(M204) It might naturally be expected that the reserve so commonly maintained with regard to personal names would be dropped or at least relaxed among relations and friends. But the reverse of this is often the case. It is precisely the persons most intimately connected by blood and especially by marriage to whom the rule applies with the greatest stringency. Such people are often forbidden, not only to pronounce each other’s names, but even to utter ordinary words which resemble or have a single syllable in common with these names. The persons who are thus mutually debarred from mentioning each other’s names are especially husbands and wives, a man and his wife’s parents, and a woman and her husband’s father. For example, among the Caffres of South Africa a woman may not publicly pronounce the birth-name of her husband or of any of his brothers, nor may she use the interdicted word in its ordinary sense. If her husband, for instance, be called u-Mpaka, from _impaka_, a small feline animal, she must speak of that beast by some other name.(1259) Further, a Caffre wife is forbidden to pronounce even mentally the names of her father-in-law and of all her husband’s male relations in the ascending line; and whenever the emphatic syllable of any of their names occurs in another word, she must avoid it by substituting either an entirely new word, or, at least, another syllable in its place. Hence this custom has given rise to an almost distinct language among the women, which the Caffres call _Ukuteta Kwabafazi_ or “women’s speech.”(1260) The interpretation of this “women’s speech” is naturally very difficult, “for no definite rules can be given for the formation of these substituted words, nor is it possible to form a dictionary of them, their number being so great—since there may be many women, even in the same tribe, who would be no more at liberty to use the substitutes employed by some others, than they are to use the original words themselves.”(1261) A Caffre man, on his side, may not mention the name of his mother-in-law, nor may she pronounce his; but he is free to utter words in which the emphatic syllable of her name occurs.(1262) In Northern Nyassaland no woman will speak the name of her husband or even use a word that may be synonymous with it. If she were to call him by his proper name, she believes it would be unlucky and would affect her powers of conception. In like manner women abstain, for superstitious reasons, from using the common names of articles of food, which they designate by terms peculiar to themselves.(1263) Among the Kondes, at the north-western end of Lake Nyassa, a woman may not mention the name of her father-in-law; indeed she may not even speak to him nor see him.(1264) Among the Barea and Bogos of Eastern Africa a woman never mentions her husband’s name; a Bogo wife would rather be unfaithful to him than commit the monstrous sin of allowing his name to pass her lips.(1265) Among the Haussas “the first-born son is never called by his parents by his name; indeed they will not even speak with him if other people are present. The same rule holds good of the first husband and the first wife.”(1266) In antiquity Ionian women would not call their husbands by their names.(1267) While the rites of Ceres were being performed in Rome, no one might name a father or a daughter.(1268) Among the South Slavs at the present day husbands and wives will not mention each other’s names, and a young wife may not call any of her housemates by their true names; she must invent or at least adopt other names for them.(1269) A Kirghiz woman dares not pronounce the names of the older relations of her husband, nor even use words which resemble them in sound. For example, if one of these relations is called Shepherd, she may not speak of sheep, but must call them “the bleating ones”; if his name is Lamb, she must refer to lambs as “the young of the bleating ones.”(1270) After marriage an Aino wife may not mention her husband’s name; to do so would be deemed equivalent to killing him.(1271) Among the Sgaus, a Karen tribe of Burma, children never mention their parents’ names.(1272) A Toda man may not utter the names of his mother’s brother, his grandfather and grandmother, his wife’s mother, and of the man from whom he has received his wife, who is usually the wife’s father. All these names are tabooed to him in the lifetime of the persons who bear them, and after death the prohibitions are not only maintained but extended.(1273) In southern India wives believe that to tell their husband’s name or to pronounce it even in a dream would bring him to an untimely end.