Word of the week: Totem

From Ojibwa to the world.

I’ve been thinking about this word for three reasons. The first: It’s fashion-week season around the world, and one of the brands kicking off the autumn showings was Toteme, “a French-sounding brand launched in New York by two Swedes” a decade ago, as U.S. Vogue put it. The fashionistas whose newsletters I read — examples here — are very keen on Toteme and I’ve been working on understanding why.¹ I’ve also been wondering about the brand name.

The second reason: A rave review in the New York Times for the new Mexican film Tótem, which has opened only in Los Angeles and New York (after spending most of 2023 on the festival circuit) and already has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I haven’t yet seen it — it opens Friday at a funky, inconvenient theater in San Francisco, but I may make the effort anyway — and none of the reviews I’ve read explain the title.² (The movie is about a young girl’s coming to terms with her father’s terminal illness.)

And the third reason: A usage of totem that surprised and puzzled me. It appears in

Amy Odell

’s Substack, The Back Row, in a discussion of Edward Enninful’s final cover as British Vogue’s editor-in-chief. Here’s the sentence that gave me pause:

The cover wasn’t just a totem to these celebrities, it was a totem to Enninful.

I don’t think I’d ever seen this particular use of “totem,” which seems here to mean “tribute.”

Three sightings equal one trend, right? My curiosity was piqued, so I did some investigating into a word I’ve known since my own childhood without ever thinking too deeply about it.

Totem was adopted into English from one of the Algonquian languages (probably Ojibwa) whose range extended from southern Canada to the northern Midwestern plains. It first appeared in print as nindoodem around 1760. The spelling became totam in 1791, about the same time as it appeared in French with the identical spelling. (The French pronunciation places the stress on the second syllable.) Here’s the OED’s definition:

An emblem representing a clan or other hereditary social unit, having the form of an animal or other natural object; the animal or natural object itself; a depiction or representation of this animal or object.

Originally with reference to some Indigenous peoples of North America but used by anthropologists with reference to other groups with similar practices or beliefs.

A totem is typically considered to be ancestrally or fraternally related to the clan and is treated with particular care.

Stylized totem mural in an alley off 23rd Street in Uptown Oakland. Photo: Nancy Friedman

Totem has spread far and wide; it may in fact be one of the most globally successful words to originate in a Native American language. It’s essentially the identical word in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Hebrew (טוֹטֶם), Swedish, and Dutch, and possibly in other languages as well.

One reason for totem’s success may be the lack of a non-Native word to describe the totem poles (first usage in English: 1808) used by the indigenous peoples of northwestern North America to represent family lineage and mythical or historical incidents.³ If you were an American or European who wanted to talk about totem poles, you had to use an indigenous word.

None of the European languages I’ve mentioned spells totem with an E on the end, as the fashion brand Toteme does. That idiosyncratic spelling may reinforce a Gallic pronunciation, accent on the second syllable. Or maybe the company’s Swedish founders just liked the symmetry of a six-letter name. (The adopted word is spelled totem in Swedish.)

I did find an interesting Swedish connection to totems of the non-fashion variety. In 2006, Stockholm’s Museum of Ethnography returned a totem pole to a Halsa delegation from British Colombia. It had been erected in 1872 “at the mouth of the Kitlope River, north of Vancouver Island, to honour their forest spirit for saving the tribe from a smallpox epidemic.” It “disappeared” in the 1920s, probably stolen by a Swedish diplomat. The incident ended happily, with Halsa craftspeople carving and donating a replacement pole to the museum.

A few additional totem items:

• TOTM makes “organic cotton tampons, pads, liners, & reusable menstrual cups.” The company is based in Cardiff, Wales; the name is an acronym — it’s been in Urban Dictionary since 2003, so I gather it’s at least somewhat well known — for Time Of The Month.

  

  TOTM packaging

• TOTM is military jargon for Tailored Operational Training Meal, “a totally self-contained packet consisting of a meal packed in a flexible meal bag that is lightweight and fits easily into military field clothing pockets.” In the videos I’ve watched it’s pronounced as an acronym, tee-oh-tee-em.

• TOTM Technologies is a Singapore-based company, founded in 2015, that “provides end-to-end identity management and biometric solutions and products.” TOTM does not appear to be an acronym. The website doesn’t give an explanation for the name.

• Thanks to LinkedIn, I now know that TOTM can also stand for “Taking Off The Mask,” a workshop offered by the Ever Forward Club in the San Francisco Bay Area. The club was looking for a facilitator to lead workshops that provide “a safe space to examine the ‘masks’ that people wear and how these can impede their ability to live fulfilling lives.”

One more: In the Minecraft game, a totem of undying is “an uncommon combat item that can save holders from death. It is dropped by evokers, which spawn in woodland mansions and raids.” I have never played Minecraft, so I have no idea what any of that means.

Totem pole at the Rotary Nature Center, Lake Merritt. The pole was carved in 1998 by Eagle Helikinuva, a a canoe and totem carver from the Native American Tsimshian nation. The nature center (off to the right, out of frame) was seriously damaged by a fire in September 2023 and has been boarded up since then. Photo: Nancy Friedman

1. Another thing I’m trying to understand is why all of these ladies now refer to an object of desire (coat, handbag, bangle) as she, as in “Am I too late to pull the trigger on the Toteme [scarf-jacket] or is she a classic?” “She” is made of 88% wool and 12% polyester and costs $1,130.

2. Names are clearly significant in this movie. The young girl is Sol (sun): her father is Tona, short for Tonatliuh (the Aztec sun god), and his nurse is Cruz (cross).

3. Although totem poles have come to be associated with the city of Seattle, and there are many fine examples in public spaces and museums there, the area’s Coast Salish peoples did not in fact erect totem poles. The association began in the late 19th century when civic leaders (white men, presumably) began touting Seattle’s status as the “Gateway to Alaska.”