Jealousy Names, Civilised Names: Anthroponomy of the Jlao Kru of Liberia

This article describes the naming practices of a west African community with a long tradition of migration, formerly overseas. Two major systems co-exist, enabling an individual's specifically ethnic and 'civilised' identities to be distinguished. Personal names classify the individual as a species, as Levi-Strauss has pointed out. Nevertheless, Kru naming does more. Names are signs, and here the sign may also carry a message-an explicit rebuke of others' misdeeds or a rejection of their criticism-by the name donor. As a part of language, naming is to be understood semiotically and symbolically. Classification is an act, so that each use of a name makes and remakes events. Names are thus indices of many processes and cannot be interpreted solely by setting up the classifications in which they are presumed to be members.