Further insights on personal names (üy) among the Mapuche

There is no agreement among academics about how mapuche's given names are constructed and the ways in which they are circulated or assigned (through maternal, paternal or a combination of the two lines). An ethnographic study in Altos Bío Bío allowed us to identify a complex universe of rituals and believes surrounding the names (üy) whose model -which we will call laku- we hypotheticize can be generalized in time (towards the past) and in space (the region of Araucanía). Using this model we critically approach the attempts made during the last hundred years to understand the construction, assignment and circulation of given names in mapuche society.

Key words: Mapuche, Kinship, Identity, Names.