Andy, you are quite right. I got my heirs Apparent and Presumptive confused!

Thank you Raymond for your further comments on the traditional protocols around names.

Thank you Chris for your additional comment, I'd also like to add that in my traditional society, elders and adult members were not called by their names by children or the young people.

My society is based on kinship and the use of gender words in speech to distinguish male and female in roles and activities. Custom and social norm dictated that people should be addressed using kinship terminologies. It is disrespectful to call a person by name.

For example, in the Arapesh society, the equivalent for father and mother is "yayen" and "yamo". I and my siblings are entitled to address or call our birth mother as "yamo" and birth father as "yayen".

If someone else wants to address or refer to our mother or father, the terminology changes. This person will refer to my mother as "emegek" and my father as "yaken". He or she cannot address my parents as I do

Only the old people and adults can call each other by name. This is why names play an important role in identifying genealogy and origin.

Thank you Fr Garry for this piece.

I would also like to add that apart from names derived from local languages, others came about as a result of the use of Pidgin and English during the colonial era.

These names, which are usually surnames, were derived from occupations or jobs done by the name bearers' fathers or grandfathers during the colonial period.

The evolution and colonial roots of such names caused these names to be unique in form and identity. The use of such names identify someone to a specific family lineage traced back to a grandparent or grandparents during the colonial era. These surnames cannot be duplicated or used by another person because of their history.

For example, the surname of the former open member for Maprik, Gabriel Kapris, came from the Tok Pisin words "kap rais" or "one cup of rice" in English.

This name came about because Gabriel's father once worked for the South Seas missionaries as a cook. As a cook, he was called "Kap rais" and he eventually adopted the name, changing it to Kapris.

Gabriel had to defend his surname publicly in the print media some years back during the trial of the infamous PNG bank robber, William Kapris. He stated that William's real surname was Kapis and not Kapris.

He was correct in saying that William lied about his name during the time of his arrest but William's name had already been registered in the court files and documents and as such, couldn't be changed again by the courts.

Gabriel Kapris only wanted to protect his father's name and distance himself from William because his family name was being tarnished with its use by the media and the high level of public interest in the case.

I personally pondered over my surname and its meaning for some time when I was still in school. I enquired about this with my father but he didn't know and couldn't help me.

It wasn't until recently, about a year ago, that I found out that my surname has colonial roots and was derived from the English word "sea man".

It was a nickname given to my paternal grandfather who once worked on a boat as a young man at Salamaua, Morobe before the war. The name stuck but changed in pronunciation and spelling when my grandfather began to use it.

My grandfathers and grandmothers (both paternal and maternal) used Christian (or first names) alongside their fathers' names. Their use of first names may have occurred, by my estimate, at the turn of the 1900s after the Catholic missionaries had established themselves in the local area.

Prior to that, in my society, people had only one name. Their single names did not necessarily mean anything but were " personal" names of ancestors and associated with landmarks, locations or places of origin. These names were passed down and were associated with clans and tribes.

Today, these names are referred to as " tokples nem" in Tok Pisin and are inserted between the first name and surname. The old people and folks in the village can only identify someone and his or her family lineage through the tok ples names or ancestor names.

With the increase in births per family and population, the practice of passing down tok ples village names is becoming a problem because these names are few in between.

Some families are now using common names or borrowed names or even nicknames as middle names. Others have excluded altogether the use of passing down tok ples names to their children.

Traditional and derivative names are important sources of history, identity and origin. With modernisation and the changing trend society, many Papua New Guineans are now using "double" first names like Michael Douglas or Peter John or Mary Paul.

The use of such names tend to remove all traces of ethnic roots and social identity from the bearer. Their names now become just names without a Papua New Guinea feel and identity.

My name is Awayang - actually Awe Ang but the patrol officers referred to old man Awe-ang as Awayang.

Awe means Savannah
Ang means from or of

Awe and means someone from the Savannah. I am from the East Trans Fly Savannah of South Fly District, Western Province.

Philip, I think "Nigints" is a red bird, maybe a parrot. Clement Papa can correct me. Re pair names, thanks Clement , perhaps also "Kundump" and "Mara" names of trees are also pair names.

Garry adding to your list of pair names in Melpa, Kuri and Paraka, Mek and Rumba, Kuk and Kaka, Pup and Papa!