Ao

Clans and Kinship

Each language group has its own clans, grouped in three phratries. Among the Chongli these are the Pongen, regarded as the senior, the Lungkam and the Chami; the Mongsen have no names of their own for theirs and use the Chongli terms (Mills, pp. 13-21). The phratries are strictly exogamous: a man may not marry a woman of a clan that local opinion counts in his own phratry or in the corresponding phratry of the other group, though some clans are assigned to different phratries in different villages. Phratries and clans keep their own rights in shares of meat, ornaments and dress. Each village ward (khel) has its councillors (tatar), organised in bodies called minden; at the end of every generation, usually twenty-five to thirty years, all the councillors of a ward leave office together and a new body takes their place, and the Chongli name the generations in a cycle of five (pp. 181-182). Near each village gate stood a morung (arichu), a guard house and club house of the young men (p. 73).

The principal clans in Mills (1926, pp. 13-14 for the Chongli and 20-21 for the Mongsen), in his order and under his phratries. He writes the names with the final -r that Ao adds to names of persons and groups (Sangtamr, 'a Sangtam'), so the forms used as surnames today may differ. A few names in his lists could not be read reliably in the scan used and are left out, and Mills notes that some clans are assigned to different phratries in different villages.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Nagaland

  Within the single entry 'Naga' in Nagaland's list.

Checked on 2026-11-06 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Mills (1926, pp. 1-2) wrote that Ao is a current mispronunciation of Aor, the people's own word for themselves, which they explained as 'those who came', that is across the Dikhu, as against their name for the Sangtam, Chang, Phom and Konyak; Hutton, in a note, doubted this and read Aor as 'those who are'. Ao tradition holds that the ancestors came out of the earth at Lungterok, 'six stones', on a spur on the right bank of the Dikhu above the present Sangtam village of Chongliyimti; one stone is pointed out as the source of the Pongen and Lungkam phratries and another as that of the Chami (p. 6). Chongliyimti is the scene of nearly all Ao miracles in their stories.

History

Mills held charge of the Mokokchung subdivision from 1917 to 1924 and published The Ao Nagas in 1926, with notes by J. H. Hutton. The Ao country was formally annexed in April 1889, after an outpost had been set up at Mongsenyimti, and the subdivisional headquarters were soon established at Mokokchung (p. 13). The American Baptist mission had taught for some years in the plains when Dr E. W. Clark moved up to Molungyimchen in the spring of 1876; in the autumn he and his converts founded a new village, Molungyimsen, and in 1894 the mission station moved to Impur (p. 411). Mrs Clark wrote an Ao grammar and Dr Clark an Ao dictionary.

Faith and Worship

In the older Ao religion, as Mills recorded it (pp. 215-221), the many spirits are tsüngrem, and the greatest of them, Lichaba, is credited with making the world: he worked carefully on the plains but was hurried before he could finish, so the hills are a jumble. A yearly rite for him, Lichabamung, was held about June to keep the land from slipping, and the Tsüngremmung, in July or August, honoured all the tsüngrem. Most Ao, like most people of Nagaland, are now Christian, chiefly Baptist.

Customs

Marriage is outside one's phratry and the corresponding phratry of the other language group. Moatsü, held immediately after the sowing is finished, was in Mills's words the most popular ceremony of the Ao year (p. 115). Village councillors received shares of meat according to their standing, and phratries and clans had their own rights in dress and ornaments. The Ao laid out their dead on platforms, and made great xylophone-like drums hewn from single logs, which Mills lists among the things that set them apart from their Sumi and Lotha neighbours.

Festivals