名為何物？──我對專名學的看法

What IS a Name? Reflections on Onomastics

專名學是包含哲學、歷史學等許多學門關心的、研究專有名詞的學問。本文採用的是應用於北美印第安人名、地名研究的人類語言學的觀點。本文提出了一個問題：「專有名詞可不可以是描述性的詞語？」。例如，字面意義為“住在溪邊的人”的詞可不可以是個人名，而“溪邊的石頭”可不可以是個地名？此外，本文同時以加州的Karuk語、奧克拉荷馬州的Creek語與墨西哥的Nahuatl語的例子討論地名的語法特點。

Onomastics, as the study of proper names, has been of concern to many branches of scholarship, including philosophy and history. The present paper takes the viewpoint of anthropological linguistics, as applied especially to personal names and place names among North American Indians. The question is raised as to whether terms which embody a DESCRIPTION can be considered proper names, e.g., whether a term meaning literally ‘man living by the stream’ can be a personal name, or whether a term meaning ‘rock standing by the stream’ can be a placename. Grammatical peculiarities of placenames are also considered, and examples are given from Karuk (California), Creek (Oklahoma), and Nahuatl (Mexico).