Citations:dead-naming

(verb or noun?) killing by naming; calling down a death-curse upon by name

 * 1909, Rose Adelaide Witham, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, page 115:
 * The scene of the fight is particularly well preserved here; but the incident of the "dead-naming" (cf. above, "Though thou see me bleed," etc.) is wholly lost.


 * 1925, Poet Lore, volume 36, page 549:
 * The somewhat similar belief that a curse or blight falls upon that spot where blood has been shed, finds place in ... Name-avoidance is present in a number of our songs, and receives notable illustration in the dead-naming incident of the ballad, Earl Brand.


 * 1957, Molly Maureen Mahood, Shakespeare's wordplay, page 171:
 * Magic relied on the direct efficacy of words for spells, curses and incantations, and the superstition of dead-naming is a powerful theme of some sagas and ballads.


 * 1962, Arthur Palmer Hudson, Songs of the Carolina Charter colonists, 1663-1763, page 6:
 * Knight asks girl to hold the horses (in Scandinavian versions telling her not to call out his name) and stands up to them until he reaches the last (father or youngest son). From this one he receives a mortal wound (result of "dead-naming" in the


 * 1997, Marvin Kaye, John Betancourt, The Best of Weird Tales ISBN 188044853X, page 95
 * The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu
 * By P. D. GOG
 * The following tale was handed to me in manuscript by an acquaintance to whom it was related by a friend who heard it from an old resident of the Hawaiian group as happening to his father. Lukapehu died of an "error of mortal judgement," [or] of the incantations of the old medicine man,  Brushing past the gaunt Kapukapu, [Lukapehu] continued up the valley, ignoring the calling of his name by the enraged sorcerer  while he muttered his diabolical dead-naming, "Lukapehu shall die!"