Where names indicate the order of birth
Children of the Lisu and Singpho communities in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam are named according to the order they are born in the family, incorporating numbers into their names
Ayu and Agey are familiar names among explorers of the 1,985sq km Namdapha, India’s easternmost tiger reserve bordering Myanmar. But for members of their Lisu or Yobin community, inhabiting pockets of the Miao subdivision in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh, the names of the two brothers are also clear indicators of the order they were born into their family.
In the Lisu dialect, Ayu means seventh, and Agey eighth. Apart from the sequence of their birth, their names reveal that they have at least six male siblings, with the eldest named Apu, followed by Adu, Akhi, Achi, Ati, and Apshi.
“I do not write ‘Ayu’, but members of my family, clan, and tribe call me by that name. Numbering our names is a tradition we generally adhere to,” said Yolisa Yobin of Gandhigram aka Shidi, about 120 km from Miao.
Lisu boys and girls have separate sets of numbered names to indicate the order of their birth. The eldest girl in a family has Ana in her name, and the ones after her are called Angyi, Acha, Ado, Achhi, Ata, Akhu, Agu, Aju, and Apshi.
“We have a mechanism for clearing the numerical confusion in cases where two or more families may have an equal or almost equal number of boys and girls. This is done by prefixing or suffixing the given names to the number assigned after birth,” Tifusa Yobin, the president of the Yobin Welfare Society told The Hindu.
The tradition of numbered names is also prevalent among the Singphos, an ethnic group inhabiting 27 countries, including China’s Yunnan province.
In India, they mostly inhabit the Changlang and Namsai districts of Arunachal Pradesh, and the Tinsukia district of Assam.