Attention has been called in connection with the phratries to the suffixes such as um, itch, aku[115], etc.  Their precise meaning is usually uncertain.  An attentive consideration of the class names seems to show that similar suffixes have been used in forming them.  If we compare Panunga and Baniker, it seems a fair conclusion that the ban or pan is compounded with iker (aku) or unga, for among the Yookala, the nearest neighbours of the Bingongina, who have it as a phratriac suffix, the _-agoo_ of the class names is unmistakeably independent of the root word, whatever that may be.  In addition to unga we find inginja, angie, inja, itch (recalling the itji of the phratries), itchana, and the form anjegoo which seems to have a double suffix. Ara, yeri, aree, um, ana, ula (as we see by comparing Purula with Burong), ta, and the possibly double form tjuka, seem to be further examples.

The feminine forms Nalyirri for Thalirri (=Palyeri), Nala for Chula, Ninum for Tjinum, Nana for Tjana or Thama, etc. suggest that prefixes are also to be distinguished.  They seem to be choo, joo, ja, ya, n-, yun, u-, ku, pu, bu, nu, etc.  We are however on very uncertain ground here, for the feminine forms may be deliberate creations.  Allowance has to be made too for the personal equation of the observer, which is by no means inconsiderable.  Possibly this factor, together with ordinary laws of phonetic change, the most elementary principles of which have yet to be established for the Australian languages, will suffice to account for the variations in the names as recorded.  Otherwise the words are in most cases reduced to monosyllabic roots from which it seems hopeless to attempt to extract a meaning.

These questions of suffixes and prefixes are intimately connected with the very difficult problem of the origin of the classes.  The languages of these tribes are at present, if not distinct linguistic stocks, at any rate very far from being mere dialectical variations of a common tongue, for the members of two tribes appear to be mutually unintelligible, unless, contrary to the custom of the American Indians, they are bilingual.  But if each tribe added a suffix, and thus adopted into their own language words which, from the general agreement among the class names of this group, seem to have come to them from outside, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the word which they adopted had some meaning for them.  Of course we may suppose that the class names were all adopted in the far off time when all spoke a common language.  But apart from the difficulty that this presupposes the existence of an eight-class system at that early period, it is clear from the Queensland evidence that class names