After the new name
has been adopted, the old name by which the king was known during
his life becomes sacred and may not be pronounced under pain of
death. Further, words in the common language which bear any
resemblance to the forbidden name also become sacred and have to be
replaced by others. Persons who uttered these forbidden words were
looked on not only as grossly rude, but even as felons; they had
committed a capital crime. However, these changes of vocabulary are
confined to the district over which the deceased king reigned; in
the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be employed in
the old sense.
The sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia
naturally extended also to their names, which on the primitive view
are hardly separable from the personality of their owners. Hence in
Polynesia we find the same systematic prohibition to utter the names
of chiefs or of common words resembling them which we have already
met with in Zululand and Madagascar. Thus in New Zealand the name of
a chief is held so sacred that, when it happens to be a common word,
it may not be used in the language, and another has to be found to
replace it.
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