The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 10

_Other Father-G.o.ds_.

The ancient Romans applied the term _Pater_ to many of their G.o.ds beside the great Jove. Vulcan was called _Lemnus Pater_, the "Lemnian Father"; Bacchus, _Pater Lenaeus_; Ja.n.u.s, the "early G.o.d of business," is termed by Horace, _Matutinus Pater,_ "Early-morning Father"; Mars is _Mars Pater,_ etc. The Guarayo Indians, of South America, prayed for rain and bountiful harvests to "Tamo, the grandfather, the old G.o.d in heaven, who was their first ancestor and had taught them agriculture" (100. 288).

The Abipones, of Paraguay, called the Pleiades their "Grandfather" and "Creator." When the constellation was invisible, they said: "Our Grandfather, Keebet, is ill" (509. 274, 284).

In his account of the folk-lore of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton tells us that the giant-beings known as _Hbalamob,_ or _balams,_ are sometimes "affectionately referred to as _yum balam,_ or 'Father Balam.'" The term _yum_ is practically the equivalent of the Latin _pater,_ and of the _"father,"_ employed by many primitive peoples in addressing, or speaking of, their great male divinities (411.

176).

In his acute exposition of the philosophy of the Zuni Indians, Mr.

Gushing tells us (424. 11) that "all beings, whether deistic and supernatural, or animistic and mortal, are regarded as belonging to one system; and that they are likewise believed to be related by blood seems to be indicated by the fact that human beings are spoken of as the 'children of men,' while _all_ other beings are referred to as 'the Fathers,' the 'All-Fathers (a-ta-tchu),' and 'Our Fathers.'" The "Priest'of the Bow," when travelling alone through a dangerous country, offers up a prayer, which begins: "Si! This day, My Fathers, ye Animal Beings, although this country be filled with enemies, render me precious" (424. 41). The hunter, in the ceremonial of the "Deer Medicine," prays: "Si! This day, My Father, thou Game Animal, even though thy trail one day and one night hast (been made) round about; however, grant unto me one step of my earth-mother. Wanting thy life-blood, wanting that flesh, hence I address to thee good fortune, address to thee treasure," etc. When he has stricken down the animal, "before the 'breath of life' has left the fallen deer (if it be such), he places its fore feet back of its horns, and, grasping its mouth, holds it firmly, closely, while he applies his lips to its nostrils and breathes as much wind into them as possible, again inhaling from the lungs of the dying animal into his own. Then, letting go, he exclaims: 'Ah! Thanks, my father, my child. Grant unto me the seeds of earth ('daily bread') and the gift of water. Grant unto me the light of thy favour, do" (424. 36).

Something of a like nature, perhaps, attaches to the bear-ceremonials among the Ainu and other primitive peoples of northeastern Asia, with whom that animal is held in great respect and reverence, approaching to deification.

Of Po-shai-an-k'ia, "the G.o.d (Father) of the Medicine Societies, or sacred esoteric orders of the Zunis," Mr. Gushing tells us: "He is supposed to have appeared in human form, poorly clad, and therefore reviled by men; to have taught the ancestors of the Zuni, Taos, Oraibi, and Coconino Indians their agricultural and other arts; their systems of worship by means of plumed and painted prayer-sticks; to have organized their medicine societies, and then to have disappeared toward his home in Shi-pa-pu-li-ma (from _shi-pa-a_ = mist, vapour; _u-lin_, surrounding; and _i-mo-na_ = sitting-place of; 'The mist-enveloped city'), and to have vanished beneath the world, whence he is said to have departed for the home of the Sun. He is still the conscious auditor of the prayers of his children, the invisible ruler of the spiritual Shi-pa-pu-li-ma, and of the lesser G.o.ds of the medicine orders, the princ.i.p.al 'Finisher of the Paths of our Lives.' He is, so far as any ident.i.ty can be established, the 'Montezuma' of popular and usually erroneous Mexican tradition" (424. 16). Both on the lowest steps of civilization and on the highest, we meet with this pa.s.sing over of the Father into the Son, this partic.i.p.ation of G.o.d in the affairs and struggles of men.

CHAPTER V.

THE NAME CHILD.

Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen [Dear children have many names].--_German Proverb_.

Child or boy, my darling, which you will.--_Swinburne_.

