Note 31 — Chapter XI · Folklore Philosophy

An instance has been already mentioned of a man’s name being put or set on him, or rather forced on him: at any rate, his name is on him both in Welsh and Irish, and the latter language also speaks of it as cleaving or adhering to him. Neither language contemplates the name, however closely identified with him, as having become an inseparable part of him, or else as something he has secured for himself. In the neo-Celtic tongues, both Welsh and Irish, all things which a man owns, and all things for which he takes credit, are with him or by him; but all things which he cannot help having, whether creditable or discreditable, if they are regarded as coming from without are on him, not with him. Thus, if he is wealthy there is money with him; but if he is in debt and owes money, the money is on him. Similarly, if he rejoices there is joy with him; whereas if he is ashamed or afraid, shame or fear is on him. This is a far-reaching distinction, of capital importance in Celtic phraseology, and judged by this criterion the name is something from without the man, something which he cannot take credit to himself for having acquired by his own direct willing or doing. This is to be borne in mind when one speaks of the name as identified or closely bound up with one’s life and personality. But this qualified identification of the name with the man is also what one may infer from savage folklore; for many, perhaps most, of the nations who name their children at their birth, have those names changed when the children grow up. That is done when a boy has to be initiated into the mysteries of his tribe or of a guild, or it may be when he has achieved some distinction in war. In most instances, it involves a serious ceremony and the intervention of the wise man, whether the medicine-man of a savage system, or the priest of a higher religion31. In the ancient Wales of the Mabinogion, and in pagan Ireland, the name-giving was done, subject to certain conditions, at the will and on the initiative of the druid, who was at the same time tutor and teacher of the youth to be renamed32. Here I may be allowed to direct attention to the two following facts: the druid, recalling as he does the magician of the Egypt of the Pentateuch and the shaman of the Mongolian world of our own time, represented a profession probably not of Celtic origin. In the next place, his method of selecting names from incidents was palpably incompatible with what is known to have been the Aryan system of nomenclature, by means of compounds, as evinced by the annals of most nations of the Aryan family of speech: such compounds, I mean, as Welsh Pen-wyn, ‘white-headed,’ Gaulish Πεννο-ουινδος, or Greek Ἵππαρχος, Ἄρχιππος, and the like. Briefly, one may say that the association of the name with the breath of life was probably Aryan, but without, perhaps, being unfamiliar to the aborigines of the British Isles before their conquest by the Celts. On the other hand, in the druid and his method of naming we seem to touch the non-Aryan substratum, and to detect something which was not Celtic, not Aryan33.