Teknonymy and the Evocation of the “Social” Among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar

INTRODUCTION Names are words, and as words they are constituent elements in speech acts. Alone, or in combination with other linguistic phenomena, they are sounds that, as a result of the conventions learnt by speakers of a particular community, evoke in the minds of hearers or speakers' mental responses (see the chapter by Lambek (Chapter 6) for a very similar theoretical position). It is important to begin a discussion of names in this rather pedantic way because, too often, names are considered in the literature in terms of the old and dangerous semiotic model of signifiers signifying signifieds. As has been argued by vom Bruck (this volume), words, including names, pace Lévi-Strauss (1962, chap. 6), are not classifiers and to see them thus is misleading. First, such an approach gives far too fixed an image of meaning, forgetting that the usage of names cannot be separated from pragmatics and that names are therefore used to “do” an almost unlimited number of things. Names, therefore, are tools used in social interaction, which can be put to ever-new uses. Second, the use of names are a constituent part of the social interactions in which they are used, they are never isolated acts, but parts of acts. Third, names, whether used in reference or in address, are one among many ways by which people can be referred to. They do not form a bounded system.