Semantic anarchy and ordered social practice in Nuaulu personal naming

Because relationship terms stand midway between abstract pronouns and more individualized developmental terms, they may serve two contradictory purposes: to personalize or depersonalize, depending on the way that they are used. [...]in looking at the intrinsic meaning of personal names it makes little sense to isolate the primary names among living persons from the entire corpus. The Nuaulu do not use these, but if they did they might be considered as a type of developmental term. 5 Most infants born alive are named, even those who subsquently live for no longer than 24 hours. [...]names may also be duplicated within a clan if sections reside in different villages, or even in the same village if those sections have assumed a de jure ritual autonomy. [...]the unit within which names cannot be duplicated is effectively the named local sub-clan, although this independence does not extend to the rules of exogamy.