ABSTRACT
There appears to be a widespread presumption in modern western societies that to have a name is to be human. Koyukon people take a certain delight in speaking in riddles, and the names of animals, plants and artefacts can often take this form. The naming of animals among the Koyukon shows how it is possible to go beyond nouns without going beyond language. To be properly human, in western eyes, is thus to be a person with a unique, named identity and to occupy a specific, named place in accordance with certain principles of tenure. The network indexes positionality by means of names; and the classification indexes diversity by means of appellatives. The characteristic of story-based names – that their meanings do not come encrypted within the words themselves but are recursively revealed by direct observation of aspects of the world to which they direct attention – is common also to simple descriptive names.
