254
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15.64 Naming
Naming as an idential has always been important in the history
*
of any race. The importance of a naming used not only to identify,
but to actually bestow a new identity, is clearly brought out in
the writings of the Old and New Testament.
In the Strelley world people have names that are relics of
station and mission days, Jacob, Snowy, Alec, Ginger etc.
9
The station∕mission names used by white people reflect the
sedimentation of meaning of an earlier era in the
history of the
Mob, when they were named by the dominant group in their world.
Nurses in the Pt. Hedland hospital continue the practice of
the white world naming the black, by bestowing names on the babies
from Strelley.
In the world of the Mob, various names are used.
•Kinship relations are expressed in naming - father, sister,
grandfather, uncle,etc.
People are named according to their location in a section or
subsection within the classification system used by the people of
the Western Desert. Everyone belongs to one of four named categories.
⅛eeBerndt and Berndt (1981:47ff.)foran account of the division of the
people of the Strelley area into sections. Tonkinson (1974:53) gives the
following explanation of the implications of section membership
Γ÷ BANAGA = GARIMARA<~]
UBURUNU = MILANGA J .
The symbol = connects intermarrying sections, and the arrows indicate the
direction in which descent is traced and connect the sections of a mother
and her children. The same section name is used for its members of both sexes.
The system works as follows: taking a Banaga male as a starting point, he
marries one or more members of the Garimara section, whom he calls ’spouse’.
He cannot marry any Garimara woman because some other female relatives
are also members of the Garimara Section. The children of his marriage
will belong to the Milanga section and will, when they grow up, take
their spouses from the Burunu section. Children of Milanga women will
be Garimara, and of Milanga men will be Banaga (Tonkinson,1974:53, 54).
Children constantly have their attention drawn to the relationship
they have with anyone with whom they come into contact, or even anyone
merely passing by.