The First Congress of Ethnozoological Nomenclature

Folk names for fundamental ethnobiological categories have been shown to be governed by regular nomenclatural principles. Two principles at work in ethnozoological nomenclature – onomatopoeia and metaphorical description of some observable property of the organism – are fairly well established as the basis for naming many folk genera. A third but less understood principle is that associated with what has been called sound symbolism. In the languages of traditional peoples, semantically opaque names for animals often exhibit sound‐symbolic properties that humans unconsciously recognize as capturing some aspect of the fundamental essence or nature of the creature being named. How is this to be explained, in spite of the changes that have taken place in human verbal communication since the beginnings of what one might call full‐blown language? In what ways are these principles related to more general principles of natural classification based on shape and movement? If verbal mimesis represents a critical stage in the evolution of human cognition, what informed speculations can be brought to bear on what might be called the First Congress of Ethnozoological Nomenclature?