The following statement, regarding one of the American Indian tribes, will stand for many other primitive peoples: "The proper names of the Dakotas are words, simple and compounded, which are in common use in the language. They are usually given to children by the father, grandfather, or some other influential relative. When young men have distinguished themselves in battle, they frequently take to themselves new names, as the names of distinguished ancestors of warriors now dead. The son of a chief when he comes to the chieftainship, generally takes the name of his father or grandfather, so that the same names, as in other more powerful dynasties, are handed down along the royal lines" (524. 44-45).
Of the same people we are also told: "The Dakotas have no family or surnames. But the children of a family have particular names which belong to them, in the order of their birth up to the fifth child. These names are for boys, Caske, Hepan, Hepi, Catan, and Hake. For girls they are, Windna, Hapan, Hapistinna, Wanske, and Wihake."
An interesting study might be made of the words we apply to children in respect of size, _little, small, wee, tiny,_ etc., very many of which, in their etymology, have no reference to childhood, or indeed to smallness. The derivation of little is uncertain, but the word is reasonably thought to have meant "little" in the sense of "deceitful, mean," from the radical _lut_, "to stoop" (hence "to creep, to sneak"). Curiously enough, the German _klein_ has lost its original meaning,--partly seen in our clean,--"bright, clear." _Small_ also belongs in the same category, as the German _schmal_, "narrow, slim," indicates, though perhaps the original signification may have been "small" as we now understand it; a cognate word is the Latin _macer_, "thin, lean," which has lost an s at the beginning. Even wee, as the phrase "a little wee bit" hints, is thought (by Skeat) to be nothing more than a Scandinavian form of the same word which appears in our English _way_. Skeat also tells us that "a little teeny boy," meant at first "a little fractious (peevish) boy," being derived from an old word _teen_, "anger, peevishness." Analogous to _tiny_ is _pettish_, which is derived from _pet_, "mama's pet," "a spoiled child." Endless would the list of words of this class be, if we had at our disposal the projected English dialect dictionary; many other illustrations might be drawn from the numerous German dialect dictionaries and the great Swiss lexicon of Tobler.