Personal Names in a Mande (Garo) Village

Abstract

The Mandes (Garos), a hill people of northeastern India, have had no fixed inventory of personal names. Instead of choosing a conventional name for a child, parents try to find a sequence of sounds that has rarely or never before been used to name a Mande. Given names often reveal the person's gender but they rarely have any other meaning. Kinship group names, by contrast, are shared by hundreds or even thousands of others. Thus, given names are highly individualizing while kinship group names are not. Searching for ways to preserve tradition and to symbolize their ethnicity, some Mandes want to give their children “real” Mande names. However, is it more traditional to find a new name that has never been used before, or to seek a traditional name where the tradition has been to find something new?