As regards the meaning of these names, we find that of the fifty-eight names which remain after deducting those which occur in more than one system, nineteen can be translated with certainty, and we can guess at the meaning of some half dozen more.  Of translateable names the most widely spread are various titles of Eaglehawk and Crow, which appear in five different systems in Victoria and New South Wales[100].  Crow reappears in West Australia under the name of Wartung, with white cockatoo, also a Victorian phratry name, as its fellow.  In North Queensland, as a parallel to the black and white cockatoo of the south, we find on the Annan River two species of bee giving their names to phratries; and the Black Duck phratry of the Waradjeri suggests that here too might be found another contrasting pair, if we could translate the other name.  For the Euahlayi phratry names, on which more will be said in discussing the “blood” organisations, Mrs Parker gives the translation “Light-blooded” and “Dark-blooded,” which comes near that suggested by Mr Mathews—­slow and quick blooded.  In the Ulu, Illi, and Wili of Northern Territory we seem to recognise Welu (curlew).  Koolpuru (emu), Yungaru and Yungo (kangaroo), and Wutheroo (emu) are also possible meanings.

The problems raised by the phratriac nomenclature are complex and probably insoluble.  They are in part bound up with the problem of the origin of the organisation itself; of this nature, for example, is the question whether the names correspond to anything existing in the pre-phratriac stage, or whether the organisation was borrowed and the names taken over translated or untranslated into the idiom of the borrowers.  If the latter be the solution, we have a simple explanation of the wide-spread Eaglehawk-Crow system as well as of other facts, to which reference is made below.

If on the other hand the names have not been much spread by borrowing,—­and the increasing number of small phratry areas known to us tells in favour of this, though it also suggests that the widely-found systems have gained ground at the expense of their neighbours,—­then we obviously need some theory as to the origin of the organisation, before we can frame any hypothesis as to the origin of the names.

The prominent part, however, played by the Eaglehawk among phratry names raises some questions which can be discussed on their merits.  One of these is the age of phratry names.  Some of the earliest records of initiation ceremonies in New South Wales mention that the eaglehawk figured in them[101].  In West Australia this bird is the demiurge, and the progenitors of the phratries, of which crow is one, are his nephews.  This is not the only case in which these birds figure in mythology.