Native Australians never spoke of the dead, who were consequently forgotten within a generation. Indeed, an astonishing reason for language change among some Aborigines was that any vocabulary word that sounded like the name of a person had to be avoided after his or her death. The people had to invent a new word.

Mark W. Moffett, The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall (2019)