nicknames and social structure in zinacantan

12
Nicknames and Social Structure in Zinacantan‘ GEORGE A. COLLIER Stanford University VICTORIA R. BRICKER Tulane University In this paper we attempt to coordinate a variety of analytic tools in the study of Zina- canteco naming practices, especially that of nicknaming. We suggest that nicknames, whose initial use is informal, are extended to members of distinct local descent groups and are gradually incorporated into the system of formal names by replacing Indian surnames. Viewing local descent groups as the principal point of articulation between the naming system and lineage structure, we show how changes in the latter are accompanied by changes in the former, and we outline the economic and political factors that seem to be behind the tendencies toward segmentation within the lineage. We conceive of nam- ing as a system of communicative codes and measure the communicative eficiency of naming components. This enables us to compare eighteenth-century Zinacanteco sur- name groups with modern nickname groups and enhances our argument that they are parallel in structure, in statistical distribution over population, and in the meaning con- tent o f particular names. We present evidence suggesting that our model relating formal and informal naming practices to modern Zinacanteco social structure appears to have historical validity as well. [names, Zinacantan, Tzotzil, lineage, humor] I HE RELATIONSHIP between naming T practices and social structure has re- cently become of special interest to social anthropologists. LCvi-Strauss ( 1966) has argued that proper names have social signif- ication: Every clan or sub-clan possesses a quota of names which only its own members can bear and, just as an individual is part of the group, so an individual name is “part” of the collec- tive appellation, either in the sense that it may cover the whole animal, and the individ- ual names correspond to its parts or limbs, or that the collective appellation may depend on an idea of the animal conceived at the highest level of generality and the individual appellations correspond to one of its predica- tions in time or space [1966:174]. Lave (1967) has demonstrated the dual function of names as social classifiers and individualizers among the Krikati (GE) of Brazil. She shows that, on the one hand, name sets are shared by groups of individ- uals, while on the other hand, nicknames Accepted for publication 7 April 1969. originate as informal substitutes for name sets, calling particular attention to a per- son’s individuality: Nicknames are a result of unusual events, usually of a sexual or excretory nature, and are transmitted along with the original namw in a name set [1967:160]. Nicknames permit flexibility in this system of social classification, for If there were no way to add names, there would be no way to cope with either the gradual attrition of names over time, nor with an increase in population [1967:161]. Goodenough (1965) points out that in some communities the classificatory prop- erty of names is emphasized, while in others the individualizing property is stressed. In Truk, for example, a person’s name empha- sizes his uniqueness as a person, for no two people share the same name. This function of names as individualizers contrasts with the Truk social system, which suppresses in- dividuality (1965:272). In Lakalai, on the other hand, the person’s name emphasizes his place “in a procreational chain or in for- 289

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Page 1: Nicknames and Social Structure in Zinacantan

Nicknames and Social Structure in Zinacantan‘

GEORGE A. COLLIER Stanford University

VICTORIA R. BRICKER Tulane University

I n this paper we attempt to coordinate a variety of analytic tools in the study of Zina- canteco naming practices, especially that of nicknaming. We suggest that nicknames, whose initial use is informal, are extended to members of distinct local descent groups and are gradually incorporated into the system of formal names by replacing Indian surnames. Viewing local descent groups as the principal point of articulation between the naming system and lineage structure, we show how changes in the latter are accompanied by changes in the former, and we outline the economic and political factors that seem to be behind the tendencies toward segmentation within the lineage. We conceive of nam- ing as a system of communicative codes and measure the communicative eficiency of naming components. This enables us to compare eighteenth-century Zinacanteco sur- name groups with modern nickname groups and enhances our argument that they are parallel in structure, in statistical distribution over population, and in the meaning con- tent o f particular names. We present evidence suggesting that our model relating formal and informal naming practices to modern Zinacanteco social structure appears to have historical validity as well. [names, Zinacantan, Tzotzil, lineage, humor]

I HE RELATIONSHIP between naming T practices and social structure has re-

cently become of special interest to social anthropologists. LCvi-Strauss ( 1966) has argued that proper names have social signif- ication:

Every clan or sub-clan possesses a quota of names which only its own members can bear and, just as an individual is part of the group, so an individual name is “part” of the collec- tive appellation, either in the sense that it may cover the whole animal, and the individ- ual names correspond to its parts or limbs, or that the collective appellation may depend on an idea of the animal conceived at the highest level of generality and the individual appellations correspond to one of its predica- tions in time or space [1966:174].

Lave (1967) has demonstrated the dual function of names as social classifiers and individualizers among the Krikati (GE) of Brazil. She shows that, on the one hand, name sets are shared by groups of individ- uals, while on the other hand, nicknames

Accepted for publication 7 April 1969.

originate as informal substitutes for name sets, calling particular attention to a per- son’s individuality:

Nicknames are a result of unusual events, usually of a sexual or excretory nature, and are transmitted along with the original namw in a name set [1967:160].