Men ever had, and ever will have, leave To coin new words well-suited to the age.

Words are like leaves, some wither every year, And every year a younger race succeeds.--_Roscommon_.

_Child and its Synonyms_.

Our word _child_--the good old English term; for both _babe_ and _infant_ are borrowed--simply means the "product of the womb"

(compare Gothic _kilthei_, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in _bairn_, cognate with Anglo-Saxon _bearn_, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic _barn_ (the Gothic had a diminutive _barnilo_, "baby"), Sanskrit _bharna_, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root _bhr_, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to _bear_" and the German "ge-_baren_." _Son_, which finds its cognates in all the princ.i.p.al Aryan dialects, except Latin, and perhaps Celtic,--the Greek [Greek: yios] is for [Greek: syios], and is the same word,--a widespread term for "male child, or descendant," originally meant, as the Old Irish _suth_, "birth, fruit," and the Sanskrit _su_, "to bear, to give birth to," indicate, "the fruit of the womb, the begotten"--an expression which meets us time and again in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. The words _offspring_, _issue_, _seed_, used in higher diction, explain themselves and find a.n.a.logues all over the world. To a like category belong Sanskrit _garbha_, "brood of birds, child, shoot"; Pali _gabbha_, "womb, embryo, child"; Old High German _chilburra_, "female lamb"; Gothic _kalbo_, "female lamb one year old"; German _Kalb_; English _calf_; Greek [Greek: _delphus_], "womb"; whence [Greek: _adelphus_], "brother," literally "born of the same womb." Here we see, in the words for their young, the idea of the kinship of men and animals in which the primitive races believed. The "brought forth" or "born" is also the signification of the Niskwalli Indian _ba'-ba-ad_, "infant"; _de-bad-da_, "infant, son"; Maya _al_, "son or daughter of a woman"; Cakchiquel 4_ahol_, "son," and like terms in many other tongues. Both the words in our language employed to denote the child before birth are borrowed. _Embryo_, with its cognates in the modern tongues of Europe, comes from the Greek [Greek: _embruon_], "the fruit of the womb before delivery; birth; the embryo, foetus; a lamb newly born, a kid." The word is derived from _eu_, "within"; and _bruo_, "I am full of anything, I swell or teem with"; in a transitive sense, "I break forth." The radical idea is clearly "swelling," and cognates are found in Greek [Greek: _bruon_], "moss"; and German _Kraut_, "plant, vegetable." _Foetus_ comes to us from Latin, where it meant "a bearing, offspring, fruit; bearing, dropping, hatching,--of animals, plants, etc.; fruit, produce, offspring, progeny, brood." The immediate derivation of the word is _feto_, "I breed," whence also _effetus_, "having brought forth young, worn out by bearing, effete." _Feto_ itself is from an old verb _feuere_, "to generate, to produce," possibly related to _fui_ and our _be_. The radical signification of _foetus_ then is "that which is bred, or brought to be"; and from the same root _fe_ are derived _feles_, "cat" (the fruitful animal); _fe-num_, "hay"; _fe-cundus_, "fertile"; _fe-lix,_ "happy" (fruitful). The corresponding verb in Greek is [Greek: _phuein_], "to grow, to spring forth, to come into being," whence the following: [Greek: _phusis_], "a creature, birth, nature,"--nature is "all that has had birth"; [Greek: _phuton_]

"something grown, plant, tree, creature, child"; [Greek: _phulae, philon_] "race, clan, tribe,"--the "aggregate of those born in a certain way or place"; [Greek: _phus_], "son"; [Greek: _phusas_], "father," etc.

In English, we formerly had the phrase "to look _babies_ in the eyes," and we still speak of the _pupil_ of the eye, the old folk-belief having been able to a.s.sert itself in the every-day speech of the race,--the thought that the soul looked out of the windows of the eyes. In Latin, _pupilla pupila,_ "girl, pupil of the eye," is a diminutive of _pupa_ (_puppa_), "girl, damsel, doll, puppet"; other related words are _pupulus_, "little boy"; _pupillus_, "orphan, ward," our _pupil_; _pupulus_, "little child, boy"; _pupus_, "child, boy." The radical of all these is _pu_, "to beget"; whence are derived also the following: _puer_, "child, boy"; _puella_ (for _puerula_), a diminutive of _puer_, "girl"; _pusus_, "boy"; _pusio_, "little boy,"

