# Which culture used no personal names? Tags: cultural-history, names - Score: 73 - Views: 16597 - Answers: 2 - Answered: yes - Asked by: csirmazbendeguz (833 rep) - Asked: 2019-10-07 - Edited: 2019-10-08 - Site: history ## Question The blog post Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples claims that: There was an isolated culture in which no one had names – they referred to everyone in relative terms, such as “my mother’s eldest sister”. Is this true? Which culture is the author talking about? ## Answers ### Answer by Lars Bosteen (score: 106 [ACCEPTED]) This would seem to be a piece of folklore. Anthropologists have not found a single society which does not use personal names in some form; they are a human universal. However, the forms that these names take and the ways in which they are bestowed and used vary between cultures. Source: Abstract from Ellen S. Bramwell, 'Personal Names and Anthropology'. In Carole Hough (ed.), 'The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming' (2016) William Bright (1928-2006), formerly a linguist at the University of California and then at the University of Colorado, also covered this in a 2003 article What IS a Name? Ref