Nicknames permit flexibility in this system of social classification, for

If there were no way to add names, there would be no way to cope with either the gradual attrition of names over time, nor with an increase in population [1967:161].

Goodenough (1965) points out that in some communities the classificatory prop- erty of names is emphasized, while in others the individualizing property is stressed. In Truk, for example, a person’s name empha- sizes his uniqueness as a person, for no two people share the same name. This function of names as individualizers contrasts with the Truk social system, which suppresses in- dividuality (1965:272). In Lakalai, on the other hand, the person’s name emphasizes his place “in a procreational chain or in for-

289

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290 American Anthropologist [72, 1970

mally structured kin and social relation- ships’’ (1965:271) at the expense of his in- dividuality, but the Lakalai public values stress individual achievement ( 1965: 273). Goodenough concludes from this that, in these two cases,

naming customs and modes of address ap- pear to counter-balance the effect that the workings of the social system tend otherwise to give to people’s images of themselves and of others [1965:275].

Our research in Zinacantan, Chiapas, Mexico, permits us to view the relationship between naming practices and social struc- ture from still another perspective. Every Zinacanteco has a surname that identifies the lineage to which he belongs, and most lineages are further subdivided by nick- names that identify individuals belonging to lineage segments. In hamlet social organiza- tion, the local descent group is the most sig- nificant structural unit, corresponding in some cases to the lineage and in others to the lineage segment. Lineage segmentation can be measured by the distribution of nick- names, and this index has social structural correlates. While the basic features of ham- let organization seem to be constant over time in the sense that the types of groups and the relations between them are un- changing, local descent groups rarely last for more than two or three generations. The re- shuffling of these groups is accompanied by changes in the inventory of Zinacanteco sur- names in a way that seems to account for the disappearance and addition of names to the surname pool at the present time and possibly also in the past. The mechanisms of these changes and their significance will be our concern in this paper.

II Zinacantan, one of several Tzotzil-speak-

ing highland townships west and north of San Crist6bal las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, has been the subject of anthropological scru- tiny for several years (cf. Vogt 1966, 1969). The bulk of its population of 7,650 live in scattered settlements in 15 hamlets,

of which PApas, the focus of this study, is typical. Men here are active in the township ritual cargo system (Cancian 1965), financ- ing their participation by entrepreneurial cornfarming of rented lowland fields that supplement the crops from limited highland properties.

Each Zinacanteco possesses three names:

a first name, like Rotnin (Domin- go), ?Antun (Antonio), or Marui? (Maria)-all loan words from Spanish; a so-called Spanish surname, like Lopis (Lbpez) or Teratol (de la Torre) ; a so-called Indian surname, which includes Tzotzil names like 3Akov ‘wasp nest,’? or 30k’il ‘cofrote,’ and Spanish loan words like Prorna? (browns) , or Vota? (botas) .

Both of the surnames are lineage names passed from father to child and retained throughout life, even by women after they marry and leave home. The first name is given a child at the baptismal ceremony.

One function of the Indian surname is to define the exogamous group from which the Zinacanteco should not take a wife. A Zina- canteco is prohibited from marrying a woman who bears the same Indian surname as he does. The significance of the Spanish surname has been the subject of much de- bate (Villa 1947; Siverts 1960; Guiteras- Holmes 1961; Vogt 1969; Pozas 1959). We will postpone discussion of this problem until Section VII.

Zinacantan has sixteen Spanish surnames that combine with approximately seventy Indian surnames. The Indian surnames form mutually exclusive sets, each linked with only one Spanish surname. Thus, for ex- ample, the Indian surname Cfiku? occurs only with the Spanish surname Lopis, al- though Lopis may be found comi :ned with other Indian surnames such as Ki$, fTin-tan and Tan-Cak. There are twenty-seven per- sonal first names for men and sixteen for women.

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COLLIER & BRICKER] Nicknames in Zinacantan 29 1

Many surnames are localized by hamlet. Within each hamlet, the population is found distributed unequally among surnames (i.e., lineages). In addition, certain first names enjoy greater popularity than others. Some- times two full brothers or sisters living in the same domestic group share the same first name. The result is that Zinacantecos them- selves have difficulties differentiating people on the basis of first names and surnames alone. There is, however, an elaborate pro- liferation of nicknames nearly always used for reference but never for direct address. Nicknames reduce the ambiguity of refer- ence significantly, as we shall see in Section IV.

I11 Nicknames are of particular interest for

our problem because they are often ex- tended in application from an individual to his offspring or siblings. When nicknames are passed on from one generation to the next, it frequently happens that the nick- name replaces the Indian surname. Our PApas data indicate that the development of nicknames into surnames is a continuous process that accompanies the formation and disintegration of local descent groups.

