Note 42 — Chapter VI

I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr. Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous names obtain now in certain tribes, e.g. the Yum." (Op. cit., p. 154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names, unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among the more elderly Kunaï. (Op. cit., p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens were their chief articles of diet.