“We are all Kmhmu, just the same”: ethnonyms, ethnic identities, and ethnic groups

Ethnonyms (the names of ethnic groups), in their socially situated linguistic use, can offer insights into indigenous conceptions of the sociocultural universe. Here I examine the complex ethnonymic system of the Kmhmu of northern Laos and neighboring regions. Kmhmu is both an ethnonym and a common noun meaning “person” or “human”; I consider how the term is understood during the ongoing communicative work of the community. Kmhmu ethnonymic usage also reveals two indigenous models of ethnicity, models that coexist unproblematically despite their mutually contradictory appearance. One model corresponds to scholarly conceptions of ethnicity as situational, the other to conceptions of ethnicity as primordial.