We are calling a “nickname” any term or set of terms referring to an individual that is neither his first name of baptism nor his lineage surname nor a kin term. Among nicknames we recognize the following classes:

Mother’s Spanish surname; Mother’s Indian surname; First name of well-known relative; Reference to an individual’s occupa- tion; Reference to a geographical location with which the individual is asso- ciated; Humorous reference to an individ- ual’s aberrant appearance or be- havior; The nickname of a near relative.

Nicknames may be drawn from any of these classes to clarify ambiguous personal

references. If two men have the name Marian Lopis Tan-Zak, they may be dis- tinguished by referring to one of them by his mother’s Spanish surname (Peres), by his mother’s Indian surname (MoZilurn) , by his uncle’s first name (Pavlu), by his occupation (HYlol ‘curer’), by the name of the hamlet where he lives (Pat Wsil) , by a humorous nickname (Kue’u-nuk’u ‘fat-neck‘), or by a near relative’s nick- name.

The first three classes of nicknames need no explanation. They come into use only in situations of ambiguity. Nicknames belong- ing to the next three classes all refer to distinctive characteristics of the person to whom the nicknames refer. If a person has distinguished himself by assuming a social position few other Zinacantecos attain, he may acquire his role name as a nickname. He may be called “curer” (Hpilol) , “mayor- domo” (Martorno), “cowherd” ( Vakero) , or “musician” (Hvabuhorn) . When a Zinacan- teco moves from one hamlet to another, he may be called by the name of his former hamlet. If he builds his house near an im- portant natural feature in the landscape such as cliffs (?entik), a sinkhole (yoZob), a rocky place (tontik), the edge of a water- hole ( t i3 YO?), he may be given, as a nick- name, the name of that feature.

Humorous nicknames are applied to indi- viduals as a form of ridicule. Zinacantecos ridicule anyone whose appearance or behav- ior deviates from norms. A study of Zina- canteco humor (Bricker 1968) revealed that the norms, implicit in the deviant behavior that Zinacantecos seem to regard as humor- ous, may be grouped into two classes. One class is concerned with the self-image the Zinacanteco presents to his community; the other class includes norms that regulate be- havior between men and women. The two classes overlap in the sense that the self-im- age Zinacanteco men and women present to one another may influence their interaction. Some norms are shared by the two classes.

Every Zinacanteco covets a self-image that is normative with respect to his posture, movements, body, and body parts, which

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292 American Anthropologist [72, 1970

should conform with those of other Zinacan- tecos of his sex and age. His clothing should be properly draped and clean, and his cos- tume should be complete. Norms of ideal physical characteristics

may be inferred from nicknames for people with unusual body traits. Such nicknames as ton-sat ‘bearded,’ bak ‘bony,’ pik’al sat ‘black face,’ #o#-nzP ‘hairy nose,’ tom-hol ‘bulging head,’ and kut’u-nuk’u ‘fat-neck‘ imply preference for a hairless face, plump- ness, light skin, and so forth.

Similarly, clothing and posture norms may be inferred from nicknames. For ex- ample :

(1) Petul Peres K’ob-yo5 is called Petul pahve3 (Petul ‘pointed pants’) because he wears his pants so long that they hang down to his knees. (Zinacanteco men wear shorts rather than trousers.)

(2) Marian Lopis Tan-Eak is called Marian t’u.s-bk (Marian ‘clip-clop leg’) because of the way he wears his sandals. When he walks, his sandals make a “clip- clop” sound on the road.

(3) Old ?Antun Krus Tontob is called liZ-k‘u? mol ‘old flapping clothes’ because he does not fasten down the sides of his tunic, which flaps like a woman’s skirt in the wind.

(4) ?Antun ?Ernantis Proma’S is called ?Antun hkailan (?Antun Ladino) because his father changed clothes and became a Ladino.8

(5) Manvel Lopis $%-tan is called lom- ?ok rnol ‘old stagger-leg’ because one of his legs is longer than the other, which affects the way he walks.

In Zinacantan, men and women are neither economically nor sexually self- sufficient. For this reason the boy or girl who will not marry is looked upon as a deviant. Old Ma1 ?AlyaS KelemEitom is called me?el Zab ‘old tar lady’ because she did not want a husband. It is said that “she sticks tar up her ass.” Two men who as youths said “I’m not going to marry be- cause I want to be a priest,” are still nick- named pale ‘priest,’ even though they even- tually married and fathered children.

In the strict division of labor by sex, women depend on men to provide food for cooking, and men expect women to prepare their meals and care for their clothing. The laziness of either party is not tolerated and may be grounds for divorce. Lazy people are given the nickname ?ah ‘lazy.’

In general, humorous nicknames, the largest single class of nicknames in 3Apa.s (see Appendix A), refer to breaches in eti- quette and unsanctioned behavior between men and women. They have their origin in the ridicule of an individual for the sake of humor alone. Like other nicknames they may stick to the individual long after the humorous circumstances that prompted them have passed, and they may be passed on to his descendants.

