Popular Science Monthly/Volume 14/November 1878/Evolution of Ceremonial Government VII

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THE undeveloped human intelligence does not initiate. Adhering tenaciously to whatever his fathers taught him, the primitive man deviates into novelty only through unintended modifications. That which every one now knows holds of languages, that they are not devised but evolve, equally holds of usages. To many proofs of this the foregoing chapters of this series have added further proofs.

The like holds of titles. Looked at as now existing, these appear artificial: there is suggested the idea that they were at some time or other consciously settled. But this is no more true than it is true that our common words were once consciously settled. Names of objects and qualities, and acts, are at first directly or indirectly descriptive; and the names we class as titles are in this respect like all others. Just as the deaf-mute who calls to mind a person he means by mimicking a peculiarity has no idea of introducing a symbol, so neither has the savage, when he recalls a place as the one where the kangaroo was killed or the one where the cliff fell down; so neither has he when he suggests an individual by referring to some marked trait in his appearance or fact in his life; and so neither has he when he gives those names, literally descriptive or metaphorically descriptive, which now and again develop into titles.

The very conception of a proper name grew up unawares. The fact that among the uncivilized a child is for years known as "Thunder-storm," or "New Moon," or "Father-come-home," shows us that there was originally nothing more than a reference to an event which occurred on its birthday, as a way of raising the thought the particular child meant. And if afterward it gets such a name as "Squash-head," or "Dirty-saddle" (Dakota names), this results from spontaneously using an alternative, and sometimes better, means of identification. Evidently the like has happened with such less needful names as titles. These must have differentiated from ordinary proper names, simply by being descriptive of some trait, or some deed, or some function, held in honor.


Various savage races give a man a name of renown in addition to, or in place of, the name by which he was previously known, on the occasion of a great achievement in battle. The Tupis furnish a good illustration. "The founder of the [cannibal] feast took an additional name as an honorable remembrance of what had been done, and his female relations ran through the house shouting the new title." And of these same people, Hans Stade says: "So many enemies as one of them slays, so many names does he give himself; and those are the noblest among them who have many such names." In North America, too, when a young Creek Indian brings his first scalp he is dubbed a man and a warrior, and receives a "war-name." Among the more advanced people of ancient Nicaragua, this practice had established a general name for such: they called one who had killed another in battle tapalique; and cobra was an equivalent title given by the Indians of the Isthmus.

How descriptive names of honor, thus arising during early militancy, become in some cases official names, we see on comparing evidence furnished by two sanguinary and cannibal societies in different stages of advance. In Feejee, "warriors of rank receive proud titles, such as 'the divider of' a district, 'the waster of' a coast, 'the depopulator of' an island—the name of the place in question being affixed." And then in ancient Mexico the names of offices filled by the king's brothers or nearest relatives were, one of them, "Cutter of men," and another, "Shedder of blood."

Where, as among the Feejeeans, the conceived distinction between men and gods is vague, and the formation of new gods by apotheosis of chiefs continues, we find the gods bearing names like those given during their lives to ferocious warriors. "The Woman-stealer," "the Brain-eater," "the Murderer," "Fresh-from-slaughter," are naturally such divine titles as arise from descriptive naming among ancestor worshiping cannibals. That sundry titles of the gods worshiped by superior races have originated in a kindred manner, is implied by the ascription of conquests to them. Be they the Egyptian deities, the Babylonian deities, or the deities of the Greeks, their power is represented as having been gained by battle; and with accounts of their achievements are in some cases joined congruous descriptive names, such as that of Mars—"the Blood-stainer," and that of the Hebrew god—"the Violent One;" which, according to Keunen, is the literal interpretation of Shaddai.


Very generally among primitive men, instead of the literally descriptive name of honor, there is given the metaphorically descriptive name of honor. Of the Tupis, whose ceremony of taking war-names is instanced above, we read that "they selected their appellations from visible objects, pride or ferocity influencing their choice." How such names, first spontaneously given by applauding companions, and afterward accorded in some more deliberate way, are apt to be acquired by men of the greatest prowess, and so to become names of rulers, is suggested by what Ximenez tells us respecting the more civilized peoples of Guatemala. Their king's names enumerated by him are—"Laughing Tiger," "Tiger of the Wood," "Oppressing Eagle," "Eagle's Head," "Strong Snake," etc. Throughout savage Africa there is a like genesis of royal titles. The King of Ashantee has among his glorifying names "Lion" and "Snake." In Dahomey, titles thus derived are made superlative: the king is "the Lion of Lions." And in a kindred spirit the King of Usambara is called "Lion of Heaven:" a title whence, should this king undergo apotheosis, myths of sundry kinds may naturally result. From Zulu-land, along with evidence of the same thing, there comes an illustration of the way in which names of honor derived from imposing objects, animate and inanimate, are joined with names of honor otherwise derived, and pass into certain of those forms of address lately dealt with. The titles of the king are—"The noble elephant," "Thou who art forever," "Thou who art as high as the heavens," "Thou who begettest the men," "The black one," "Thou who art the bird who eats other birds," "Thou who art as high as the mountains," "Thou who art the peacemaker," etc. Shooter shows us how these Zulu titles are used, by quoting part of a speech addressed to the king—"You mountain, you lion, you tiger, you that are black. There is none equal to you." Further, there is proof that names of honor thus originating pass into titles applied to the position occupied, rather than to the occupant considered personally; for Shooter says that a Caffre chief's wife "is called the Elephantess, while his great wife is called the Lioness."

Guided by such clews we cannot miss the inference that the use of animal-names as names of honor, traceable in the records of extinct historic races, similarly arose. If we find that now in Madagascar one of the king's titles is "Mighty Bull," and are reminded by this that to the conquering Rameses a like laudatory name is given by defeated foes, we can scarcely avoid suspecting that, from animal-names thus given to kings, there result the animal-names given as names of honor to deities; so that Apis in Egypt becomes an equivalent for Osiris and the Sun, and so that Bull similarly becomes an equivalent for the conquering hero and Sun-god Indra.

With titles derived from imposing natural objects and powers, it is the same. We have seen how among the Zulus the hyperbolic compliment to the king—"Thou art as high as the mountains"—passes from the form of a simile into the form of a metaphor when he is addressed as "you Mountain." And that the metaphorical name thus used sometimes becomes a proper name, proof comes to us from Samoa, where "the chief of Pango-Pango being now Maunga, or Mountain, that name must never be used in his presence." There is evidence that among the ruder ancestor-worshipers divine titles are similarly derived. The Chinooks and Navajos and Mexicans in North America, and the Peruvians in South America, regard certain mountains as gods; and since these gods have other names, the implication is that in each case an apotheosized man had received in honor either the general name Mountain, or the name of a particular mountain, as has happened in New Zealand. From complimentary comparisons to the sun, there result not only personal names of honor and divine names, but also official titles. On reading that the Mexicans distinguished Cortes as "the offspring of the Sun," that the Chibchas called the Spaniards in general "children of the Sun," and that in Tlascala Alvarado was named by the people "Sun"—on reading that "Child of the Sun" was the complimentary name often given to any one particularly clever in Peru, where the Incas, regarded as descendants of the Sun, successively enjoyed a title hence derived—we are enabled to understand how "Son of the Sun" came to be a title borne by the successive Egyptian kings, which was joined with proper names individually distinctive of them. And remembering how in Egypt, along with elaborate ancestor-worship, there went worship of living kings, we shall have no difficulty in seeing that as the kings, besides the solar title borne in common by them, took from the same original such special titles as "the Sun becoming victorious," "the Sun orderer of Creation," etc., there naturally resulted, among their gods arising by apotheosis, solar titles similarly specialized; as "the Cause of Heat," "the Author of Light," "the Power of the Sun," "the Vivifying Cause," "the Sun in the Firmament," and "the Sun in his Resting-place."





Descent of this name of honor into ordinary intercourse, though not common, does sometimes occur. After what has been said above, it will not appear strange that it should be applied to deceased persons; as, according to Motolinia, it was by the ancient Mexicans, who "called any of their dead teotl so and so—i. e., this or that god, this or that saint." And prepared by such an instance we shall understand the better its occasional use as a greeting between the living. Colonel Yule says of the Kasias, "The salutation at meeting is singular—'Kublé! O God!' "


The connection between "God" as a title and "Father" as a title becomes clear only on going back to those early forms of conception and language in which the two are undifferentiated. The fact that, even in so developed a language as Sanskrit, words which mean "making," "fabricating," "begetting," or "generating," are indiscriminately used for the same purpose, suggests how naturally in the primitive mind the living father, as begetter or visible causer of new beings, becoming at death a causer of new beings who is no longer visible, is associated in word and thought with dead and invisible causers at large, who, some of them acquiring preëminence, come to be regarded as causers in general—makers or creators. When Sir Rutherford Alcock remarks that "a spurious mixture of the theocratic and patriarchal elements forms the bases of all government, both in the Celestial and the Japanese Empires, under emperors who claim not only to be each the patriarch and father of his people, but also divine descent," he adds one to the many misinterpretations produced by descending from our high conceptions, instead of ascending from the low conceptions of the primitive man. For what he thinks a "spurious mixture" of ideas is, in fact, a normal union of ideas; which, in the cases named, has persisted longer than commonly happens in developed societies.

The Zulus show us this union very clearly. They have traditions of Unkulunkulu (literally, the old, old one), "who was the first man," "who came into being and begat man," "who gave origin to man and everything besides" (including the sun, moon, and heavens), and who is inferred to have been a black man because all his descendants are black. The original Unkulunkulu is not worshiped by them because he is supposed to be permanently dead; but instead of him the Unkulunkulus of the various tribes into which his descendants have divided are severally worshiped, and severally called "Father." Here, then, the ideas of a Creator and a Father are directly connected. Equally specific, or even more specific, are the kindred ideas conveyed in the answers which the ancient Nicaraguans gave to the question, "Who made heaven and earth?" After their first answers, "Tamagastad and Çipattoval," "our great gods whom we call teotes," cross-examination brought out the further answers—"Our fathers are these teotes;" "all men and women descend from them;" "they are of flesh and are man and woman;" "they walked over the earth dressed, and ate what the Indians ate." Gods and first parents being thus identified, fatherhood and divinity become allied ideas. The remotest ancestor supposed to be still existing in the other world to which he went, the creator of his descendants, "the old, old one," or "ancient of days," becomes the chief deity; and so "father" is not, as we suppose, a metaphorical equivalent for "god," but a literal equivalent.



Hence the prevalence of this word as a royal title. It is used equally by American Indians and by New-Zealanders in addressing the rulers of the civilized. We find it in Africa, Of the various names for the king among the Zulus, the name father heads the list; and in Dahomey, when the king walked from the throne to the palace, "every inequality was pointed out, with finger-snappings, lest it might offend the royal toe, and a running accompaniment of 'Dadda! dadda!' (Grandfather! grandfather!) and of 'Dedde! dedde!' (softly! softly!) was kept up." In Asia, we find cases in which the titles "Lord Raja and Lord Father" are joined together. In Europe, at the present time, father is applied to the czar; and in ancient times, under the form sire, it was the common name for potentates of various grades—feudal lords and king's: and still continues to be one of the names used in addressing a monarch.[1]

More readily than usual, perhaps from its double meaning, has this title been diffused. Everywhere we find it becoming the name for any kind of superior. Not to the king only among the Zulus is the word "baba," father, used; but also by inferiors of all ranks to those above them. In Dahomey a slave applies this name to his master, as his master applies it to the king. And Livingstone narrates how he was referred to as "our father" by his attendants, as also was Burchell by the Bachassins. It was the same of old in the East; as when "his servants came near, and spake unto Naaman, and said. My father," etc.; and it is the same in the remote East at the present time. A Japanese "apprentice addresses his patron as 'father.'" In Siam "children of the nobles are called 'father and mother' by their subordinates;" and Hue narrates how he saw Chinese laborers prostrating themselves before a mandarin, exclaiming, "Peace and happiness to our father and mother!" Then, as a stage in the descent to more general use, may be noted its extension to those who, apart from their rank, have acquired the superiority ascribed to age: a superiority sometimes taking precedence of rank, as in Siam, and in certain ways in Japan and China. Such extension occurred in ancient Rome, where pater was at once a magisterial title and a title given by the younger to the elder, though not related; and in Russia, at the present time, the equivalent word is used to the czar, to a priest, and to any aged man. Eventually it spreads to young as well as old. Under the form sire, at first applied to feudal rulers, major and minor, the title of father originated our familar sir; once general among us in speech and still in letters.

A curious group of derivatives, common among uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples, must be named. The wish to compliment by ascribing that dignity which fatherhood implies, has in many places led to the practice of replacing a man's proper name by a name which, while it recalls this honorable paternity, distinguishes him by the name of his child. The Malays, says St. John, have "the same custom as the Dyaks of taking the name of their first-born, as Pa Sipi, the father of Sipi." Marsden names the usage as common in Sumatra; and Ellis illustrates it from Madagascar. It is so too among some Indian hill tribes: the Kasias "address each other by the names of their children, as Pabobon, father of Bobon!" Africa also furnishes instances. Bechuanas addressing Mr. Moffat used to say, "I speak to the father of Mary;" and in the Pacific States of North America there are people so solicitous to bear this primitive name of honor that, until a young man has children, his dog stands to him in the position of a son, and he is known as the father of his dog.


The supremacy associated with age in patriarchal groups and in societies derived by composition from patriarchal groups, shown primarily in that honoring of parents which, as in the Jewish commandments, is put next to the worship of God, and secondarily in the honoring of old men in general, gives rise to a kindred but divergent group of titles. Age being dignified, words indicating seniority become names of dignity.

The beginnings may be discerned among the uncivilized: councils being formed of the older men, there arises a connection between the local name for an older man and an office of power and therefore of honor. Merely noting this, it will suffice if we trace among European peoples the growth of titles hence resulting. Among the Romans, senator, or member of the senatus, words having the same root with senex, was the name for a member of the assembly of elders; and in early times these senators or elders, otherwise called patres, represented the component tribes: father and elder being thus used as equivalents. From the further cognate word senior, we have, in derived languages, signore, seigneur, senhor; first applied to head-men, rulers, or lords, and then by diffusion becoming names of honor for those of inferior rank. The same thing has happened with ealdor or aldor. This, says Max Müller, "like many other titles of rank in the various Teutonic tongues, is derived from an adjective implying age;" so that "earl" and "alderman," both diverging from this root, are names of honor, similarly resulting from that social superiority which went along with age.

Whether or not the German title Graf should be added, is a moot point. If Max Müller is right in considering the objections of Grimm to the current interpretation inadequate, then the word originally means gray; that is, gray-headed.


We may deal briefly with the remaining titles which re illustrate, in their respective ways, the general principle set forth.


















  1. Though the disputes respecting the origins of sire and sieur have ended in the conclusion that they are derived from the same root, meaning originally elder, yet it has become clear that sire was a contracted form in use earlier than sieur (the contracted form of seigneur), and hence acquired a more general meaning, which became equivalent to father. Its applicability to various persons of dignity besides the seigneur, is evidence of its previous evolution and spread; and that it had a meaning equivalent to father, is shown by the fact that in early French grant-sire is used as an equivalent for grand-père, and also by the fact that sire was not applicable to an unmarried man.