The American Language
Irish immigrants quickly dropped such names as /Terence/, /Dennis/ and
/Patrick/, and adopted in their places the less conspicuous /John/,
/George/ and /William/. The Germans, in the same way, abandoned
/Otto/, /August/, /Hermann/, /Ludwig/, /Heinrich/, /Wolfgang/,
/Albrecht/, /Wilhelm/, /Kurt/, /Hans/, /Rudolf/, /Gottlieb/, /Johann/
and /Franz/. For some of these they substituted the English
equivalents: /Charles/, /Lewis/, /Henry/, /William/, /John/, /Frank/
and so on. In the room of others they began afflicting their offspring
with more fanciful native names: /Milton/ and /Raymond/ were their
chief favorites thirty or forty years ago.[30] The Jews carry the
thing to great lengths. At present they seem to take most delight in
/Sidney/, /Irving/, /Milton/, /Roy/, /Stanley/ and /Monroe/, but they
also call their sons /John/, /Charles/, /Henry/, /Harold/, /William/,
/Richard/, /James/, /Albert/, /Edward/, /Alfred/, /Frederick/,
/Thomas/, and even /Mark/, /Luke/ and /Matthew/, and their daughters
/Mary/, /Gertrude/, /Estelle/, /Pauline/, /Alice/ and /Edith/. As a
boy I went to school with many Jewish boys. The commonest given names
among them were /Isadore/, /Samuel/, /Jonas/, /Isaac/ and /Israel/.
These are seldom bestowed by [Pg284] the rabbis of today. In the same
school were a good many German pupils, boy and girl. Some of the girls
bore such fine old German given names as /Katharina/, /Wilhelmina/,
/Elsa/, /Lotta/, /Ermentrude/ and /Frankziska/. All these have begun
to disappear.
The newer immigrants, indeed, do not wait for the birth of children to
demonstrate their naturalization; they change their own given names
immediately they land. I am told by Abraham Cahan that this is done
almost universally on the East Side of New York. "Even the most
old-fashioned Jews immigrating to this country," he says, "change
/Yosel/ to /Joseph/, /Yankel/ to /Jacob/, /Liebel/ to /Louis/,
/Feivel/ to /Philip/, /Itzik/ to /Isaac/, /Ruven/ to /Robert/, and
/Moise/ or /Motel/ to /Morris/." Moreover, the spelling of /Morris/,
as the position of its bearer improves, commonly changes to /Maurice/,
though the pronunciation may remain /Mawruss/, as in the case of Mr.
Perlmutter. The immigrants of other stocks follow the same habit.
Every Bohemian /Vaclav/ or /Vojtĕch/ becomes a /William/, every
/Jaroslav/ becomes a /Jerry/, every /Bronislav/ a /Barney/, and every
/Stanislav/ a /Stanley/. The Italians run to /Frank/ and /Joe/; so do
the Hungarians and the Balkan peoples; the Russians quickly drop their
national system of nomenclature and give their children names
according to the American plan. Even the Chinese laundrymen of the big
cities become /John/, /George/, /Charlie/ and /Frank/; I once
encountered one boasting the name of /Emil/.
The Puritan influence, in names as in ideas, has remained a good deal
more potent in American than in England. The given name of the
celebrated /Praise-God/ Barebones marked a fashion which died out in
England very quickly, but one still finds traces of it in America,
/e. g./, in such women's names as /Faith/, /Hope/, /Prudence/, /Charity/
and /Mercy/, and in such men's names as /Peregrine/.[31] The religious
obsession of the New England colonists is also kept in mind by the
persistence of Biblical names: /Ezra/, /Hiram/, /Ezekial/,
/Zachariah/, /Elijah/, /Elihu/, and so on. These [Pg285] names excite
the derision of the English; an American comic character, in an
English play or novel, always bears one of them. Again, the fashion of
using surnames as given names is far more widespread in America than
in England. In this country, indeed, it takes on the character of a
national habit; fully three out of four eldest sons, in families of
any consideration, bear their mothers' surnames as middle names. This
fashion arose in England during the seventeenth century, and one of
its fruits was the adoption of such well-known surnames as /Stanley/,
/Cecil/, /Howard/, /Douglas/ and /Duncan/ as common given names.[32]
It died out over there during the eighteenth century, and today the
great majority of Englishmen bear such simple given names as /John/,
/Charles/ and /William/--often four or five of them--but in America it
has persisted. A glance at a roster of the Presidents of the United
States will show how firmly it has taken root. Of the ten that have
had middle names at all, six have had middle names that were family
surnames, and two of the six have dropped their other given names and
used these surnames. This custom, perhaps, has paved the way for
another: that of making given names of any proper nouns that happen to
strike the fancy. Thus General Sherman was named after an Indian
chief, /Tecumseh/, and a Chicago judge was baptized /Kenesaw
Mountain/[33] in memory of the battle that General Sherman fought
there. A late candidate for governor of New York had the curious given
name of /D-Cady/.[34] Various familiar American given names,
originally surnames, are almost unknown in England, among them,
/Washington/, /Jefferson/, /Jackson/, /Lincoln/, /Columbus/ and /Lee/.
/Chauncey/ forms a curious addition to the list. It was the surname of
the second president of Harvard College, and was bestowed upon their
offspring by numbers of his graduates. It then got into [Pg286]
general use and acquired a typically American pronunciation, with the
/a/ of the first syllable flat. It is never encountered in England.
In the pronunciation of various given names, as in that of many
surnames, English and American usages differ. /Evelyn/, in England, is
given two syllables instead of three, and the first is made to rhyme
with /leave/. /Irene/ is given two syllables, making it /Irene-y/.
