Linkage of credit cards to cell phones, where your cell phone will be your credit card, will combine to sets of data (geographical, consumer)–in the end you don’t need a name, as you are the electronic blip that sends information. The point of Kerim’s blog which interested me was how users of Facebook could “come out” with their indigenous identites. I wonder if with newer network systemssupporting identification will we not have parallel systems operating so that we, like in sociolinguistics, code switch according to our needs?

Perhaps the innovation Kerim mentions which shows the Chinese name to Chinese friends is one such example. Innovations may allow such flexibility, and we have to see names like language usage as signals of group identification, and not markers of personal/family identification.

I have less information on names in China. My research assistant in China last summer fought the system by insisting on using only his Lahu name, transliterating it rather than taking a Han name as well and refusing a surname, but he seemed unique in this respect. When I am literate in Chinese I will certainly spend more time on this issue!

This connects to a problem I faced presenting a paper this past week. A friend also on the panel had asked me to cover the ethnic diversity within the category Lahu, which was background to both of our papers. I ended up using far too much time on the subject, which means I probably need to explore it a bit more I suppose. The issue, as brief as I can make it, is that two linguistically distinct subgroups use the same ethnonym (Lahu Na or “black Lahu”) for themselves. Thus, a person who says “I am Lahu Na” may be a member of one of two quite different groups. Each group has a name for the other as well, there are some complex historical and ideological issues at play, and folks in both groups are quite aware of the issue. Explaining this makes me very aware of the ideological force of the naturalization of a link between a particular group and a particular name.

Thank you, Kerim, for linking all of this to social networking policies and the desire for visibility. I find I want to connect it to an ongoing discussion of human vs. cultural rights in which I am involved. That discussion has been dealing a lot with agency, and the right to name – for example, upland peoples in Thailand adopting the adjective “indigenous” although they are not authochthonous in the traditional sense.