Tzotzil surnames and nicknames both serve as social classifiers then, though on different levels. The surnames indicate the lineage group to which each Zinacanteco be- longs. Nicknames, which have their origin in referring to what is unique about a person, designate a smaller group including that in- dividual and those near relatives to whom his nickname has been extended. As such, nicknames tend to be more individualizing than surnames.

Iv The information theory4 measure of en-

tropy, when applied to the component codes of the Zinacanteco names for 149 married men of PApas, shows that specification of individuals is most efficiently realized by a combination of first name and nickname.

As we have seen, the most important components of naming are A, the first names; B, the Spanish surnames; C, the In- dian surnames; and D, the nicknames. Each group can be thought of as a code in which the code symbols are names. Naming could be by any of the four codes alone, or, as is more common, by a combination of first name and Indian surname (A + C) or of first name and nickname (A + D). Table 1 illustrates how naming by codes separately or in combination subdivides the 149 indi- viduals into named categories:

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TABLE 1. T H E DISTRIBUTION OF NAMING COM- PONENTS FOR 149 MARRIED 7APAS MALES

Names Men each

Code A (14 first names)

4 1 1 3 2 4 2 6 1 15 1 23 2 27 1 30

Code B (8 Spanish surnames)

2 1 1 5 1 9 1 19 1 21 1 41 1 52

Code C (18 Indian surnames)

6 1 2 3 3 4 1 5 1 9 1 14 2 16 1 21 1 44

Names Men each

Code D (52 nicknames) 25 1 4 2

10 3 3 4 4 5 1 6 2 8 1 9 1 10 1 13

Code A + C (72 first+Indian surname pairs) 46 1 10 2 6 3 3 4 2 5 2 7 1 8 1 10 1 11

Code A+D (121 first+nickname

combinations) 101 1 19 2 2 3 1 4

Code A, for instance, contains four names that refer to only one individual, one name used for three men, two that are taken by four men each, and so forth. When first and nicknames are combined (Code A + D ) , 101

men are specified uniquely while 19 name combinations are shared by two men, and so forth.

Code entropy is defined as the summation over each of the code symbols of the quan- tity

1 P C i log2 -

Pc i

where Pc, is the probability of occurrence of one of the code names. It is a measure of the average number of “bits” (binary digits) of information transmitted by a sym- bol from the code. To transmit in the most efficient possible way 149 equiprobable names, a communications engineer might use a code system of binary digits in which each symbol was made up of 7.22 “bits”

(since 149 [-& log2 1401 = 7.22).

No code whose symbols had an average length greater than 7.22 “bits” would con- vey more information than this ideal code, although other codes whose entropy was less than 7.22 “bits” could not identify the 149 individuals uniquely. The efficiency of the latter class of codes can be defined as the ratio of their entropy (average bits of information per symbol) to the maximum achievable entropy (in this case 7.22 “bits”).

Table 2 illustrates the entropy and effi- ciency of each of the naming codes when used to name the 149 married men of ?Apas with equal probability.

Clearly, of the naming component codes used in isolation, nicknames convey more information than either first names or In-

TABLE 2. ENTROPY AND EFFICIENCY OF NAMING CODES USED FOR 149 MARRIED PAPAS MALES

Type of code symbol Name of code Entropy of code (bits) EfJiciency of code (%)

First name A 3.10 42.9 Spanish surname B 2.32 32.2 Indian surname C 3.29 45.6 Nickname D 5.13 71.1 First+Indian surname A+C 5.69 78.8 First+nickname A+D 6.85 94.9

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294 American Anthropologisl [72, 1970

TABLE 3. WITHIN-LINEAGE DYADS OF 149 MARRIED PAPAS MALES COMPARED WITH RESPECT TO GENEALOGICAL DISTANCE AND THE SHARING OF NICKNAME*

GeneaIogical distnnce between dyad members Dyad members, nickname

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 group

A h Ah A h A h A h

29 54 23 21 41 51 4 223 Same (+I61 (+27) (+5) (-18) (-20) (-8) (-2)

3 12 21 76 112 97 10 331 Different (-16) (-27) (-5) (+18) (+20) (+8) (+2)

32 66 44 97 153 148 14 554 Total

* Deviations from expected values according to margins are in parentheses. Goodman and Kruskal’s G=0.471.

dian surnames, and when first and nick- names are combined, far more information is conveyed than by the traditional use of first names and Indian surnames.5

V We feel that the widespread use of the

first and nickname combination for refer- ence in ?Apas is indicative of the greater importance of the local descent group- usually a lineage segment headed by an elder male whose nickname is applied as well to his wife and offspring-than of the lineage, in hamlet social structure.

In the hamlet of ?Apas, the major line- ages are identified by the Spanish-Indian surname pairs, and segments of those line- ages are distinguished by nicknames. In the illustrative genealogy (Figure 1 ) , for in- stance, the nineteen living married men share the lineage surname ?Ernantis Heron- imo, but the lineage is subdivided into eight groups.