_pusillus_; "a very little boy"; _putus_, "boy"; _putillus_, "little boy"; _putilla_, "little girl,"--here belongs also _pusillanimus_, "small-minded, boy-minded"; _pubis_, "ripe, adult"; _p.u.b.ertas_, "p.u.b.erty, maturity"; _pullus_, "a young animal, a fowl," whence our _pullet_. In Greek we find the cognate words [Greek: polos] "a young animal," related to our _foal, filly_; [Greek: polion], "pony," and, as some, perhaps too venturesome, have suggested, [Greek: pais], "child," with its numerous derivatives in the scientifical nomenclature and phraseology of to-day. In Sanskrit we have _putra_, "son," a word familiar as a suffix in river-names,--_Brahmaputra_, "son of Brahma,"--_pota_, "the young of an animal," etc. Skeat thinks that our word _boy_, borrowed from Low German and probably related to the Modern High German _Bube_, whence the familiar "bub" of American colloquial speech, is cognate with Latin _pupus_.

To this stock of words our _babe_, with its diminutive _baby_, seems not akin. Skeat, rejecting the theory that it is a reduplicative child-word, like _papa_, sees in it merely a modification (infantine, perhaps) of the Celtic _maban_, diminutive of _mab_, "son," and hence related to _maid_, the particular etymology of which is discussed elsewhere.

_Infant_, also, is a loan-word in English. In Latin, _infans_ was the coinage of some primitive student of children, of some prehistoric anthropologist, who had a clear conception of "infancy" as "the period of inability to speak,"--for _infans_ signifies neither more nor less than "not speaking, unable to speak." The word, like our "childish," a.s.sumed also the meanings "child, young, fresh, new, silly,"

with a diminutive _infantulus_. The Latin word _infans_ has its representatives in French and other Romance languages, and has given rise to _enfanter_, "to give birth to a child," _enfantement_, "labour," two of the few words relating to child-birth in which the child is directly remembered. The history of the words _infantry_, "foot-soldiers," and _Infanta_, "a princess of the blood royal" in Spain (even though she be married), ill.u.s.trates a curious development of thought.

Our word _daughter_, which finds cognates in Teutonic, Slavonic, Armenian, Zend, Sanskrit, and Greek, Skeat would derive from the root _dugh_, "to milk," the "daughter" being primitively the "milker,"

--the "milkmaid,"--which would remove the term from the list of names for "child" in the proper sense of the word. Kluge, however, with justice perhaps, considers this etymology improbable.

A familiar phrase in English is "babes and sucklings," the last term of which, cognate with German _Saugling_, meets with a.n.a.logues far and wide among the peoples of the earth. The Latin words for children in relation to their parents are _filius_ (diminutive _filiolus_), "son," and _filia_ (diminutive _filiola_), "daughter,"

which have a long list of descendants in the modern Neo-Latin or Romance languages,--French _fils, fille, filleul_, etc.; Italian _figlio, figlia_, etc. According to Skeat, _filius_ signified originally "infant," perhaps "suckling," from _felare_, "to suck," the radical of which, _fe_ (Indo-European _dhe_), appears also in _femina_, "woman," and _femella_, "female," the "sucklers"

_par excellence_. In Greek the cognate words are [Greek: _t.i.tthae_], "nurse," _thaelus_, "female," _thaelae_, "teat," etc.; in Lithuanian, _dels_, "son." With _nonagan_, "teat, breast," are cognate in the Delaware Indian language _nonosh.e.l.laan_, "to suckle," _nonetschik_, "suckling," and other primitive tongues have similar series.

