ABSTRACT
A RELATIVELY simple task commonly performed by ethnographers is that of getting names for things. The ethnographer typically performs this task by pointing to or holding up the apparent constituent objects of an event he is describing, eliciting the native names for the objects, and then matching each native name with the investigator's own word for the object. The logic of the operation is: if the informant calls object X a m b u b u and I call the object X a r o c k , then m b u b u means r o c k . In this way are compiled the ordinary ethnobotanical monographs with their lists of matched native and scientific names for plant specimens. This operation probably also accounts for a good share of the native names parenthetically inserted in so many monograph texts: "Among the grasses ( s i g b e t ) whose grains ( b u n g an e n ) are used for beads ( b i t e k e l ) none is more highly prized than Job's tears ( g l i a s ) ." Unless the reader is a comparative linguist of the languages concerned, he may well ask what interest these parenthetical insertions contain other than demonstrating that
From Thomas Gladwin and William C. Sturtevant (Eds.), A n t h r o p o l o g y and H u m a n Behavior. Copyright © 1963 by the Anthropological Society of Washington. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author. Charles 0. Frake is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University.