The set of nicknames in ?Apas includes names drawn from all the classes listed above (see Appendix A) . Apparently nick- names are appellations acquired by a man in one of these ways and given to his decen- dants unless those, in turn, receive appella- tions of their own, for the genealogies of ?Apas show that, with only one exception, lineage members sharing a nickname can trace descent back to a common fork in the tree of descent without overlapping the routes of descent of other nickname groups from that fork. As such, the nickname groups can be thought of as segmented one from another, and we can term them “line- age segments.”

This property of nicknames permits them to be used in a measure of lineage solidar- ity. One lineage can be defined as more soli- dary than another if it has a higher ratio of household heads to nickname groups, that is, if its name groups’ average size is larger than that of groups of other lineages. In PApas, fifteen lineages having more than one descent group can be ranked from least to greatest solidarity in this way.

Other criteria help validate using the av- erage size of name groups as a measure o€ a lineage’s solidarity.

First, a fine measure of closeness of ge- nealogical relation shows that nickname groups incorporate individuals whose lineal relationship is close. Every dyad of two men in a lineage is one in which the individuals

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COLLIER & BRICKER] Nicknames in Zinacantan 295

TABLE 4. EACH SET OF BROTHERS IN TAPAS CLASIFIED AS HAVINO MEMBERS WHO SHARE OR DIFFER IN

NICKNAME AND AS BEING OFFSPRING OF ONE MOTHER OR MORE*

Mothers per sets of brothers Nickname

one more than one group

23 4 27 sharing one (+3) (-3)

(-3) (+3) 2 5 7 differing

25 9 34 Totals

Deviations from expected values according to margins are in parentheses. Goodman and Kruskal’s G =0.87.

do or do not share a nickname and in which the lineal “distance” between them is defined as the number of steps in the shortest route connecting them via a common ancestor, where each step is an ascending link of a son to his father. (Thus a father and son are one step apart, two brothers two steps apart, and two first cousins four apart.) The 554 dyads of within-lineage relationship found within the fifteen lineages under examina-

tion fall into the matrix shown in Table 3. The large deviation from expected values

according to the margins indicates a strong degree of relationship, and Goodman and Kruskal’s Gamma statistic (Freeman 1965:79-88) indicates that there is forty- seven percent more agreement than dis- agreement between the rankings of dyads on genealogical distance and sharing of nick- name. Thus name groupings prove to corre- spond well to this more sensitive measure of closeness of formal genealogical connection.

Second, name group membership is re- lated to divorce, which fosters fission within the lineage because sons who leave the father’s home in a separation as children have little opportunity to establish solidary ties with their father and stepbrothers of the father’s later marriage. In Table 4 each set of 7Apas brothers is classified as having individuals of one or more than one name group and as being offspring of one mother or more. In this case the Gamma statistic in- dicates that there is eighty-seven percent more agreement than disagreement between the ranking of sets of brothers with respect to shared mothers and name group. Clearly,

8 TABLE 5. THE FIFTEEN ?APAS LINEAGES WITH MORE THAN ONE DESCENT GROUP RANKED BY SIZE OF LINEAGE

SEGMENTS, DEGREE OF PATRILQCALITY, PER-CAPITA LAND OWNED, AND DEGREE OF LAND PURCHASE*

Rankings

Lineage Size of nickname Degree of patrilocal Per-capita Degree of groups, or “segments” residence landholdings land purchase

1 1 3 10.5 12.5 2 2 4 . 5 1 15 3 3 10 7 .5 9 4 4 . 5 7 2 2 .5 5 4.5 1 4 9 6 6 2 5.5 7 7 7 7 3 14 8 8.5 14 9 12.5 9 8.5 14 5.5 6

10 10 11 12.5 12 12.5 13 12.5 14 12.5 15 15

11.5 7

14 11.5 4 .5 9

14 7 .5

11 2.5

13 2.5 12 5 15 2 .5 10.5 9

* The Spearman rank order correlation of the first variable (size of nickname groups) with each of the others is 0.482. 0.624. and -0.525, respectively.

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296 American Anthropologist [72, 1970

when there is divorce in one generation there is likely to be nickname group fission in the next.

Finally, the degree of patrilocal residence within a lineage has a relation to name- group membership. Patrilocality is the gen- eral rule for post-marital residence in Zina- cantan, but neolocal and uxorilocal excep- tions can be found in every hamlet. The proportion of marriages that showed patrilo- cal residence was computed for each lineage and converted into a rank of degree of line- age patrilocality. The comparison of this rank with that of size of nickname group in Table 5 shows that there is a rank order correlation of 0.482 between these variables, indicating a moderate degree of correspon- dence between the ranks. In other words, where name groups are large there is more than the ordinary strong preference for pa- trilocal residence.

