Project 57 Week 55: Inuit disc numbers and Project Surname

Traditional Inuit names reflect “things of importance (family, spirits, animals, the environment) and were neither gender-specific nor recognized shared family names” (Library and Archives Canada [LAC] blog, 2016; Osborne, 2023). Family and community members provided advice when a child was named, with names being understood as “discovering who the child was, who they represented from the past and who they will become” (Filice, 2023). Missionaries, government officials and settlers in Inuit communities didn’t understand and found this style of naming challenging to learn, so imposed several naming systems on Inuit. 

According to a post on the Indigenous Corporate Training (ICT) blog, missionaries first attempted renaming Inuit through baptizing people and giving them Christian names (2016). There was little attention or care paid to the impact of having someone’s “soul name” erased (ICT, 2016).  Inuk author Norma Dunning shared that “what was lost or temporarily interrupted was the traditional Inuit system of naming and the ceremony around death.” (Mlynek, 2022). Erasing someone’s name, and the system of naming within a community, is another way colonization “erodes a people” (Mlynek, 2022). 

Inuit had trouble pronouncing and translating these new names so continued to use their traditional names along with the new Christian ones, which caused a lot of confusion. In the late 1920s the government attempted to standardize identification and names but just added to the confusion (ICT, 2016; Osborne, 2023). There was also an attempt to force each head of a household to choose a common name, following Western-European conventions of shared last names for families (ICT, 2016; Osborne, 2023).  

This changed in 1941 when the government started assigning numbers to Inuit (LAC blog, 2016; ICT, 2016) following a suggestion made in 1935 by a doctor (Osborne, 2023). The suggestion was that each Inuk be given an identity disc, like military tags, known as ujamik or ujamiit in Inuktitut (Osborne, 2023). Identification discs were given to Inuit living in Inuvialuit, Nunavut, and Nunavik; Inuit in Nunatsiavut weren’t because Labrador was not part of Canada then and Inuit there were given last names by Moravian missionaries starting in 1893 (Osborne, 2023). The discs were updated in the 1950s to include which district someone lived in (Osborne, 2023). 

The government’s intention was to have Inuit wear these discs all the time or have them sewn into clothing and be used in official documents (Filice, 2023; ICT, 2016). The numbers were used on items such as paycheques and to access social services (Osborne, 2023).  

In the late 1960s this practice gained attention as being demoralizing and the government decided disc numbers would be replaced by last names (ICT, 2016; Osborne, 2023). “Project Surname” launched in 1970, with Inuk Abraham Okpik touring the Arctic and recording surnames chosen by each person (Osborne, 2023). Often people choose to go by an ancestor’s name (Filice, 2023). A linguist worked with Okpik to determine a standardized spelling (Filice, 2023). By 1972 the Northwest Territories were no longer using disc numbers, though the practice continued in Quebec until 1978 and in some cases, Inuit were still receiving them in the 1980s (ICT, 2016; Osborne, 2023).  

Project Surname wasn’t without criticism. Inuit “argued surnames did not exist in traditional Inuit culture” and reinforced European naming conventions (Filice, 2023). If someone wasn’t home, their family would choose a name for them, and women were often left out of the decision-making process (Filice, 2023). However, some Inuit preferred the disc system and continue to use the numbers (Filice, 2023). 

Since 1999 when Nunavut was established, there has been an increase in renaming the names of places (Filice, 2023). Additionally, people changing the spelling of names to be more in line with Inuktitut (Filice, 2023). 

To continue learning, check out these resources:  

• Atiqput: Inuit oral history and project naming, (2022) Carol Payne (editor).
• E9-1956 (Identification disc numbers system applied by the federal government to Inuit from 1941-1978), (2000) Zebedee Nungak.
• Inuit kinship and naming customs in Baffin region, (2014) Leah Otak, Peesee Pitsiulak-Stevens, Louis Tapardjuk.
• Kinauvit? What is your name: The Eskimo disc system and a daughter’s search for her grandmother, (2022) Norma Dunning. 

The Decolonizing the Library Working Group invites everyone to learn alongside us with Project 57. This project is a response to the TRC Call to Action 57, which calls on "federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to provide education to public servants on the history of Aboriginal peoples." 

For more information visit Indigenous Initiatives.