Naming in Nunavut: A Case Study in Political Onomastics

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The study that forms the basis for this article revisits and substantially updates my earlier work on Inuit names and naming experiences, within the framework of a politics of naming. I have been developing the sub-discipline of political onomastics, or politics of naming, since the early 1980s. Inuit experiences with decades of colonialist-Outsider interventions provide a case study within which to examine the political implications of naming and renaming. 'There is no social agent who does not aspire ... to have the power to name and to create the world through naming', wrote the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1991: 105). He called official naming 'a symbolic act of imposition [that makes] the state the holder of the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence' (Bourdieu 1991: 239). The experience of Inuit in Canada is both unique and universal. While the particular religious institutions, individuals, and ways of bestowing missionary-given (baptismal, Christian) names and the renaming programme called 'Project Surname' were unique to Canadian experience, there are similar reidentification programmes elsewhere in the Arctic and in virtually every part of the world. Inuit Naming Traditions Names are the heart and soul of Inuit culture. Over the years, visitors have studied and observed, praised and criticised, confused and distorted, regulated and registered, revised and amended Inuit names. In the intricate, multi-layered Inuit naming system, names are passed from one generation to the next to commemorate and continue the lives of members of the community. The name can belong to a male in one generation and a female in another. What is crucial is that it continue to be passed along the multi-generational continuum. As Minnie Aodla Freeman (1978: 50) explains: 'Our belief is that no one really dies until someone is named after the dead person. So, to leave the dead in peace and to prevent their spirits from being scattered all over the community, we give their names to the newborn. The minds of the people do not rest until the dead have been renamed'. A child is not a complete person until he or she receives an atiq - a namesake name. The whole naming system is based on sauniq - namesake commemoration so powerful it amounts to a form of reincarnation. The namesake, or atiq, can continue life through many people of either gender. When a child is named, he or she becomes the sauniq or 'bone' of all those who have shared that name. People linked by names are bound together in a complex and permanent set of relationships. The namesake ties are so strong that kinship terms, dress, and behaviour often follow the relationship rather than the individual's biological sex. Napatchie Akeego MacRae described how cross-gender naming worked in her family (Alia 2005: 5-8): 'A lot of the names are about a hundred years old that I know of ... My father's sisters call me Akeego. When I was born, [a man] had just recently died ... called Napatchie [pronounced 'Napat-see'] ... Napatchie was a man - the person I'm named after - his relatives call me his younger brother'. Her identities are even more complicated because, in addition to being a 'younger brother', she is also a 'younger sister': 'My middle name is Akeewok, after my dad's youngest sister ... My grandfather showed his love towards me more than towards my other siblings because I was named after his youngest daughter'. Her biological family treats her as female, but the family whose brother is her namesake treats her as male: 'The older brother would ask me if I want to go hunting with him, or catch my first caribou or seal ... but the way I saw myself, I was more female, so I didn't want to do that. It's kind of hard to explain how it really works'. Alexina Kublu tells a story that shows the strength of the namesake connection. Her daughter's namesake died in a plane crash, but her daughter was never told about it. When my daughter was about eleven, we were flying down to Winnipeg from Rankin and it was pretty turbulent. …