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THE AESTHETICS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CAMEL AND GOAT NAMING AND NOMENCLATURE AMONG THE AFAR PASTORALISTS OF NORTH EASTERN ETHIOPIA [Abstract ID: 1208-05]
Due to their ability to adapt to the dry desert conditions in Afar land, camels and goats are important economic and cultural animals among the Afar pastoralists of north Eastern Ethiopia. Camels and goats serve as a source of food (meat, milk), clothing, utensils, and are a source of cash for the Afar pastoral communities. Apart from their economic value, camels and goats play an important traditional value among the Afars, serving as a source of prestige and indicators of social status, precursors for fulfilling cultural traditions. Owing to the economic and cultural roles of camels and goats, the Afar pastoralists have developed a very elaborate identification and nomenclature system for these animals. With the objective of documenting and analyzing the naming and nomenclature system, we have undertaken an ethnographic assessment and analysis, focusing mainly on goats and camels. The study involved interviewing village elders, herders, and various household members of five villages around Aba'ala town in the Afar regional state of Ethiopia. Our results indicate that camel nomenclature and naming serves a utilitarian purpose of easing camel management, identification, and conflict avoidance. Camels are identified by ten different stages of development, around 40 behavioral categories, 31 types of tattoos that belong to different clans and families, and in rare cases, by coat color. On the other hand, the Afar goat breeds, which are endowed by diverse aesthetic and reproductive qualities, are usually named or identified in two ways. The first one is purely based on coat color and coloring patterns and seems to focus only on the aesthetics of coat color diversity. There are more than 40 coat color and color patterns used for naming goats. According to the Afar, recognizing color patterns and naming goats according to their color patterns, provides aesthetic satisfaction, while serving as obvious identification. People associate different colors with luck, or sometimes bad luck, and and therefore coat coloring determines the worth of an animal. Apart from serving pure identification purposes, the animal nomenclature and naming system provides insights into Afar values, norms, fears, life philosophies and signifies the different layers of sentimental animal-human relationships in pastoral areas.