The Modern High German word for child is _Kind_, which, as a substantive, finds representatives neither in Gothic nor in early English, but has cognates in the Old Norse _kunde_, "son," Gothic _-kunds_, Anglo-Saxon _-kund_, a suffix signifying "coming from, originating from." The ultimate radical of the word is the Indo-European root _gen_ (Teutonic _ken_), "to bear, to produce," whence have proceeded also _kin_, Gothic _kuni_; _queen_, Gothic _qvens_, "woman"; _king_, Modern High German _Konig_, originally signifying perhaps "one of high origin"; Greek _genos_ and its derivatives; Latin _genus, gens, gigno_; Lithuanian _gentis_, "relative"; Sanskrit _janas_, "kin, stock," _ja.n.u.s_, "creature, kin, birth," _jantu_, "child, being, stock," _jata_, "son." _Kind_, therefore, while not the same word as our _child_, has the same primitive meaning, "the produced one," and finds further cognates in _kid_ and _colt_, names applied to the young of certain animals, and the first of which, in the slang of to-day, is applied to children also. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland _Kind_ has the sense of _boy_; in Thuringia, for example, people speak of _zwei Kinder und ein Madchen,_ "two boys and a girl." From the same radical sprang the Modern High German _Knabe_, Old High German _chnabo_, "boy, youth, young fellow, servant," and its cognates, including our English _knave_, with its changed meaning, and possibly also German _Knecht_ and English _knight_, of somewhat similar import originally.

To the same original source we trace back Greek [Greek: _genetaer_], Latin _genitor_, "parent," and their cognates, in all of which the idea of _genesis_ is prominent. Here belong, in Greek: [Greek: _genesis_], "origin, birth, beginning"; [Greek: _gynae_], "woman"; [Greek: _genea_], "family, race"; [Greek: _geinomai_], "I beget, produce, bring forth, am born"; [Greek: _gignomai_], "I come into a new state of being, become, am born."

In Latin: _gigno_, "I beget, bring forth"; _gens_, "clan, race, nation,"--those born in a certain way; _ingens_, "vast, huge, great,"--"not _gens_," _i.e._ "born beyond or out of its kind"; _gentilis_, "belonging to the same clan, race, tribe, nation," then, with various turns of meaning, "national, foreign,"

whence our _gentile, genteel, gentle, gentry,_ etc.; _genus_, "birth, race, sort, kind"; _ingenium_, "innate quality, natural disposition"; _ingeniosus_, "of good natural abilities, born well-endowed," hence _ingenious; ingenuus_, "native, free-born, worthy of a free man," hence "frank, _ingenuous_"; _progenies_, "descent, descendants, offspring, progeny"; _gener_, "son-in-law"; _genius_, "innate superior nature, tutelary deity, the G.o.d born to a place," hence the _genius_, who is "born," not "made"; _genuinus_, "innate, born-in, _genuine_"; _indigena_, "native, born-there, indigenous"; _generosus_, "of high, n.o.ble birth," hence "n.o.ble-minded, _generous_"; _genero_, "I beget, produce, engender, create, procreate," and its derivatives _degenero, regenero_, etc., with the many words springing from them. From the same radical _gen_ comes the Latin _(g)nascor_, "I am born," whose stem _(g)na_ is seen also in _natio_, "the collection of those born," or "the birth," and _natura_, "the world of birth,"--like Greek [Greek: _phnsis_],--for "nations" and "nature" have both "sprung into being." The Latin _germen_ (our _germ_), which signified "sprig, offshoot, young bud, sprout, fruit, embryo," probably meant originally simply "growth," from the root _ker_, "to make to grow."

From the same Indo-European radical have come the Latin _creare_, "to create, make, produce," with its derivatives _procreare_ and _creator_, which we now apply to the Supreme Being, as the "maker"

or "producer" of all things. Akin are also _crescere_, "to come forth, to arise, to appear, to increase, to grow, to spring, to be born," and _Ceres_, the name of the G.o.ddess of agriculture (growth and creation), whence our word _cereal_; and in Greek [Greek: Kronos], the son of Ura.n.u.s (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth), [Greek: kratos], "strength," and its derivatives ("democracy," etc.).

Another interesting Latin word is _pario_, "I bring forth, produce," whence _parens_, "producer, parent," _partus_, "birth, bearing, bringing forth; young, offspring, foetus, embryo of any creature," _parturio, parturitio_, etc. _Pario_ is used alike of human beings, animals, birds, fish, while _parturio_ is applied to women and animals, and, by Virgil, even to trees,--_parturit arbos_, "the tree is budding forth,"--and by other writers to objects even less animate.

