totem

totem
    n 1: a clan or tribe identified by their kinship to a common
         totemic object
    2: emblem consisting of an object such as an animal or plant;
       serves as the symbol of a family or clan (especially among
       American Indians)
    

Totem \To"tem\, n. [Massachusetts Indian wutohtimoin that to
   which a person or place belongs.]
   1. A rude picture, as of a bird, beast, or the like, used by
      the North American Indians as a symbolic designation, as
      of a family or a clan; also, the object or animal itself,
      considered as an symbol of the family.
      [1913 Webster]

            And they painted on the grave posts
            Of the graves, yet unforgotten,
            Each his own ancestral totem
            Each the symbol of his household;
            Figures of the bear and reindeer,
            Of the turtle, crane, and beaver.     --Longfellow.
      [1913 Webster]

            The totem, the clan deity, the beast or bird who in
            some supernatural way attends to the clan and
            watches over it.                      --Bagehot.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. Anything which serves as a venerated or mystic symbol or
      emblem.
      [PJC]
    

100 Moby Thesaurus words for "totem":
      allegory, ancestral spirits, angel, animal kingdom, ashram,
      attendant godling, blood, body, breed, brood, caste, charactery,
      cipher, clan, class, colony, commonwealth, commune, community,
      control, conventional symbol, daemon, deme, demon, economic class,
      emblem, endogamous group, extended family, fairy godmother,
      familiar, familiar spirit, family, folk, genius, genius domus,
      genius loci, gens, good angel, good genius, guardian,
      guardian angel, guardian spirit, guide, house, household gods,
      iconology, ideogram, invisible helper, kind, kinship group,
      lares and penates, lares compitales, lares familiaris,
      lares permarini, lares praestites, lares viales, line, lineage,
      logogram, logotype, love knot, manes, matriclan, ministering angel,
      moiety, nation, nuclear family, numen, order, patriclan, penates,
      people, phratria, phratry, phyle, pictogram, plant kingdom, race,
      sept, settlement, social class, society, special providence,
      species, stem, stirps, stock, strain, subcaste, symbol,
      symbolic system, symbolism, symbolization, symbology, token,
      totem pole, tribe, tutelar god, tutelary, type