Sunday, November 01, 2015

Taimirian naming conventions

A person in the Taimir region has at his disposal three names, with which other people may address him: A familial name, a relational name, and a courtesy name. Each of these names are used by a different group of people, according to age or status of relationship.

The full name is rarely mentioned, if at all, but where bureaucratic needs are taken into account, the order of names recorded would be: [Familial], [Relational], then [Courtesy]. Take the name, for instance:

Ritä Laurannyi Kristin su Nestorkulik

1. su Nestorkulik describes origin: Kristin was born and raised in the area of Nestorkulik.

2. Ritä is the familial name. Members of Kristin's family members and childhood playmates before Kristin's age of reckoning would by default address Kristin as Ritä. If Kristin makes close friends with people outside of the family circle, then those friends could also address her as Ritä, though with her explicit consent to escalate a friendship into "first name terms".

It is not taboo, as in certain modern societies, to call one's elder relatives by their familial name, but a suffix would have to be used:

Kristin's niece would refer to her with the name: Ritäjäti
Kristin's cousin would refer to Kristin's father, Lauran, with the name: Lauranbäşi
Kristin's great-niece would refer to her with the name: Ritäkäjä
Lauran's great-niece would refer to him with the name: Lauranpaşa

Immediate antecedents would simply be called "mother", "father", "grandmother", etc.

3. Laurannyi is the relational name. Lauran refers to Kristi's father. The suffix "-nyi" is a compressed form of the word "niki", meaning daughter. Lauran's son would take the name "Lauranmjek", a shortened form of the word "mjeki" (son). Sometimes the tribe name is used, instead of the name of either parent.

4. Kristin is Kristin's Courtesy name. A child would warn a courtesy on their age of reckoning, which can vary from twelve to sixteen years of age. Most of Kristin's friends and acquaintances would address Kristin with this name.

Courtesy names behave similarly to modern nicknames as it brings to focus a specific outstanding attribute of the person. A courtesy name can be changed at will by the bearer, usually for life-changing events.

Similar to the familial name, people of a junior age to the bearer of the name could the suffixes used e.g. "Kristinjäti" for a much younger, unrelated girl to refer to Kristin.