Some insights into the plant nomenclatural system of the Kelabit people of Sarawak, Malaysia

Ethnotaxonomic and nomenclatural systems of indigenous communities help in the identification, classification and retrieval of information related to natural resources. For this research, the first two authors collaborated with the subsequent authors who are Kelabit scholars by themselves, to gain some insights into the Kelabit plant nomenclatural system. We used a ‘reverse documentation’ approach where Kelabit food plant names sourced from existing literature were deciphered to understand the mechanisms behind the naming process. We were able to identify 195 food plants which include 29 species of mushroom; mechanisms used for naming are ecology (32), morphology (126), quality (12) and utility (60). Our study indicates that the Kelabit nomenclatural system is an elaborate system operating on the basis of well-defined principles.