Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - On the Use of Indian Terms for Identification of Weapon Types

A. G. Maisey · 17th October 2015, 01:32 PM

Ariel, I believe I can accept the blame for first coining the term "name game".

At least, I had never heard it before I myself used it, and I first used it perhaps 40 odd years ago.

The intent encaptioned in the term was not to denigrate the diligent research of those scholars who seek to interpret and understand the terminologies applied to weaponry --- and for that matter, other examples of the material culture of foreign places, but rather to illuminate the total and absolute futility of attempting to identify the "correct" terminology applied to any item in the absence of a good working knowledge of the culture, society, history and language of the place concerned.

Further, any terminology that may be perceived as being a probable "correct" terminology must be fixed in terms of time and place, for the very obvious reason that time distorts perception, and that which is accepted as accurate today has only about a 45% possibility of still being accepted as accurate in 50 years time --- at least this appears to be so in the field of medicine, and by extrapolation can probably be considered to be so to a greater or lesser degree in other fields.

The meanings of words change over time, as does the way in which constant meanings are understood, thus if it can be shown that a particular name is correct for any object, that correctness must at the very least be fixed within a framework of time and place.

For example, if it can be shown that the accepted name for a particular object was "Whatsit", that accepted name must be qualified in terms of time and place by the affixation of historical and geographic parameters. To do less than this is not simply sloppy, it is close to rabid stupidity.

Thus, our Whatsit becomes "an object known as a Whatsit during the 13th century in Shaftsbury, Dorset, England". Of course supporting references and/or evidence are provided.

As an example of the way in which meanings can become lost or can change I would like to use the case of the keris, variant spellings of creese, kris, cris, and a few more that do not readily come to mind. At the present time we have a number of other words that can be used to refer to the keris:- dhuwung, kadgo, curigo, wangkingan, cundrik, pusaka, and that is only in Javanese.

However in this same language of Javanese, prior to about 1600, it is probable that none of those names would have referred to a keris as we know it now. Good candidates for the "correct" name for the Modern Keris, and other keris-like objects , in pre-1600 Jawa were "tewek" and "tuhuk", but we do not really know with any certainty whether this presumption is correct or not.

So, I put it to you:- the "name game", when understood as I intended the phrase to be understood, is something worse than useless, however, diligent research into terminology by dedicated scholars is not the "name game", and must never be thought of as such.

17th October 2015, 01:32 PM	#62
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,752	Ariel, I believe I can accept the blame for first coining the term "name game". At least, I had never heard it before I myself used it, and I first used it perhaps 40 odd years ago. The intent encaptioned in the term was not to denigrate the diligent research of those scholars who seek to interpret and understand the terminologies applied to weaponry --- and for that matter, other examples of the material culture of foreign places, but rather to illuminate the total and absolute futility of attempting to identify the "correct" terminology applied to any item in the absence of a good working knowledge of the culture, society, history and language of the place concerned. Further, any terminology that may be perceived as being a probable "correct" terminology must be fixed in terms of time and place, for the very obvious reason that time distorts perception, and that which is accepted as accurate today has only about a 45% possibility of still being accepted as accurate in 50 years time --- at least this appears to be so in the field of medicine, and by extrapolation can probably be considered to be so to a greater or lesser degree in other fields. The meanings of words change over time, as does the way in which constant meanings are understood, thus if it can be shown that a particular name is correct for any object, that correctness must at the very least be fixed within a framework of time and place. For example, if it can be shown that the accepted name for a particular object was "Whatsit", that accepted name must be qualified in terms of time and place by the affixation of historical and geographic parameters. To do less than this is not simply sloppy, it is close to rabid stupidity. Thus, our Whatsit becomes "an object known as a Whatsit during the 13th century in Shaftsbury, Dorset, England". Of course supporting references and/or evidence are provided. As an example of the way in which meanings can become lost or can change I would like to use the case of the keris, variant spellings of creese, kris, cris, and a few more that do not readily come to mind. At the present time we have a number of other words that can be used to refer to the keris:- dhuwung, kadgo, curigo, wangkingan, cundrik, pusaka, and that is only in Javanese. However in this same language of Javanese, prior to about 1600, it is probable that none of those names would have referred to a keris as we know it now. Good candidates for the "correct" name for the Modern Keris, and other keris-like objects , in pre-1600 Jawa were "tewek" and "tuhuk", but we do not really know with any certainty whether this presumption is correct or not. So, I put it to you:- the "name game", when understood as I intended the phrase to be understood, is something worse than useless, however, diligent research into terminology by dedicated scholars is not the "name game", and must never be thought of as such.