/Ralph/ is pronounced /Rafe/. /Jerome/ is accented on the first
syllable; in America it is always accented on the second.[35]
§ 3
/Geographical Names/--"There is no part of the world," said Robert
Louis Stevenson, "where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous
and picturesque as in the United States of America." A glance at the
latest United States Official Postal Guide[36] or report of the United
States Geographic Board[37] quite bears out this opinion. The map of
the country is besprinkled with place names from at least half a
hundred languages, living and dead, and among them one finds examples
of the most daring and elaborate fancy. There are Spanish, French and
Indian names as melodious and charming as running water; there are
names out of the histories and mythologies of all the great races of
man; there are names grotesque and names almost sublime. No other
country can match them for interest and variety. When there arises
among us a philologist who will study them as thoroughly and
intelligently as the Swiss, Johann Jakob Egli, studied the place names
of Central Europe, his work will be an invaluable contribution to the
history of the nation, and no less to an understanding of the
psychology of its people.
The original English settlers, it would appear, displayed little
imagination in naming the new settlements and natural features
[Pg287] of the land that they came to. Their almost invariable
tendency, at the start, was to make use of names familiar at home, or
to invent banal compounds. /Plymouth Rock/ at the North and
/Jamestown/ at the South are examples of their poverty of fancy; they
filled the narrow tract along the coast with new /Bostons/,
/Cambridges/, /Bristols/ and /Londons/, and often used the adjective
as a prefix. But this was only in the days of beginning. Once they had
begun to move back from the coast and to come into contact with the
aborigines and with the widely dispersed settlers of other races, they
encountered rivers, mountains, lakes and even towns that bore far more
engaging names, and these, after some resistance, they perforce
adopted. The native names of such rivers as the /James/, the /York/
and the /Charles/ succumbed, but those of the /Potomac/, the
/Patapsco/, the /Merrimack/ and the /Penobscot/ survived, and they
were gradually reinforced as the country was penetrated. Most of these
Indian names, in getting upon the early maps, suffered somewhat severe
simplifications. /Potowánmeac/ was reduced to /Potomack/ and then to
/Potomac/; /Unéaukara/ became /Niagara/; /Reckawackes/, by the law of
Hobson-Jobson, was turned into /Rockaway/, and /Pentapang/ into /Port
Tobacco/.[38] But, despite such elisions and transformations, the
charm of thousands of them remained, and today they are responsible
for much of the characteristic color of American geographical
nomenclature. Such names as /Tallahassee/, /Susquehanna/,
/Mississippi/, /Allegheny/, /Chicago/, /Kennebec/, /Patuxent/ and
/Arkansas/ give a barbaric brilliancy to the American map. Only the
map of Australia, with its mellifluous Maori names, can match it.
The settlement of the American continent, once the eastern coast
ranges were crossed, proceeded with unparalleled speed, and so the
naming of the new rivers, lakes, peaks and valleys, and of the new
towns and districts no less, strained the inventiveness of the
pioneers. The result is the vast duplication of names that shows
itself in the Postal Guide. No less than eighteen imitative [Pg288]
/Bostons/ and /New Bostons/ still appear, and there are nineteen
/Bristols/, twenty-eight /Newports/, and twenty-two /Londons/ and /New
Londons/. Argonauts starting out from an older settlement on the coast
would take its name with them, and so we find /Philadelphias/ in
Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, /Richmonds/ in Iowa,
Kansas and nine other western states, and /Princetons/ in fifteen.
Even when a new name was hit upon it seems to have been hit upon
simultaneously by scores of scattered bands of settlers; thus we find
the whole land bespattered with /Washingtons/, /Lafayettes/,
/Jeffersons/ and /Jacksons/, and with names suggested by common and
obvious natural objects, /e. g./, /Bear Creek/, /Bald Knob/ and
/Buffalo/. The Geographic Board, in its last report, made a belated
protest against this excessive duplication. "The names /Elk/,
/Beaver/, /Cottonwood/ and /Bald/," it said, "are altogether too
numerous."[39] Of postoffices alone there are fully a hundred
embodying /Elk/; counting in rivers, lakes, creeks, mountains and
valleys, the map of the United States probably shows at least twice as
many such names.
A study of American geographical and place names reveals eight general
classes, as follows: (/a/) those embodying personal names, chiefly the
surnames of pioneers or of national heroes; (/b/) those transferred
from other and older places, either in the eastern states or in
Europe; (/c/) Indian names; (/d/) Dutch, Spanish and French names;
(/e/) Biblical and mythological names; (/f/) names descriptive of
localities; (/g/) names suggested by the local flora, fauna or
geology; (/h/) purely fanciful names. The names of the first class are
perhaps the most numerous. Some consist of surnames standing alone, as
/Washington/, /Cleveland/, /Bismarck/, /Lafayette/, /Taylor/ and
/Randolph/; others consist of surnames in combination with various old
and new /Grundwörter/, as /Pittsburgh/, /Knoxville/, /Bailey's
Switch/, /Hagerstown/, /Franklinton/, /Dodge City/, /Fort Riley/,
/Wayne Junction/ and /McKeesport/; and yet others are contrived of
given names, either alone or in combination, as /Louisville/, /St.
Paul/, /Elizabeth/, /Johnstown/, /Charlotte/, /Williamsburg/ and
/Marysville/. The number of towns in the United States bearing women's
given names is enormous. [Pg289] I find, for example, eleven
postoffices called /Charlotte/, ten called /Ada/ and no less than
nineteen called /Alma/. Most of these places are small, but there is
an /Elizabeth/ with 75,000 population, an /Elmira/ with 40,000, and an
/Augusta/ with nearly 45,000.