Daughter-in-Law Name Taboo in Karakalpak: Kinship Euphemisms, Semantic Substitution and Teknonymy

This article examines the taboo that prohibits a Karakalpak daughter-in-law (kelin) from pronouncing the names of her husband's relatives, and the system of euphemistic substitutes that the taboo has generated. Drawing on descriptive and ethnographic sources and on examples from Karakalpak prose fiction, the study identifies four substitution strategies: (1) kinship- and age-based terms of respect, (2) descriptive names based on appearance, character or occupation, (3) avoidance of common nouns that coincide with a tabooed name, replaced through semantic association, and (4) teknonymic and deferential reference to the husband. The Karakalpak data are compared with affinal avoidance practices described for Kyrgyz, Mongolic, Nguni and Australian languages. It is argued that the Karakalpak taboo, originally rooted in beliefs about the magical power of names, now functions primarily as a deference strategy in the sense of politeness theory, and that its extension from personal names to homophonous common nouns places it typologically close to Nguni hlonipha. The article concludes by outlining hypotheses on the present-day vitality of the taboo to be tested in future survey research.