An Alternative to Patronymics

A long, drunken subway ride last night gave me the chance to finish The Black Nile, Dan Morrison's account of a harrowing trip he took from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. There's enough grist in this excellent travelogue to craft a dozen killer Microkhan posts, but for now I'll just limit myself to a quick discussion of the Nuer, one of the major ethnic groups in southern Sudan.

Morrison, an occasional Microkhan correspondent now based in Dhaka, delves into the Nuer practice of...