For instance, if a man called Waa ( "crow")
departed this life, during the period of mourning for him nobody
might call a crow a _waa;_ everybody had to speak of the bird as a
_narrapart._ When a person who rejoiced in the title of Ringtail
Opossum (_weearn_) had gone the way of all flesh, his sorrowing
relations and the tribe at large were bound for a time to refer to
ringtail opossums by the more sonorous name of _manuungkuurt._ If
the community were plunged in grief for the loss of a respected
female who bore the honourable name of Turkey Bustard, the proper
name for turkey bustards, which was _barrim barrim,_ went out, and
_tillit tilliitsh_ came in. And so _mutatis mutandis_ with the names
of Black Cockatoo, Grey Duck, Gigantic Crane, Kangaroo, Eagle,
Dingo, and the rest.
A similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of
the Abipones of Paraguay, amongst whom, however, a word once
abolished seems never to have been revived. New words, says the
missionary Dobrizhoffer, sprang up every year like mushrooms in a
night, because all words that resembled the names of the dead were
abolished by proclamation and others coined in their place.
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