Now Clan Chattan is named, not from the cat, but from Gilla Catain, "the servant of Saint Catan," a common sort of Celtic personal name, as in Gilchrist.[1] The Sutherland cat-crest is, apparently, derived from Catness, or Caithness. That name, again, is mythically derived from Cat, one of the Seven Sons of Cruithne, who gave their names to the seven Pictish provinces, as Fib to Fife, and so on. These Seven Sons of Cruithne, like Ion and Dorus in Greece (lonians, Dorians), are mere mythical "eponymoi" or name-giving heroes, invented to explain the names of certain districts. In totemism this is not so. Not fancied names, like Duddingstone, or marmalade, are, in totemism, explained by popular etymologies. Emu, kangaroo, wolf, bear, raven, are real, not perverted names; the question is, why are these names borne by groups of human beings? Answers are given in all the numerous savage myths, whether of a divine ordinance, (Dieri, Woeworung), or of descent and kinship of intermarriage with beasts, or of adventures with beasts, or of a woman giving birth to beasts, or of evolution out of bestial types; and all these myths suggest mutual duties between men and their totems, as between men and their human kinsfolk. It will be seen that here no disease of language is involved, not even a Volks-etymologie (a vera causa of myth).
If it could be shown by philologists that many totem names originally meant something other than they now do, and that they were misunderstood, and supposed to be names of plants and animals, then "disease of language" would be present. Thus (
Greek characters) and (Greek characters) have really been regarded as meaning, each of them, "the bright one," and the Wolf Hero of Athens, and the Bear of the Arcadians, have been explained away, as results of "disease of language." But nobody will apply that obsolete theory to the vast menagerie of savage totem-names.
- ↑ Macbain, Etymological Dictionary, 1896, quoting MS. of 1456.
