HL 2 Discovering the Significance of the Names

2 Discovering the Significance of the Names
Note:Arroganti, sprezzanti del mondo esterno e indifferenti alle tecnologie dei visitatori. Il disprezzo cresce al vrescere della natura selvaggia...

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2@@@@@@@@@@@@@@FINO AL SEGNALIBRO

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they struck me as being more self-confident—even somewhat arrogant—and startlingly indifferent to the “outside world”
Note:ARROGANTI E SPREZZANTI VERSO IL MONDO ESTERNO... POCO CURIOSI

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they were not awed for very long by some of our technology, such as outboard motors, machetes, or flashlights.
Note:TECNOLOGIA

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I knew immediately when I saw my first Yanomamö what “wild” Indian meant compared to an “acculturated” one.
Note:DIFFERENZA BEN XCEPIBILE

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The wild ones had a kind of glint in their eyes and a haughty look
Note:IL SELVAGGIO

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surrounded by groups of Yanomamö—dozens—each clamoring to be heard and, when I didn’t respond to them in a normal Yanomamö fashion, they assumed that I was hard of hearing and would speak louder,
Note:CONVERSANDO AMABILMENTE CON Y

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tomorrowiplantotakeatripdownstreamin mycanoetocatchsomefishandiwillgiveyou someifyougivemesomematchesinreturn. Imagine trying to make sense of a phrase like this
Note:DISORIENTAMENTO

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the long strings of Yanomamö
Note:UN UNIVERSITÀ NCUBO

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For example, the Yanomamö have a frequently used phoneme that sounds to English speakers like the oe or ö in the name of the famous German poet Goethe.
Note:SUONI ESTRANEI ALL INGLESE

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FONEMI CHE NN ESISTONO ESISTANO N INGLESE

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no other native group speaks a related language
Note:DIMOSTRATO L ISOLAMENTO

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The Physical Appearance of the Yanomamö
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Their cautious attitudes were understandable.
Note:ACCOMPAGNATORI...CHI SI INTERESSA A Y È X RAPIRLI

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Discovering the “Name Taboo” and the Structure of Yanomamö Society
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the Yanomamö were practical jokers and would play mischievous tricks on me, and (2) they would sometimes get me into trouble by having me repeat things aloud that angered others within earshot.
Note:PIACE IMBROGLIARE

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whenever I showed them photographs of women—even photos of women from their own village—the first thing that drew their attention was the relative amount of hair the women had around their pubic area.
Note:LA PRIMA COSA CHE NOTANO IN UNA DONNA

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beshi,

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horny.”

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One day a young man asked me what I thought was a question about the hair on my body, especially the hair on my pubic area. We were resting on a trail en route to a nearby village. He knew that I sometimes confused these two words. He asked me, “Wa beshi rä kä?” (“Are you horny?”), which I mistakenly heard as “Wa weshi rä kä?” (“Do you have pubic hair?”). There was a small crowd of young men with me. They all watched and listened attentively. When I said, “Awei! Ya beshi!” (“Yes, I’m horny!”) they broke into uproarious laughter because they had set me up to confuse the two words—and I fell into their trap.
Note:LO HUMOR Y..DOPPI SENSI...INGANNARE LO STRANIERO

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For example, if Kumamawä wanted to tell Wakupatawä that he is really ugly, Kumamawä would say to me, the stranger, “Say to Wakupatawä, ‘Wa waridiwa no modahawa!’ (‘You are really ugly!’)” I, of course, would have no idea what I was told to say and would innocently repeat what Kumamawä told me to say to Wakupatawä. But instead of getting angry with Kumamawä, Wakupatawä would get angry with me!
Note:AMBASCIATORE PUNITO PER Y VALE LO STRATAGEMMA

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the initiator of the insult is mysteriously invisible
Note:INVISIBILE

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Buutawä would get angry at me because I used his name publicly.
Note:TABÙ DEL NOME

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tribal societies are fundamentally kinship-based
Note:PARENTELA

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imagine a Yanomamö village as a large spiderweb.
Note:UNA RAGNATELA

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men and women remarry
Note:IL GIOCO DELLE COPPIE