In the Latin _enitor_, "I bring forth or bear children or young,"--properly, "I struggle, strive, make efforts,"--we meet with the idea of "labour," now so commonly a.s.sociated with child-bearing, and deriving from the old comparison of the tillage of the soil and the bearing of the young. This a.s.sociation existed in Hebrew also, and Cain, the first-born of Adam, was the first agriculturist. We still say the tree _bears_ fruit, the land _bears_ crops, is _fertile_, and the most characteristic word in English belonging to the category in question is "to _bear_" children, cognate with Modern High German _ge-baren_, Gothic _gabairan_, Latin _ferre_ (whence _fertilis_), Greek _[Greek: ferein]_, Sanskrit _bhri_, etc., all from the Indo-European root _bher_, "to carry"--compare the use of _tragen_ in Modern High German: _sie tragt ein Kind unter dem Herzen_. The pa.s.sive verb is "to be _born_" literally, "to be borne, to be carried, produced," and the noun corresponding, _birth_, cognate with German _Geburt_, and Old Norse _burthr_, which meant "embryo" as well. Related ideas are seen in _burden_, and in the Latin, _fors, fortuna_, for "fortune" is but that which is "borne" or "produced, brought forth," just as the Modern High German _Heil_, "fortune, luck," is probably connected with the Indo-European radical _gen_, "to produce."

Corresponding to the Latin _parentes_, in meaning, we have the Gothic _berusjos_, "the bearers," or "parents"; we still use in English, "forbears," in the sense of ancestors. The good old English phrase "with child," which finds its a.n.a.logues in many other languages, has, through false modesty, been almost driven out of literature, as it has been out of conversational language, by _pregnant_, which comes to us from the Latins, who also used _gravidus_,--a word we now apply only to animals, especially dogs and ants,--and _enceinte_, borrowed from French, and referring to the ancient custom of girding a woman who was with child. Similarly barren of direct reference to the child are _accouchement_, which we have borrowed from French, and the German _Entbindung_.

In German, Grimm enumerates, among other phrases relating to child-birth, the following, the particular meanings and uses of which are explained in his great dictionary: _Schw.a.n.ger, gross zum Kinde, zum Kinde gehen, zum Kinde arbeiten, um's Kind kommen, mit Kinde, ein Kind tragen, Kindesgrosz, Kindes schwer, Kinder haben, Kinder bekommen, Kinder kriegen, niederkommen, entbinden,_ and the quaint and beautiful _eines Kindes genesen_,--all used of the mother. Applied to both parents we find _Kinder machen_, _Kinder bekommen_ (now used more of the mother), _Kinder erzeugen_ (more recently, of the father only), _Kinder erzielen_.

Our English word _girl_ is really a diminutive (from a stem _gir_, seen in Old Low German _gor_, "a child") from some Low German dialect, and, though it now signifies only "a female child, a young woman," in Middle English _gerl_ (_girl, gurl_) was applied to a young person of either s.e.x. In the Swiss dialects to-day _gurre_, or _gurrli_, is a name given to a "girl" in a depreciatory sense, like our own "girl-boy." In many primitive tongues there do not appear to be special words for "son" and "daughter," or for "boy" and "girl," as distinguished from each other, these terms being rendered "male-child (man-child)," and "female-child (woman-child)"

respectively. The "man-child" of the King James' version of the Scriptures belongs in this category. In not a few languages, the words for "son" and "daughter" and for "boy" and "girl" mean really "little man," and "little woman"--a survival of which thought meets us in the "little man" with which his elders are even now wont to denominate "the small boy." In the Nahuatl language of Mexico, "woman" is _ciuatl_, "girl" _ciuatontli_; in the Niskwalli, of the State of Washington, "man" is _stobsh_, "boy" _stotomish_, "woman" _slane_, "girl" _chachas_ (_i.e._ "small") _slane_; in the Tacana, of South. America, "man" is _dreja_, "boy" _drejave_, "woman"

_epuna_, "girl" _epunave_. And but too often the "boys" and "girls" even as mere children are "little men and women" in more respects than that of name.

In some languages the words for "son," "boy," "girl" are from the same root. Thus, in the Mazatec language, of Mexico, we find _indidi_ "boy," _tzadi_ "girl," _indi_ "son," and in the Cholona, of Peru, _nun-pullup_ "boy," _ila-pullup_ "girl," _pul_ "son,"--where _ila_ means "female," and _nun_ "male."

In some others, as was the case with the Latin _puella_, from _puer_, the word for "girl" seems derived from that for "boy."

