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Prophecy, Sorcery, and Reincarnation
emotional support” (M. Nuttall 1994 , 133 ). Nuttall explores the deep
emotional and social bonds that are attached to namesakes:
Once named, children begin to learn the identities of the people
they are named after and acquire a knowledge of the various rela-
tionships that link them to an intricate pattern of genealogical and
fictive kin. As the child is named after people who had previously
occupied positions in the kinship network, to some extent roles and
interaction between atsiaq [i.e., the person who receives the name of
a dead person] and the family of the aqqa [the person who gives the
name] are prescribed. However, this does not tell us of the person’s
own sense of identity and feelings of being named. Other people do
the naming, ensuring that they continue to experience the memory
of a deceased relative and loved and valued member of the commu-
nity in the form of an atsiaq. (M. Nuttall 1994 , 130 – 131 )
Although I never heard my host family use specific terminology in
conjunction with naming practices, the names used correspond to Nut-
tall’s description of Greenlandic naming practices. What are the cos-
mological origins of such systems? This question has not been studied
so extensively, although a recent article by Alexina Kublu and Jarich
Oosten, building on the work of Knud Rasmussen, portrays the Inuit
soul-complex as a complex yet comprehensible system of agents and
actions (Kublu and Oosten 1999 ). Every being, persons and animals
included, possess a tarniq, or that part of the soul that gives life and
health. A tarniq might be coaxed into leaving the body through sor-
cery or when a person transgresses a taboo. The loss of one’s tarniq
generally eventuates in death, although shamans have the ability to
call back one’s tarniq, or replace it with another. The other part of the
soul (in animals, it exists independently of the tarniq), the inuusia, is
associated with warmth and breath (Kublu and Oosten 1999 ). Both
the tarniq and the inuusia eventually leave the body when an individ-
ual dies. The tarniq might linger for a few days with the dead body
and then either become reincarnated and/or go to the land of the dead.
The latter is what happened to Levi’s tarniq, which had dwelled in the
body of Jamasee, then died, then entered the body of Levi, transfer-
ring to him memories and idiosyncrasies from his life.
