What kind of “friend” are you – Wayan?

Here’s an idea for all you social media-network sites out there, freshly imported from Bali.

On Bali everybody have the same 4 names. The firstborn – boy or girl – is Wayan, number two Made, number three Nyoman, and four Ketut. Number 5 is called Wayan again and so it starts over (See Wikipedia for more on the subject).

Captain Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut (make your choise!) having let my youngst son Osvald take the steering of his traditional Balisnese boat during an early morning Dolphin-scout tour some two weeks ago, outside Lovina, Bali.

From one point of view this naming-practice is overwhelmingly restricted, and surely does not allow for much expression of individuality. From a social point of view, however, they tell you a lot: Meeting a “Wayan” tells you he’s either the firstborn, a prestigious position – or number 5, which in turns indicates he’s from a rather big family.

This is a smart way to convey social functions! Compare to eg. the somewhat pauvre labelling at social networking sites. Here everybody’s a “friend”. Not much distinction between degrees of “friendship”, “familyship” or merely “knowingship”.

Could this naming practice be adopted by social networking sites? Imagine, eg, if my “friends” at a professional social network like linkedin were all “Steves” (that is bosses or former bosses), “Susans” (present or former collegeaues) or “Bobs” (employees).

Checking out a profiles could then read you: Mutual Steves, Mutual Bobs – or “you got 3 Susans in common – click to view all shared Susans”. At a horse-riding social networking site “chevalliers” would be the ones who’ve owned a horse for at least five years, at a party-photosharing-website “Piclers” could be users who attended the same discoteqeus as you self, and so on and so on…

PS. On second thought some of these ideas might allready have been adopted. I had a kind of a kick from being “friend” with “Anders” during af after the national elections last year (“Anders” with the sirname Fogh-Rasmussen is the primeminister of Denmark). That was somewhat cool, I thought (I also saw to it to befriend the leader of the opposition, “Helle” as well as “Margrethe” and “Ellen”, and blogged about it here). But then after a few months my friend Anders wrote me an email, telling me he had changed my social standing from “friend” to “follower”, which in turn led me to abandon our relationsship 🙁