have been handed on from tribe to tribe, and it is reasonable to suppose this to have been the case with the northern tribes.  This conclusion is borne out by the forms of the suffixes, which do not appear to have been developed from one root determinative, as must have been the case if we suppose that the names originated when the language spoken by these tribes was undifferentiated; and by the facts as to the apparent duplication of Koomara, to which allusion has already been made.

The important point about the class, as distinguished from the phratry systems, is the great extent covered by the former.  The north-west area of male descent is virtually one from the point of view of class names; two other areas are very large, six are of medium size, three are small, and the remaining one is probably medium.

Although the question of the meaning of the class names is closely bound up with that of their origin, the problem is closely bound up with some of the points discussed in this chapter.  The meaning of the eight-class names is connected with the area of origin of the system, and linguistic questions, such as those relating to suffixes, come in.  We may therefore briefly discuss at this point the meaning of the class names.

On the whole it may be said that we know the meaning of the class names only in exceptional cases.  The Kiabara, Kamilaroi, Annan River, Kuinmurbura, Narrang-ga, and two of the West Australian names can be translated (see Table I).  But with these exceptions we have no certain knowledge of the meaning of the single class names.

Conjectures are of comparatively little value.  For in the first place the number of words recorded from any given tribe is as a rule very small, and little or no indication of the pronunciation is given even in the latest works on Australian ethnography.  The variations, evidently purely arbitrary and due to the want of training in phonetics, are frequently very considerable.  And finally the area over which the names prevail is sufficiently great to give us our choice from half a dozen or more different tribal languages, which combined with the variation in the form of the words, adds very considerably to the probability that there will be found somewhere within the area a word or words bearing a deceptively close resemblance to the class names.  How far this is the case may be made clear by one or two instances of chance resemblances between animal names (it seems on the whole probable that if the names are translateable they will turn out to be animal names) in the same or neighbouring tribes.  The meaning of Arunta seems to be white cockatoo[116], but we also find a word almost indistinguishable from it in sound—­eranta—­with the meaning of pelican[117].  Kulbara means emu and koolbirra kangaroo[118].  Malu (=kangaroo), mala (=mouse), and male (=swan) are found in tribes of West Australia, though not of tribes living in immediate proximity one to another[119].  But perhaps the best example is that of Derroein, which, as we have seen, means kangaroo.  In addition to durween (young male kangaroo) we find at no great distance the words dirrawong (=iguana) and deerooyn (=whip snake), either of which bears a sufficiently close resemblance to the class name to be accepted as a translation for it in the absence of other competitors[120].