Lardil
The Lardil of Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria have eight skin groups, shown here with some of their totems:
-
-
Male skin group Totems May marry only
female skin groupChildren will be Ngarrijbalangi Rainbird, shooting star,
egretBurrarangi Bangariny Bangariny Brown shark, turtle Yakimarr Ngarrijbalangi Buranyi Crane, salt water,
sleeping turtleKangal Balyarriny Balyarriny Black tiger shark,
sea turtleKamarrangi Buranyi Burrarangi Lightning, rough sea,
black dingoNgarrijbalangi Kamarrangi Yakimarr Seagull, barramundi,
grey sharkBangariny Kangal Kangal Barramundi,
grey sharkBuranyi Yakimarr Kamarrangi Rock, pelican, brolga,
red dingoBalyarriny Burrarangi
-
Each Lardil person belongs to one of these groups. Their paternal grandfather's skin group determines their own; so a Balyarriny man or woman will have a Balyarriny grandfather. A Ngarrijbalangi man may marry only a Burrarangi woman, a Bangariny a Yakimarr, a Buranyi a Kangal and a Balyarriny a Kamarrangi, and vice versa for each.
Once a person's skin group is known, their relationship to any other Lardil can be determined. A Ngarrijbalangi is a 'father' to a Bangariny, a 'father-in-law' to a Yakimarr and a 'son' to another Bangariny, either in a social sense or purely through linearship.
The mechanics of the Lardil skin system means that generations of males cycle back and forth between two skins. Ngarrijbalangi is father to Bangariny and Bangariny is father to Ngarrijbalangi and similarly for the three other sets of skins. Generations of women, however, cycle through four skins before arriving back at the starting point. This means that a woman has the same skin name as her (matrilineal) great-great-grandmother.
Read more about this topic: Australian Aboriginal Kinship, The Subsection or 'skin Name' System, Systems With Eight Skin Groups (subsection Systems)
Other articles related to "lardil":
... While very few speakers of Lardil in its traditional form remain, Norvin Richards and Kenneth Hale both worked with some speakers of a “New Lardil” in the 1990s which displays significant ...
... Lardil (also spelled Leerdil or Leertil) is a moribund language spoken on Mornington Island (Kunhanha), in the Wellesley Islands of Queensland in northern Australia ... Lardil is unusual among Australian languages in that it features a ceremonial register, called Damin (also Demiin) ... Damin is regarded by Lardil speakers as a separate language, and possesses the only phonological system outside Africa to use click consonants ...
... Lardil has an intensely complex system of kinship terms reflecting the centrality of kin-relations to Lardil society all members of the community are ... Lardil kinship terms Title Relation(s) kangkar FaFa, FaFaBr, FaFaSi kantha Fa, FaBr babe FaMo, FaMoSi, FaMoBr jembe MoFa, MoFaBr, MoFaSi nyerre MoMo, MoMoBro, MoMoBrSoCh merrka FaSi wuyinjin WiFa, HuFa ...
... Traditionally, the Lardil community held two initiation ceremonies for young men ... marlda kangka classifies animals somewhat differently from Lardil, having, for example, a class containing all shellfish (which Lardil lacks) and lacking an inclusive sign for ‘dugong ... like marlda kangka, was phonologically, lexically and semantically distinct from Lardil, though its syntax and morphology seem to be analogous ...