The Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea are renowned for their prolific art forms including architecture, sculpture and body modification. Their naven ceremonial was canonised as an ethnographic staple when it was introduced into anthropology. The Iatmul have an intriguing and complex totemic cosmology that is articulated primarily through a system of personal names. These names are at once stories and stories are populated by these names whose esoteric significance is jealously guarded. The naming system is indeed the theoretical image of the culture as a whole and the ownership of these names individuates and separates one clan from another. The ownership of these names are also bound up with the ownership of both material resources—such as land, lagoons and water ways—and non-material resources such as specialised magical knowledge. When a clan appropriates a name from another clan, a fierce dispute would ensue and this would culminate in a litigious ceremonial debate in which competing clans seek to dispossess each other in the ownership and appropriation of the contested name. Ownership itself appropriates litigious moments of competing claims to assert its presence as an organiser of social relations. The basic ethnography of Iatmul personal names show how naming and identity are intricately tied to issues of ownership and appropriation. However, there are instances within contemporary Iatmul naming practices which proffer the view that appropriation can exist without the necessitating the presence of ownership. This is revealed through the use of introduced Christian names such as John and Esther. Introduced names are bestowed on individuals by the choice and convenience of individual families whereas there are specific rules that govern the use of traditional names. Introduced names provide an additional stock of names which Iatmul people use without having to worry about the litigious implications of ownership that traditional names carry. This is because introduced names are not capable of being owned and so they are freely appropriated. These two internal usages of name within a single culture go to show how appropriation exists with and without ownership. On the basis of such ethnography, we might be able to ask anew why it is necessary for cultures to appropriate or why is it that cultures are so able to absorb something external to itself that is either consistent or contradictory to its nature of onto-cosmological foundations.