Among the Sea Dyaks a man may not pronounce
the name of his father-in-law or mother-in-law without incurring the
wrath of the spirits. And since he reckons as his father-in-law and
mother-in-law not only the father and mother of his own wife, but
also the fathers and mothers of his brothers' wives and sisters'
husbands, and likewise the fathers and mothers of all his cousins,
the number of tabooed names may be very considerable and the
opportunities of error correspondingly numerous. To make confusion
worse confounded, the names of persons are often the names of common
things, such as moon, bridge, barley, cobra, leopard; so that when
any of a man's many fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law are called by
such names, these common words may not pass his lips. Among the
Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, the custom is carried still
further so as to forbid the use even of words which merely resemble
the personal names in sound. It is especially the name of a
father-in-law which is thus laid under an interdict. If he, for
example, is called Kalala, his son-in-law may not speak of a horse
by its common name _kawalo;_ he must call it a "riding-beast"
(_sasakajan_).
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