these change it ceases to
operate. Thus when the Nandi men are away on a foray, nobody at home
may pronounce the names of the absent warriors; they must be
referred to as birds. Should a child so far forget itself as to
mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother would rebuke it,
saying, "Don't talk of the birds who are in the heavens." Among the
Bangala of the Upper Congo, while a man is fishing and when he
returns with his catch, his proper name is in abeyance and nobody
may mention it. Whatever the fisherman's real name may be, he is
called _mwele_ without distinction. The reason is that the river is
full of spirits, who, if they heard the fisherman's real name, might
so work against him that he would catch little or nothing.


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