NEW WORRY FOR TURKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20426, 30 November 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW WORRY FOR TURKS.

SELECTING FAMILY NAMES. EFFECT OF RECENT ACT. HOUSEHOLDERS' PROBLEM. The order to the people of Turkey to find names for themselves lias been attended by such scanty results that a lawhas recently been passed requiring the head of every Moslem family to adopt a family name, i The task cannot but be difficult to a backward, unimaginative people. Hitherto their names have been borrowed from their, religion, and describe some quality of God. Their place-names, 100, arc simple and often repeated. In the course of a single short journey the traveller meets again and again with Turkish names which mean new village, old castle, pig valley, and black mountain.

British people who have directories containing thousands of names and gazetteers with still more, would have no difficulty if the law ordered a sort of general post with their names and made each adopt a new one. Our choice to-day is practically unlimited. But all nations have passed through a stage in which it was difficult to invent and adopt names as the Turks are now finding it. Originally : English place-names were as simple as those in Turkey. A river, a valley,' a Jiill. certain trees, the presence and home of animals, all suggested names well established before the Romans came to Britain.

Race after race invaded England before civilisation dawned, and each had a language, though not a written one. The

names first bestowed were adopted by later comers and continued in use long after their meaning -was forgotten. It is a romantic truth that British pioneers have carried into Australia, New Zealand, Africa, America, and the remotest islands the names of places which were first used by men who had never seen bronze or iron and had not learned to polish the stone implements with which they worked, hunted, and fought. Names of people were as simple in origin, and the process by which they

came into being seems to have been similar in all lands. There were no regular surnames as at present, but titles suggested by the time, the season, and the conditions and surroundings associated with birth. Yet in spilo of the primitive nature of the names given, some of them poetic and lovely in idea, there was a certain complexity in tho system. There was a name at birth and a second when maturity was reached. Beyond these there was a third name, a totem name.

Just as (he Greeks and Romans believed their heroes to be gods, so primitive peoples Jiavo traced their ancestry to an origin not human. Tho source might be a tree, a bear, a turtle, the Sun or the Moon, n tiger or a reed. All the members of a tribo or a group supposed to have this line of descent had tho figure of Hie supposed ancestor as a symbol. The roughly-carved or painted image is the totem, and all bearors of it are kin.

Although tho namo is important and may be a matter of life or death to ils owner among unknown kindred, yet it is preserved with superstitious secrecy. A savage may. be addressed as brother, father, cousin, or what not, but ho will hide his true name from all but members of his o>vn totem as if it were a jewel beyond price, a mystery whoso betrayal might involve its owner in disaster or even destruction.