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| | languagehat.com: WHAT'S IN A NAME? |
 | | Still on my colonial history kick, I'm reading Jill Lepore's The Name of War, about the worst conflict in early American history, King Philip's War of 1675-76 (although, as she says, "Its very name, each word in its title—'King,' 'Philip's,' 'War'—has been passionately disputed"). |
 | | Those who knew Philip by the name he went by at the time of his death, in August 1676, would not have uttered it: a strict naming taboo prohibited it. |
 | | As Roger Williams had reported, "the naming of their dead Sachims, is one ground of their warres"; in 1665 Philip himself had traveled to Nantucket to kill an Indian who had spoken the name of his deceased father, Massasoit. |
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