Editing Inuit languages (section)

=== Disc numbers and Project Surname ===
In the 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics such as [[tuberculosis]] made the [[government of Canada]] interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce.

Thus, in the 1940s, the Inuit were given [[disc numbers]], recorded on a special leather ID tag, similar to a [[Dog tag (identifier)|dog tag]]. They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to [[shamanism]] and [[paganism]].

They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become [[Ann Meekitjuk Hanson|Annie E7-121]].<ref name="Annie">{{cite web |url=http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html |title=What's in a name? |author=Ann Meekitjuk Hanson |publisher=nunavut.com |access-date=2012-02-20 |archive-date=2016-11-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107123650/http://www.nunavut.com/nunavut99/english/name.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all the region codes (like knowing a telephone area code).

Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tradition-orale.ca/english/project-surname-102.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002064546/http://www.tradition-orale.ca/english/project-surname-102.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=October 2, 2011 |title=Project Surname: Listening to Our Past |publisher=Francophone Association of Nunavut |access-date=2012-02-20 }}</ref> headed by [[Abe Okpik]], to replace number-names with [[patrilineal]] "family surnames".