To summarize, the use of the ratio of household heads to nickname groups as a measure of lineage solidarity is supported by the degree of close kinship relation of mem- bers sharing a nickname, the likelihood that if there are children of a broken mar- riage they will be distinguished in naming from their half-brothers, andtby the associa- tion between name group size and patrilocal residence.

VI Nicknaming, then, can be thought of as

reflecting the process of lineage segmenta- tion. Coherence of the lineage is under- mined by the tendency toward cleavage of its component local descent groups, and nicknaming goes hand in hand with such cleavage. We feel that some of the under- lying causes of lineage cleavage are to be found in the realm of Zinacanteco econoni- ics and land tenure. In addition to Ejido land acquired by

?Apas under Mexican land reform, the com- munity has held, in private ownership, an equal amount of highland property since before the turn of the century. A careful study of the tenure of each property parcel (Collier 1968) permitted each lineage to be

ranked by the per-capita amount of its private landholdings. This measure has a rank order correlation of 0.624 with that of size of nickname group (see Table 5) in- dicating that lineages with more extensive per-capita landholdings have larger than normal nickname groups.

In a similar way, the study of land parcel purchase by individuals permitted lineages to be ranked by the degree of land purchase. When this rank is compared with that of size of nickname group the -0.525 rank order correlation found indicates that mem- bers of the highly segmented lineages are the most active land buyers.

Finally, the scale of each man’s lowland entrepreneurial cornfarming was compared with his land purchases. For the sixty men aged forty or over, a strong relationship be- tween large-scale farming and land purchase was found (see Table 6) , although this rela- tionship did not hold for younger men.

These findings can be related meaning- fully to the process of local descent-group formation and disintegration in hamlet so- cial organization. The core of the local de- scent group is usually an elder man and his married sons, together with their wives and immature children. To the core may be added men living neolocally or uxorilocally. In space the group is usually discrete, shar- ing residence sometimes with other lineally related descent groups. Men in thc group

TABLE 6. LOWLAND FARMING AND HIGHLAND LAND PURCHASE OF 7APAS MEN OLDER THAN FORTY

_ _ _ _ _ ~

Higldand Drooertv

Amount of corn seeded (almuds*)

A ‘ ,

Up to 3 More than 3 purchased

7 15 22 have (-6) (+6)

(+6) (-6) 30 8 38 have not

37 23 60 Totals

* An almud is a unit of volume equal to fifteen metric liters. Deviations from expected values according to margins are in parentheses. Goodman and Kruskal’s G ~ 0 . 7 8 .

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COLLIER & BRICKER] Nicknames in Zinacantan 297

usually farm together and call upon each other’s help when faced with the burdens of the life crises or of ritual performance. Al- though structured primarily by ties of kin- ship, the group often has political functions; its head will attempt to settle disputes within the group and will represent a group mem- ber in settling disputes between groups.

Land inheritance can be seen as a mecha- nism for holding the group together. A man’s distribution of his farm property to his male heirs is conditional upon their har- monious cooperation in the economic and ritual spheres. Even after their benefactor’s death, heirs risk disinheritance if their be- havior justifies charges that they show dis- respect for their benefactor’s wishes. Since land is highly valued, heirs are careful not to jeopardize their inheritance rights, and they cooperate in just those ways that coun- teract the tendency toward fission within the local descent group. Thus it makes sense that the more heavily landed lineages should be those with larger than average nickname groups, or lineage segments, while land-poor lineages are subject to a greater than aver- age degree of name group fission.

Because land inheritance is within the male line, land is usually kept within the lineage, but in some cases where a man has no suitable male heirs women inherit farm- land, which is thereby transferred to their husbands’ lineages; while land sale is infre- quent, it too is a mechanism of transfer of property from one lineage to another. Men who have little land seek to consolidate es- tates for their heirs through appropriate marriage and through land purchase. Again it makes sense that men of the land-poor lineages with smaller, more segmented de- scent groups should be the most active land purchasers.

Finally, Cancian (1965) has shown that large-scale lowland farming is the principal means of financing the expensive ritual posi- tions that confer the greatest prestige upon their occupants. The relation between large- scale lowland farming and highland prop- erty purchase that we have uncovered sug- gests that Iand-poor men of the highly seg-

mented lineages seek to consolidate their de- scent groups through prestigious ritual per- formance as well.

In the long run, descent groups disinte- grate as land sale and inheritance by women transfer land from one lineage to another; at the same time smaller groups grow in im- portance as their members acquire property by purchase and by marriage while seeking political eminence through prestigious ritual activity financed by ambitious lowland farm- ing.

