The purpose of this study is to investigate the social and residential mobility and to describe the mechanism of movement among the Orochon around the Greater and Lesser Khingan Ranges of northeast China in the first half of the 20th century. Since the 1950s, the Orochon began to change their migratory way of life, by means of hunting, fishing, and collecting, to a sedentary onerelying on forestry and agriculture.
The analysis of the residential mobility of the Orochon was mainly based on the documents of Chinese scholars who depended upon the Orochon elders' memories concerning their hunting-gathering way of life. The inter-settlement movement of the households is analyzed by tracing the names of heads of house holds from year to year.
As a result, it is confirmed that many households changed their home base from one settlement to another. The residents of a settlement are found in different settlements before the time when they were surveyed. The composition of members from each settlement changed substantially. These fluid residential groupings were recognized to be mainly caused by the nature of hunting-gathering activities and by the deaths of resident members.
The resident members, who lacked sufficient horses for their hunting activities, moved their home base to another settlement for a time to borrow a few horses from their kin or friends. When households moved between settlements, they moved independently in most cases. On the other hand, the resident members disbanded and moved to other settlements upon the death of a certain resident, separating themselves into a few different groups.

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It is known that the the name-giving prohibition of the Ainu was applied, not only among individual settlement dwellers, but among the inhabitants of each district during the early 1800s and 1850s. The name-giving prohibition among the Ainu dictated that the name of a living neighbor or a dead person should not be given to another individual. However, such culture as name-giving prohibition among the Ainu has not been investigated among other societies.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the spatial range of the application of the name-giving prohibition among the Orochon in the southeastern part of Greater Khingan Range, northern China, in the 1930s. The findings of the analysis are as follows:
The core members of the household consisted of the household head, his or her spouse, and his or her son and/or daughter in many cases. The number of persons who lived in the same household were within the range of 2 to 11 persons (mean 5.1 persons per household). The number of settlement dwellers was within the range of 4 to 40 persons (mean 14.6 persons per settlement) in summer, but was 4 to 66 persons (mean 19.4 persons per settlement) in winter. The number of households within the same settlements was within the range of 1 to 9 households (mean 2.8 households per settlement) in summer, but was within the range of 1 to 11 households (mean 3.8 households per settlement) in winter. The settlement size of the Orochon was smaller than that of the Ainu in the early 1800s.
No one had the same name as that of a living member within the same household. This was true in spite of their having at least two clan names (family names) in the same household. The Orochon individual has clan name and given name, but the Ainu has given name only. The ratio of persons who contravened the prohibition against taking the name of a living neighbor within the same settlement (the number of persons whose names were same as those of living persons in the same settlement/total number of inhabitants) was 0% in summer, but was 0.6% in winter. That ratio of the Ainu in the early 1800s was within the range of 0.3% to 1.6% by district. When the study area is expanded from settlement to district, the ratio of persons who contravened the name-giving prohibition was 1.1%. That ratio of the Ainu in the early 1800s was within the range of 0.3% to 1.6% by district in the early 1800s, and was within the range of 0% to 4.4% by district in the 1850s. The namegiving prohibition of the Orochon was widely applied, not only among individual household members and settlement dwellers, but also among the inhabitants of the southeastern part of Greater Khingan range.

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