Thus, we have in Maya, _mehen_ "son," _ix-mehen_ "daughter,"-- _-ix_ is a feminine prefix; and in the Jivaro, of Ecuador, _vila_ "son," _vilalu_, "daughter."

Among very many primitive peoples, the words for "babe, infant, child,"

signify really "small," "little one," like the Latin _parvus_, the Scotch _wean_ (for _wee ane_, "wee one"), etc. In Hawaiian, for example, the "child" is called _keiki_, "the little one," and in certain Indian languages of the Western Pacific slope, the Wiyot _kusha'ma_ "child," Yuke _unsil_ "infant," Wintun _cru-tut_ "infant," Niskwalli _cha chesh_ "child (boy)," all signify literally "small," "little one."

Some languages, again, have diminutives of the word for "child," often formed by reduplication, like the _wee wean_ of Lowland Scotch, and the _pilpil_, "infant" of the Nahuatl of Mexico.

In the Snanaimuq language, of Vancouver Island, the words _ka'ela_, "male infant," and _ka'kela_, "female infant,"

mean simply "the weak one." In the Modoc, of Oregon, a "baby" is literally, "what is carried on one's self." In the Tsimshian, of British Columbia, the word _woka'uts_, "female infant," signifies really "without labrets," indicating that the creature is yet too young for the lip ornaments. In Latin, _liberi_, one of the words for "children,"

shows on its face that it meant only "children, as opposed to the slaves of the house, _servi_"; for _liberi_ really denotes "the free ones." In "the Galibi language of Brazil, _tigami_ signifies 'young brother, son, and little child,' indiscriminately." The following pa.s.sage from Westermarck recalls the "my son," etc., of our higher conversational or even officious style (166.93):--

"Mr. George Bridgman states that, among the Mackay blacks of Queensland, the word for 'daughter' is used by a man for any young woman belonging to the cla.s.s to which his daughter would belong if he had one. And, speaking of the Australians, Eyre says, 'In their intercourse with each other, natives of different tribes are exceedingly punctilious and polite; ... almost everything that is said is prefaced by the appellation of father, son, brother, mother, sister, or some other similar term, corresponding to that degree of relationship which would have been most in accordance with their relative ages and circ.u.mstances."

Similar phenomena meet us in the language of the criminal cla.s.ses, and the slang of the wilder youth of the country.

Among the Andaman Islanders: "Parents, when addressing or referring to their children, and not using names, employ distinct terms, the father calling his son _dar o-dire,_ i.e. 'he that has been begotten by me,' and his daughter, _dar o-dire-pail-;_ while the mother makes use of the word _dab e-tire,_ i.e. 'he whom I have borne,' for the former, and _dab e-tire pail-_ for the latter; similarly, friends, in speaking of children to their parents, say respectively, _ngar o-dire,_ or _ngab e-tire_ (your son), _ngar o-dire-pail-,_ or _ngab e-tire-pail-_ (your daughter)" (498. 59).

In the Tonkawe Indian language of Texas, "to be born" is _nikaman yekewa,_ literally, "to become bones," and in the Klamath, of Oregon, "to give birth," is _nkacgi,_ from _nkak,_ "the top of the head," and _gi,_ "to make," or perhaps from _kak'gi,_ "to produce bones," from the idea that the seat of life is in the bones. In the Nip.i.s.sing dialect of the Algonkian tongue, _ni kanis,_ "my brother," signifies literally, "my little bone," an etymology which, in the light of the expressions cited above, reminds one of the Greek [Greek: adelphos], and the familiar "bone of my bone," etc. A very interesting word for "child" is Sanskrit _toka,_ Greek [Greek: teknon], from the Indo-European radical _tek,_ "to prepare, make, produce, generate." To the same root belong Latin _texere,_ "to weave," Greek [Greek: technae] "art"; so that the child and art have their names from the same primitive source--the mother was the former of the child as she was of the chief arts of life.

_"Flower-Names."_

The people who seem to have gone farthest in the way of words for "child" are the Andaman Islanders, who have an elaborate system of nomenclature from the first year to the twelfth or fifteenth, when childhood may be said to end. There are also in use a profusion of "flower-names" and complimentary terms. The "flower-names" are confined to girls and young women who are not mothers. The following list shows the peculiarity of the name-giving:--