Folk Fish Names Are Condensed Forms of Traditional Knowledge: Case Study with the Vaie People of Sarawak, Malaysia

Abstract

Folk names that form the backbone of folk biological classifications are coined using traditional knowledge and linguistic mechanisms. In the process, traditional knowledge on the salient characteristics of the denoted taxa gets encoded in their respective names. In this chapter, we present 132 folk names used by the Vaie community of Sarawak, Malaysia to denote the fish known to them. Based on the apparency of traditional knowledge encoded by these names, we classify them into barefaced and cryptic. We found 61 Vaie fish names encoding traditional knowledge related to ecology, morphology, quality, and utility values of the respective taxa. Of these, 21 names were found to be cryptic (metaphors—11; metonyms—10), and the rest barefaced. Cryptic names such as metonyms and metaphors often encode traditional knowledge that spans beyond the taxon denoted. Folk names encoding traditional knowledge are indicative of the larger body of traditional knowledge held by local communities.