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many men have several wives at the same time (polygyny) or several wives that they divorce
Note:Cccccccc

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a few men share the same wife (polyandry) until one of them can find a wife for himself.
Note:Ccccccccc

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Social Intricacies of Name Avoidance
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The Yanomamö have what anthropologists call a name taboo.
Note:TIPICO

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strangers are generally suspect and viewed with distrust
Note:IL LORO ATTEGGIAMENTO VERSO DI VOI

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To know someone’s personal name is, in a sense, to “possess” some kind of control over that person,

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X ACQUISIRE POTERE

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What frequently happens is that the headman of the village adopts some fictitious kinship relationship with you.
Note:SE SEI AFFIDABILE

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brother-in-law that is most frequently chosen.
Note:IL CASO TIPICO

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when someone comes into a Yanomamö village to live there for a long period of time—as I did—they must somehow or other become incorporated into the social group by an extension of kinship ties.
Note:PARENTELA ARTIFICIALE

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Yanomamö villages comprise a small number of what we would call very large extended families.
Note:LA RAGNATELA

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Everyone is, by kin term, a blood relative.
Note:NO SUOCERI NO COGNATI

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Yanomamö in fact are obliged to marry their female cross cousins
Note:VINCOLO

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Yanomamö didn’t want me to know their names because I was a stranger, a nabä: a subhuman.
Note:PRIMO XIODO... DIFFICOLTÀ

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it was acceptable to use the names of young children in many circumstances,
Note:TRUCCHI X AGGIRARE L OSTACOLO

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It was acceptable to yell out something like “Hey! Go get Nakabaimi’s mother!” Nakabaimi being a child.
Note:ESEMPIO

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you should not use a child’s name if he or she is sick—it
Note:ALTRO VINCOLO

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Yanomamö were “egalitarian” and nobody had higher status
Note:TIPCO

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“differential access to scarce, strategic material resources.”
Note:DOVE SI ROVELA LO STATUS...DI SOLITO

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Individuals of the same age and same sex have the same social and political status. Kinship had nothing to do with biology. This was a fundamental message of Marxist social science that dominated most departments of anthropology in the 1960s,
Note:UN LUOGO COMUNE DI UN TEMPO

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For reasons I’ve never understood, “science” and “Marxism” were linked together.
Note:INCOMPRENSIBILE

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One implied the other because, I suppose, both were materialistic
Note:IPOTESI TRABALLANTE

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leaders in all Yanomamö villages almost always have the largest number of genetic relatives within the group.
Note:PIÙ PARENTI PIÙ LEADERSHIP

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status among the Yanomamö depended to a very large extent on the numbers and kinds of biologically defined (genetic) relatives one has in the community and was entirely unrelated to “control” one had over allegedly “scarce strategic resources.”
Note:STATUS E GENETICA.... NO POTERE

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Yanomamö males are concerned about their status and they strive for esteem.

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POSSIAMO DIRLO

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The Yanomamö have a rich vocabulary to describe stages of life during human maturation,
Note:PIÙ SI AVANZA PIÙ SI CHIEDE RISPETTO

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Objecting to the public use of your name is a kind of status consciousness
Note:SEGNALI

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they quickly get angry and unpleasant when someone uses their name aloud
Note:I MATURANDI SONO UN XICOLO

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the taboo on using names serves to endorse and reinforce the differential status system among males—and
Note:COORDINAMENTO ESEMPLARE

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See what happens when, on your next visit to your family doctor, you address him/her by their given name—or call the judge at a trial by his or her first name,
Note:NOI NN SIAMO MOLTO DIVERSI

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Yanomamö are male chauvinists.
Note:LO STATUS DELLE DONNE È INFIMO

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The Yanomamö “Sabotage” My Genealogy Research
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When a person dies, his or her name is not supposed to be used aloud again in that village.
Note:DEFUNTI

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avoid reminding the close kinsmen of the death of a loved one,
Note:FUNZIONE

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They try to name people with minute aspects or attributes of commonly used names of plants, animals, environmental features, etc.
Note:ORIGINE DEI SOPRANNOMI