Local descent groups in ?Apas are thus the outcome of a process based on economic and political achievement. When a lineage breaks up, the segments are distinguished from each other by the nicknames of the founders of the segments. In the course of time, the Indian surname shared by all the lineage segments is dropped and replaced by nicknames for each segment. When an Indian surname, the symbol of lineage iden- tity, disappears from use, the lineage seg- ments identified by nicknames become, for all intents and purposes, lineages in their own right. It is by such a process that we account for the obscene nature of lineage surnames such as Tun-Zuk ‘ashy [filthy] ass,’ Tun-hol ‘ashy [filthy] head,’ Lek‘sim ‘lick snot,’ f?o? t’ul ‘rabbit shit,’ and No1 Yo ‘rat head’ in Zinacantan. Viewed in terms of our model they “make sense”- they were once humorous nicknames that were stabilized by lineage segmentation and eventually replaced former surnames.6

w There is some evidence that the relation-

ship between surnames, nicknames, and local descent groupings that we have docu- mented for ?Apas has not changed radically since before 1749. The evidence on which our case rests is an eighteenth-century census of household heads of Zinacantan copied from the Archivo General de Guate- mala (1749) by E. Calnek. The corpus of names it contains bears comparison with our modern data in several ways.

The census includes 176 Spanish-Indian surname pairs, exactly parallel in construc-

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298 American Anthropologist [72, 1970 tion to those in use today. That is, while each Spanish surname was linked with sev- eral Indian surnames, each of the latter was linked with only one of the former.

When the two naming systems are com- pared as communicative codes, an impor- tant difference between them is apparent. Spanish surnames of 1749 had a communi- cative efficiency of 35.8 % , slightly more than that (32.2%) of modern Spanish sur- names (see Table 2). On the other hand, Indian surnames of 1749 had a communica- tive efficiency of 86.7%, far greater than that of Indian surnames today (45.6%) and even in excess of modem nickname effi- ciency (71.1%). In other words, Spanish surnames divided up the population in much the same way in 1749 as they do now, but Indian surnames designated groups about the same size as nickname groups today, 40% of them referring to only one family each. Probably they corresponded then, as nickname groups do now, to localized lin- eage segments.

As is the situation with nicknaming today, many of the eighteenth-century Indian sur- names may have originated as humorous appellations. Of the 176 Indian surnames, 3 1 have humorous and/or obscene meanings and could once have functioned as nick- names. The names in their original and modern Tzotzil transcription are listed in Appendix B with an explanation of their meaning. Names that still function as sur- names in Zinacantan are starred.

One pair of surnames from that census has interesting parallels with a set of ?Apas lineage-segment nicknames. In ?Apas one lineage has segments identified by the nick- names Sakil, Meko, and ?Albino. The first is a Tzotzil word meaning “white“ and the other two are Spanish loan words meaning “albino.” The information carried by all three is the same, but the different words permit the differentiation of those lineage segments. Apparently a lineage ancestor was an albino, possibly referred to by all three forms of the nickname which, when trans- ferred to his descendants, came to represent distinct lineage segments. In the 1749 cen-

sus two Indian surnames, Ical (Vk’al ) and Negro, are linked with one Spanish surname. Both mean “black” and could once have been humorous nicknames for a dark- skinned Zinacanteco whose descendants were later segmented by naming.

Since 1749, at least one hundred Indian surnames have been lost, while those added number around twenty, of which about three-fifths are Tzotzil words and the re- mainder are either Spanish loan words or Spanish names now functioning as Indian surname^.^ What happened to the one hun- dred Indian surnames lost since the eigh- teenth century? By what process have Span- ish loan words and surname forms been introduced?

Migration and dying out of lineages are possible solutions suggested to the first prob- lem by Vogt (1969). A more attractive so- lution, however, is to view eighteenth-cen- tury Indian surnaming as equivalent to mod- ern nicknaming of local descent groups, in which case the twenty-odd new Indian sur- names would formerly have been nicknames identified with lineage segments, eventually replacing some of the Indian surnames of 1749. Included among the new Indian sur- names are possible nicknames such as ?Akov ‘wasp nest,’ Qu ‘gourd [head],’ Taki-bek’et ‘dried meat,’ Prom& (Sp. Bromas ‘jokes’), and 7Z’lnu.s (Sp. first name Ignacio). If In- dian surnames of that time corresponded to local descent groups rather than higher order lineages, the distribution of names in the population would be roughly the same as that of nicknames today, and the changes in inventory of names would have resulted from the continual redesignation of con- stantly segmenting local descent groups.

Vogt (1969) feels the increase of Span- ish surnames that function as Indian sur- names is a result of a gradual changeover in naming to the Spanish system of patro- nymics and matronymics. On the other hand, we have shown that in situations of ambiguity a mother’s Spanish surname may be used as an individualizing nickname and may be perpetuated as an Indian surname (i.e., a patronyniic, not a matronymic) by

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COLLIER & BRICKER] Nicknames in Zinacantan 299

lineage segmentation. In other words, the in- crease of Spanish-Indian surnames can be explained just as well by our model as by one that posits movement toward the Span- ish naming system.

