Personal Names

While there may be restrictions on their use and they may rarely be used (with kin terms, for example, often taking their place in most conversational settings), personal names are a human universal. There is considerable variation from society to society in their naming systems. To give but a few examples, the names may or may not have semantic meaning; they may be drawn from a small number of possible names (as is common) or may be unique for each individual; they may or may not be different for male or female; they may be fixed for life or be changeable. The record of their existence is confined to the advent of writing systems but there is no reason to doubt they have long existed. Being fundamentally linguistic they have no precise counterparts in other species. However, individuals are recognized in many species beyond the hominid line.