Rituals of Naming and Exposure: Meaning and Signification in a Name

Albert Doja (1)

1 Université de Lille

Every individual occupies a determined place in a chain of descent. The criteria of this determination are usually conceptions concerning physical resemblance and difference, paternal and maternal kin ties, ceremonies celebrating the birth, as well as marks and practices involving augury, prediction, divination and predestination, etc. Through these conceptions, the individual components, which give the individual his/her singularity, are conjoined with the inherited components, which mark his/her place in the chain of family and kin, the symbolic elements, which make him/her part of the cosmic world, and the attributes that the person acquires and which ensure his/her social identity by giving it its individual expression. This paper attempts to show how the name in particular, as illustrated in Albanian culture, is in fact part of a whole set of such multiple components and attributes that merges the individual within the space and the time in which they are imbedded.

Mots clés: name; ritual; naming

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Sociologie

Albert Doja. Rituals of Naming and Exposure: Meaning and Signification in a Name. Onoma: Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, 2006, 41, pp.237-270. ⟨10.2143/ONO.41.0.2119618⟩. ⟨halshs-00629438⟩