Article: Personal names as narrative in Fiji: politics of the Lauan onomasticon.

In every society, proper names, as well as all words that are being used to make reference to a specific object rather than a class or category, are a point of contact between the language and the local, concrete reality of the world. Culturally specific systems of language and meaning constitute, in a broad sense, the differences among societies, while concrete, physical, and biological reality represents a starting point of commonality from which some degree of commensurability is attainable. Perhaps this is an underlying basis for the idea that "the understanding of names and naming [can provide] the most valuable key to the elucidation of ... social systems" ...

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