[PW] Re: Hypothetical cultural divergence

[Rboconoresq at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/3/2006 7:42:33 AM Mountain Daylight Time, 
pzi at ingerman.org writes:

> There are (were?) Pacific Island autochthons that had taboos against 
> naming the dead. Persons were named after objects, and it was presumed 
> that the dead were hard of hearing, so when a person died, a new word 
> was invented for the object after which s/he had been named, as well as 
> for similar-sounding words/objects.


       Concidentally, the Navajo will not speak the name of the dead.  
Someones husband becomes "the man I was married to who died."  It is thought that to 
say the name mof the dead person is call that person's ghost (ghosts walk the 
earth and create death and sickness).