In what follows, I attempt to show that among the Orokaiva of Papua New Guinea, the use of a name system constitutes the morphological framework that maps the relations between people and groups through time. This, of course, does not mean that this system is intangible, but on the contrary, that while it is repeatedly reshaped by other dimensions of Orokaiva social life, like historical events, wars, individual endeavors and so forth, its capacity to preserve its general structure render these momentary movements meaningful. The point is thus that the system of names, far from being a rigid framework, is instrumental both in prolonging society through time and in granting meaning to all events.

This Orokaiva fact projects, I believe, a comparative light on an old debate concerning the status of kinship and marriage and that of the title system. The name system is here instrumental in projecting society through time, just as kinship, marriage, and title system may be in other places.

The major contemporary discovery in Melanesia is undoubtedly that persons are not closed up units but that relations constitute them. This conception implies that all sorts of things, like objects of exchange, are integral to the person. In this context, one might expect names to be one of the most intimate assets of the individual. Among the Orokaiva, this is, however, not the case.