Ethnographic footnote regarding 'stud and joist'

[Alan Rumsey]

While 'stud and joist' is perhaps not a standard trope in the 
English-speaking world, a very similar one is standard among the Ku Waru 
people of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, where it figures among their 
personal naming practices. Often pairs of same-sex siblings there are 
given names which rhyme (e.g. Ruta and Rata, Wai and Pai, Kekl and 
Kokl), or which are semantically related as complementary terms evoking 
images of mutual support, or of appeal and response. For example, a pair 
of sisters we know have names which mean 'suffering' and 'compassion'. A 
common pair of names for brothers are ones which mean 'center beam and 
support post'. It is relevant to note that these terms are more widely 
known and used there than 'stud and joist' are in most English-speaking 
parts of the world --- and the image therefore more readily available 
---  because in Ku Waru nearly everyone builds their own houses, using 
locally available casuarina wood for the frames, woven cane for the 
walls and floors, and kunai grass for the thatched roofs.

Alan