Yoruba greeting is elaborate, physical and hierarchical. A younger man prostrates fully — dobale — flat on the ground before a substantially senior person; a woman kneels — kunle. Greetings are also situational to an unusual degree, with distinct forms for someone working, someone eating, someone who has returned from a journey, someone in mourning, someone who has had a child. Elders are addressed by title or by a kinship term rather than by name. Outsiders read this as elaborate courtesy; its function is to establish relative position before any transaction of content, so that the conversation happens on a settled footing. It is also religiously grounded, since respect for age is continuous with respect for ancestors — the elder is closer to becoming one. In the diaspora the physical prostration has generally survived inside religious houses, where godchildren prostrate to godparents, long after disappearing from ordinary social life.