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Complicating the problem of collecting genealogies was the fact that a large number of Yanomamö have two (or even more) names.
Note:ALTRO PROBLEMA X LO STUDIOSO...DIFFICILE INCROCIARE OLE STORIE

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one is the “true” name and the other(s) are nicknames or derogatory names that people use behind the person’s back or in distant villages, which, in general, denigrate their neighbors when they are out of earshot.
Note:SOPRANNOMI DENIGRATORI

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Younger people tended to invent names (and relationships) to impress me with how much they knew,
Note:FONTI INAFFIDABILI

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My payment scale started with small items—small fishhooks, nylon fish line, spools of thread, a box of matches—and
Note:COMPENSO ALL INFORMATORE

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they would grab me by the head, pull my ear close to their mouths, and barely audibly whisper the person’s name into my ear.
Note:NEL RIFERIRE I NOMI DEI GENITORI

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Discovering the Elaborate Sabotage
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The Yanomamö are very ethnocentric and seize on the slightest of differences to make invidious distinctions between “them” and “us.”
Note:RAZZISTI AL INVEROSIMILE...LORO E NOI

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I discovered how the Bisaasi-teri had systematically deceived me.
Note:INFORMATORI INAFFIDABILI

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Yanomamö who, according to their Creation Myth, were descendants of the Blood of Moon.
Note:L ANTENATO

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Peribo (Moon) was an ancient Spirit who lived on the Sky Layer.
Note:Ccccccccccc

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As always on trips through the jungle we walked single file to get to Mömariböwei-teri.
Note:IN FILA INDIANA

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They combed their pudding-bowl bangs with their fingers, donned their monkey-tail headbands, washed their legs and arms in the stream, and quickly applied the red nara paint and a few brilliant feathers they carried in the bamboo arrow point quivers (toras) that dangled down their backs.
Note:SI FANNO BELLI PRIMA DELL INGRESSO NEL VILLAGGIO

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An instant, loud, collective hoot erupted from the residents, who excitedly took our whistle signal as a sign of peace
Note:L NGRESSO NEL VILLAGGIO

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everyone stays home when visitors arrive lest they miss something worth seeing, like, perhaps, a third arm or an extra eye of the subhuman nabä.

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L UOMO BIANCO

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The Yanomamö have a notion of nuclear family very similar to ours—unmarried sons and daughters usually lived at home, but married ones lived in different households within the same village.
Note:FAMIGLIA NUCLEARE

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Most Yanomamö girls want to be given in marriage to someone in their own village—because they will have brothers who will protect them from a possibly cruel husband.
Note:IL DESIDERIO DI OGNI RAGAZZA

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But the major strategy of intervillage political alliances is to get your allies to give you marriageable females—and
Note:POLITICA

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they quickly learned that I always brought a bigger gift for them than for other men and this news spread from village to village.
Note:TUTTI MOLTO COLLABORATIVI CON L ANTROPOLOGO

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the Polaroid prints would be soiled—full of red pigment and smudges from dozens of fingers. The Yanomamö loved to look at these pictures, run their fingers over them, and discuss them for hours;
Note:LE FOTO FATTE ALLE FAMGLIE

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It seemed that the Bisaasi-teri had collectively conspired to tell me a bunch of whopping lies about people’s names.
Note:LE OSCENITA FATTE DIRE ALL ANTROPOLOGO ...CHE DIVERTIMENTO...IL NOME DELLA MOGLIE DEL CAPO...FICA BARBUTA

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Hairy Cunt was married to the headman, Long Dong, their youngest son was Asshole,
Note:ESEMPIO

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I would have been totally ignorant of the elaborate hoax the Bisaasi-teri had played on me. I made this discovery some six months into my fieldwork!
Note:L HANNO FATTA BENE

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Many anthropologists do their fieldwork in less time than that—and usually in a single village, which means they cannot cross-check their information with people in other villages.
Note:LE CAVOLATE DEGLI ANTROPOLOGHI

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Thereafter, when I wanted to learn something about Village A, I would go to Village B and ask people there what I wanted to know.
Note:IL METODO PIÙ SICURO

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They enjoyed duping others, especially the unsuspecting and gullible anthropologist who lived among them.
L UNICA CERTEZZA