+646+. It is not clear how early the practice began of giving these beings proper names. In the lowest known tribes we meet descriptive titles such as "old one," "grandfather," "grandmother"; and so among some civilized peoples, as the Semites, whose local deities are often known simply as _baals_ ('possessors,' 'lords'), sometimes as lords of particular places, as, for example, the Arabic Dhu ash-Shara (Dusares), 'lord of the Shara.' A god identified with a particular object may be called by its name; so 'Heaven' is said to have become the proper name of a Huron deity (cf. Zeus, Tien, Shangti).[1083] Names of Pawnee gods are Bright Star (Evening Star), Great Star (Morning Star), Motionless One (North Star), and many other such; the Navahos have The Woman Who Changes (apparently the changing year), White Shell Woman, Child of Water;[1084] the Kolarian Sunthals, Great Mountain;[1085] the Brazilian Arawaks, River-born.[1086] A proper name becomes necessary as soon as definite social relations with a god are established. Divine names in civilized religions, of remote origin, are often inexplicable.
+647+. Among the simple clan gods divinized men should be included. In many parts of the world, as is remarked above, chiefs and other great personages are regarded as divine; this attribution of divinity is a part of that general early conception according to which there was an element of power in all things, naturally embodied in a special way in important men. This sort of divinization is particularly prominent in Melanesia and parts of Polynesia; it exists also in Japan and in West Africa. As a rule it is only the recently dead that are thus regarded as divine objects of worship, and the cult would thus be substantially a part of the worship of ancestors; but such divinized men frequently bore a peculiarly intimate relation to the clan or community and became specific protectors.[1087] So far as their origin is concerned, this class of divine patrons differs essentially from the old clan god, whose genesis probably belongs to a remote antiquity and is based on the general consciousness of some powerful influence in nature.[1088]
+648+. Clan gods are found abundantly among the ancient civilized peoples, Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Arabian, Greek, Roman, and probably existed among other peoples as to whom we have no exact information. In Old Egypt every hamlet had its protecting deity; these continued to be the objects of popular worship down to a very late time, the form of the deity being usually that of a living animal.[1089]