belief would promote kindness to and regard for the animal.
Unessential to my system is the question, how the groups got animal names, so long as they did get them and did not remember how they got them, and so long as the names, according to their way of thinking, indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its name-giving animal. No more than these things—a group animal-name of unknown origin; and belief in a transcendental connection between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same;—was needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds.
Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would not have invented such myths. Thus that, by their way of thinking, the name denotes a transcendental connection, which may be exploited, between themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.
In Social Origins I ventured to guess as to how the group names first arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[1] I showed that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as in France—Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney—Starlings, Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges such as Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas, Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in the Orkneys, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be totemic, the group sobriquets were often "Eaters of" this or that animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "not Eaters of" this or that.[2] I thus established the