A final problem concerns the possible sig- nificance of the Spanish surnames found in Zinacantan today, in 1749, and presumably since shortly after the Conquest.

Other scholars (Vogt 1969; Pozas 1959; Siverts 1960; Villa 1947) have suggested that Spanish surnames, whose function in patronymics in combination with Indian sur- names is widespread in the TzotziI-TzeItal area, corresponded to social groupings of a higher order than the lineage. In the case of modern Oxchuc (Villa 1947), Spanish sur- names designate exogamous clans with ap- parent political functions.

In Zinacantan today, however, Spanish surnames have no evident social function. Lineage exogamy is with respect to Indian surname alone, and marriage of individuals sharing only Spanish surname is common. From the 1749 census as well, Calnek re- ports exogamy with respect to Indian sur- name but not with respect to Spanish sur- name. For more than two hundred years, then, Zinacantecos seem to have used Span- ish surnames as a patronymic alone, and not as a social classifier.

Needed to resolve the question of the function of Spanish surnames is clearcut evi- dence on the form of aboriginal Tzotzil naming, such as that available for the Yucatin (Roys 1940; Tozzer 1941) or in- ferentially for the Lacand6n (Tozzer 1970), or a clearcut description of how Spanish surnames were adopted in the Chiapas high- lands after the Conquest. Until new evi- dence of this sort appears, we feel it is im- possible to decide either that Spanish sur- names once designated aboriginal social groups of clan or phratry or that they were simply added on to aboriginal lineage patro- nymics as a legal accommodation to the conquerors.

VIII In this paper we have attempted to coor-

dinate a variety of analytic tools in the study of Zinacanteco naming practices, especially nicknaming. The formally structured tradi- tional system of first and lineage surnames classifies individuals by lineage but results in ambiguity when classification within the lineage is required. Analysis of the content of nicknames revealed their origin as dis- tinctive, usually humorous, appellations for individuals who might otherwise be mis- taken for those sharing their traditional names. We suggested that nicknames, whose initial use is informal, are extended to mem- bers of distinct local descent groups and are gradually incorporated into the system of formal names by replacing Indian surnames. Viewing local descent groups as the princi- pal point of articulation between the naming system and lineage structure, we showed how changes in the latter were accompanied by changes in the former, and we outlined economic and political factors that seem to be behind the tendencies toward segmenta- tion within the lineage. We conceived of naming as a system of communicative codes and measured the communicative efficiency of naming components. This enhanced our argument that eighteenth-century Zinacan- teco surname groups are parallel to modern nickname groups in structure, in statistical distribution over population, and in the meaning content of particular names. Thus our model relating formal and informal nam- ing practices to modern Zinacanteco social structure appears to have historical validity as well.

NOTES ‘In their fieldwork the authors were sup-

ported by NIMH Predoctoral Fellowships MH 32,736 and MH 20,345 respectively. In prepa- ration of the paper they benefitted from com- ments and suggestions from Roberto da Matta, Dr. Robert M. Laughlin, Jeremy A. SabIoff, Dr. Francesca Cancian, Dr. Munro S. Edmon- son, Dr. Stephen Tyler, and Dr. Evon Z. Vogt. Domingo Pirez Hacienda and JosC Hernhdez Gerhimo provided key assistance in the col- lection of data. In lieu of other criteria, order of authorship was determined by Dr. John L. Fischer by coin toss.

*We are grateful for Dr. Robert M. Laugh- link comments on the conjectural quality of a

Page 12: Nicknames and Social Structure in Zinacantan

300 American Anthropologist [72, 1970 few of the nickname interpretations, which de- rive from informants’ translations.

‘“Ladinos are persons who wear European clothes and speak Spanish as their principal language (although their ancestors may be In- dian)” (Cancian 196537f). The Zinacanteco costume is quite different from the European- type clothes worn by Ladinos.

‘A good introduction to Information Theory and its measures is Abramson (1963).

‘The values of code entropy applied in Ta- ble 2 would, of course, be quite different were the sample of names greater or less than 149. The measures of efficiency, however, are inde- pendent of sample size and thus are more ap- propriate for comparisons with other samples.

a This hypothesis is strengthened by data from another Zinacanteco hamlet. In one large lineage roughly twenty percent of the mar- riages between lineage members violate the or- dinary rule of lineage exogamy. Yet none of these marriages are between partnen of the same nickname group. In this lineage, then, the nickname group is the effective exogamous unit, apparently stabilized by lineage segmentation.

‘The exact number of “new” names cannot be determined because damage to the 1749 census rendered about one-third of its entries illegible. Of twenty-seven modern surnames not found in the legible portions, we estimate that some seven would have been found in the re- mainder.

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APPENDIX A: ?APAS NICKNAMES

(1) Mother’s Spanish surname: ?Alyal Vaskes

?As yento Wsuna

(2) Mother’s Tzotzil. surname: