The Animal Names of the Arab Ancestors: Explaining the Non-Human Names of Arab Kinship Groups, Volume 1

In the Arab world, people belong to kinship groups that are named after wolves, birds, and plants. Why these names? Young’s book questions old explanations and suggests a new hypothesis: Bedouin tribes use such names to obscure internal cleavages. Contents Acknowledgements Figures and Tables Abbreviations Chapter 1 Explaining the Non-human Names of Arab Kinship Groups 1 The Puzzle: Why Use Terms for Non-human Species as Names for People and Groups? 2 The Importance of Kinship Group Names and the Mundane Elements of Culture 3 The Distinctiveness of Arab Names for Kinship Groups in Comparative Perspective 4 A Traditional Explanation of Kinship Group Names: The “Predatory Animals” Hypothesis 5 Exceptions to the “Predatory Animals” Hypothesis: Why Use the Names of Vermin and Other Valueless Species as Personal and Tribal Names? 6 Robertson Smith’s Solution: “Totemism” 7 Comparing the Arab Case with More Elaborated Cases of “Totemism” 8 The Lingering Traces of “Totemism” in Scholarship about the Middle East 9 Evaluating Nöldeke’s Explanations: The Inadequacy of the Anecdotal Approach 10 Testing Nöldeke’s Explanations of Why Animal Names Are Given to Groups 11 A New Explanation: “Obscuring Internal Cleavages” 12 Deriving Testable Hypotheses from the “Obscuring Internal Cleavages” Explanation 13 The Broader Context: The Meanings of Arab Tribal Names 14 How to Read the Remaining Chapters in This Book Chapter 2 Compiling a Data Base of Arab Kinship Groups Named after Natural Species 1 The Starting Point: Finding a Suitable List of Arab Kinship Groups 2 The Difficulties of Translation 3 The Process of Comparing Terms for Natural Species with Kinship Group Names Chapter 3 Methods for Compiling a List of Arabic Terms for Birds 1 Theoretical Background: Anthropological Research on Folk Taxonomies and the Definition of Arabic Bird Terms 2 Obstacles That Complicate the Comparison of Bird Terms with Kinship Group Names Chapter 4 Finding and Translating Arabic Terms for Mammals 1 The Difficulty of Defining Non-taxonomic Terms for Mammals in Modern Standard Arabic 2 The Impact of Classical and Early Islamic Scholarship on Arabic Biological Terminology 3 An Alternative to Standard Dictionaries: Local Tradition 4 The Utility and Limits to the Usefulness of Local Tradition for Defining Animal Terms in Arabic 5 An Artificial Hierarchy of Arabic Animal Terms 6 Additional Terms for Mammals below the Species Level of Classification 7 Problems in Comparing Terms for Mammals with Kinship Group Names Chapter 5 Arabic Terms for Plants, Insects, Reptiles, and Marine Life 1 Problems in Collecting Terms for Plants 2 Terms for Insects and Spiders, Reptiles and Amphibians, and Marine Life Chapter 6 Evaluating Existing Explanations in Light of Empirical Evidence 1 The “Predatory Animals” Hypothesis 2 Testing the “Ancestor Eponymy” Hypothesis: Comparing the Personal Names of Ancestors with the Collective Names of Kinship Groups 3 “Nickname Eponymy” as an Explanation of Group Names Derived from Terms for Natural Species 4 The “Naturalistic” Explanation Chapter 7 Group Names, Bedouin Social Organization, and the Flow of Information 1 Two Ideal Types of Social Organization in the Arab World: The Bedouin Tribe and the Sedentary Tribe 2 Sedentary Tribes That Have Bedouin Features 3 Conflict Resolution and Bedouin Control Over Genealogical Information 4 The Bedouin Tribe as a Stratified Collection of Peripheral Groups around a Core of Kin 5 Economic Inequality and Political Stratification in Bedouin Tribes 6 Geography and Political Stratification in Bedouin Tribes 7 The Attachment of Foreign Elements to the Bedouin Tribe 8 The Cultural Dimension: Native Representations of Attachment to the Tribe 9 Using Non-human Names for Kinship Groups as “Empty Ciphers” that Conceal Foreign Origins Chapter 8 Tests of the New Explanation 1 The Heterogeneous Composition of Bedouin Tribes 2 Test Number One: A Search for a Correlation between Variation in Tribal Heterogeneity and Variation in the Names Chosen for Kinship Groups 3 A Second Test of the “Obscuring Internal Cleavages” Hypothesis: Comparing Bedouin with Non-Bedouin Chapter 9 Conclusions: Varying Levels of Support for Five Hypotheses 1 The Goals of the Analysis 2 The Goals of This Book 3 Topics for Future Research References Index "In the Arab world, people belong to kinship groups (lineages andtribes). Many lineages are named after animals, birds, and plants. Why? This survey evaluates five old explanations - "totemism," "emulation of predatory animals," "ancestor eponymy," "nicknaming," and "Bedouin proximity to nature." It suggests a new hypothesis: Bedouin tribes use animal names to obscure their internal cleavages. Such tribes wax and wane as they attract and lose allies and clients; they include "attached" elements as well as actual kin. To prevent outsiders from spotting "attached" groups, Bedouin tribes scatter non-human names across their segments, making it difficult to link any segment with a human ancestor. Young's argument contributes to theories of tribal organization, Arab identity, onomastics, and Near Eastern kinship"-- Provided by publisher