and
the term 'totem' has been explained by natives as meaning 'badge.' But
this explanation is late, and the employment of the sacred object as
badge is not widely diffused. When it gives a clan its name it is, of
course, a distinguishing mark, but this does not show that such
distinction was in all cases its original function. Nor would the badge
come into use till the name had been fixed.

+556+. The view just mentioned does not attempt to explain how a
particular name came to be attached to a clan. This lack is supplied by
the theory that a clan was named by its neighbors after the kind of food
on which it chiefly subsisted.[911] The objection to this theory is that
no group of men is known to confine itself to one article of
food--savages eat whatever they can find--and moreover contiguous groups
would feed on the same kinds of food. A view not open to this objection
is that names of clans, also given from without, expressed fancied
resemblances of the persons named to animals and other objects, or
peculiarities of person or speech, or were derived from the place of
abode.[912]

+557+. It is obviously true that human groups have names derived from
objects with which they are somehow specially connected; in the lists of
clan-names in Oceania, Africa, India, America, animal names predominate,
but many are taken from plants, and some from inanimate objects;[913]
when groups become settled they are sometimes called after their places
of abode. The other supposition in these "name theories"--that the names
are given from without--is less certain. There are examples of such
naming by outsiders--nicknames, sometimes respectful, sometimes
derisive.[914] But the known cases are not numerous enough to establish
a general rule--the origin of names of clans and tribes is largely
involved in obscurity.[915] There is no improbability in either theory
of the method of naming, native or foreign--both modes may have existed,
one in one region, one in another, and one group may at different times
have been called by different names.

+558+. "Cooeperative" theories suppose that a number of groups united
for economic purposes, to each being assigned the duty of increasing by
magical means the supply of a particular sort of food or other
necessity, and procuring a portion for the general store.[916] Such
cooeperation, however, assumes too great a capacity of organization to be
primitive. It is hardly found outside of Central Australi