The American Language
America, and they also make free use of /place/, /walk/, /passage/,
/lane/ and /circus/, all of which are obsolescent on this side of the
ocean. Some of the older American cities, such as Boston and
Baltimore, have surviving certain ancient English designations of
streets, /e. g./, /Cheapside/ and /Cornhill/; these are unknown in the
newer American towns. /Broadway/, which is also English, is more
common. Many American towns now have /plazas/, which are unknown in
England. Nearly all have /City Hall parks/, /squares/ or /places/;
/City Hall/ is also unknown over there. The principal street of a
small town, in America, is almost always /Main street/; in England it
is as invariably /High/ street, usually with the definite article
before /High/.
I have mentioned the corruption of old Dutch street and neighborhood
names in New York. Spanish names are corrupted in the same way in the
Southwest and French names in the Great Lakes region and in Louisiana.
In New Orleans the street names, many of them strikingly beautiful,
are pronounced so barbarously by the people that a Frenchman would
have difficulty recognizing them. Thus, /Bourbon/ has become
/Bur-bun/, /Dauphine/ is /Daw-fin/, /Foucher/ is /Foosh'r/, /Enghien/
is /En-gine/, and /Felicity/ (originally /Félicité/) is /Fill-a-city/.
The French, in their days, bestowed the names of the Muses upon
certain of the city streets. They are now pronounced /Cal´-y-ope/,
/Terp´-si-chore/, /Mel-po-mean´/, /You-terp´/, and so on. /Bon
Enfants/, apparently too difficult for the native, has been translated
into /Good Children/. Only /Esplanade/ and /Bagatelle/, among the
French street names of the city, seem to be commonly pronounced with
any approach to correctness.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The great Irish famine, which launched the chief emigration to
America, extended from 1845 to 1847. The Know Nothing movement, which
was chiefly aimed at the Irish, extended from 1852 to 1860.
[2] A. B. Faust: The German Element in the United States, 2 vols.;
Boston, 1909, vol. ii, pp. 34 /et seq./
[3] Richard T. Ely: Outlines of Economics, 3rd rev. ed.; New York,
1916, p. 68.
[4] /Cf./ Seth K. Humphrey: Mankind; New York, 1917, p. 45.
[5] /Cf./ William G. Searle: Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum; Cambridge,
1897.
[6] /New York World/ Almanac, 1914, p. 668.
[7] It was announced by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance on March 30,
1918, that there were then 15,000 /Millers/ in the United States Army.
On the same day there were 262 /John J. O'Briens/, of whom 50 had
wives named /Mary/.
[8] /Cf./ Carlyle's Frederick the Great, bk. xxi, ch. vi.
[9] S. Grant Oliphant, in the /Baltimore Sun/, Dec. 2, 1906.
[10] Harriet /Lane/ Johnston was of this family.
[11] /Cf./ Faust, /op. cit./, vol. ii, pp. 183-4.
[12] A Tragedy of Surnames, by Fayette Dunlap, /Dialect Notes/, vol.
iv, pt. 1, 1913, p. 7-8.
[13] Americanisms, p. 112.
[14] Henry Harrison, in his Dictionary of the Surnames of the United
Kingdom; London, 1912, shows that such names as /Bloom/, /Cline/,
etc., always represent transliterations of German names. They are
unknown to genuinely British nomenclature.
[15] A great many more such transliterations and modifications are
listed by Faust, /op. cit./, particularly in his first volume. Others
are in Pennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldemann; London, 1872, p. 60 /et
seq./, and in The Origin of Pennsylvania Surnames, by L. Oscar Kuhns,
/Lippincott's Magazine/, March, 1897, p. 395.
[16] I lately encountered the following sign in front of an automobile
repair shop:
For puncture or blow
Bring it to /Lowe/.
[17] /Baltimore Sun/, March 17, 1907.
[18] /Cf./ The Origin of Pennsylvania Surnames, /op. cit./
[19] /Koch/, a common German name, has very hard sledding in America.
Its correct pronunciation is almost impossible to Americans; at best
it becomes /Coke/. Hence it is often changed, not only to /Cook/, but
to /Cox/, /Koke/ or even /Cockey/.
[20] This is army slang, but promises to survive. The Germans, during
the war, had no opprobrious nicknames for their foes. The French were
always /die Franzosen/, the English were /die Engländer/, and so on,
even when most violently abused. Even /der Yankee/ was rare.
[21] /Cf./ Some Current Substitutes for Irish, by W. A. McLaughlin,
/Dialect Notes/, vol. iv, pt. ii.
[22] /Spiggoty/, originating at Panama, now means a native of any
Latin-American region under American protection, and in general any
Latin-American. It is navy slang, but has come into extensive civilian
use. It is a derisive daughter of "No /spik/ Inglese."
[23] /Cf./ Reaction to Personal Names, by Dr. C. P. Oberndorf,
/Psychoanalytic Review/, vol. v, no. 1, January, 1918, p. 47 /et seq./
This, so far as I know, is the only article in English which deals
with the psychological effects of surnames upon their bearers.
Abraham, Silberer and other German psychoanalysts have made
contributions to the subject. Dr. Oberndorf alludes, incidentally, to
the positive social prestige which goes with an English air, and, to a
smaller extent, with a French air in America. He tells of an Italian
who changed his patronymic of /Dipucci/ into /de Pucci/ to make it
more "aristocratic." And of a German bearing the genuinely
aristocratic name of /von Landsschaffshausen/ who changed it to "a
typically English name" because the latter seemed more distinguished
to his neighbors.
[24] The effects of race antagonism upon language are still to be
investigated. The etymology of /slave/ indicates that the inquiry
might yield interesting results. The word /French/, in English, is
largely used to suggest sexual perversion. In German anything
/Russian/ is barbarous, and /English/ education hints at flagellation.
The French, for many years, called a certain contraband appliance a
/capote Anglaise/, but after the /entente cordiale/ they changed the
name to /capote Allemande/. The common English name to this day is
/French letter/. /Cf./ The Criminal, by Havelock Ellis; London, 1910,
p. 208.
[25] /Cf./ The Jews, by Maurice Fishberg; New York, 1911, ch. xxii,
and especially p. 485 /et seq./
[26] The English Jews usually change /Levy/ to /Lewis/, a substitution
almost unknown in America. They also change /Abraham/ to /Braham/ and
/Moses/ to /Moss/. /Vide/ Surnames, Their Origin and Nationality, by
L. B. McKenna; Quincy (Ill.), 1913, pp. 13-14.
[27] For these observations of name changes among the Jews I am
indebted to Abraham Cahan.
[28] They arose in England through the custom of requiring an heir by
the female line to adopt the family name on inheriting the family
property. Formerly the heir dropped his own surname. Thus the ancestor
of the present Duke of Northumberland, born /Smithson/, took the
ancient name of /Percy/ on succeeding to the underlying earldom in the
eighteenth century. But about a hundred years ago, heirs in like case
began to join the two names by hyphenation, and such names are now
very common in the British peerage. Thus the surname of Lord Barrymore
is /Smith-Barry/, that of Lord Vernon is /Venables-Vernon/, and that
of the Earl of Wharncliffe is /Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie/.
[29] B. W. Green: Word-Book of Virginia Folk-Speech; Richmond, 1899,
pp. 13-16.
[30] The one given name that they have clung to is /Karl/. This, in
fact, has been adopted by Americans of other stocks, always, however,
spelled /Carl/. Such combinations as /Carl/ Gray, /Carl/ Williams and
even /Carl/ Murphy are common. Here intermarriage has doubtless had
its effect.
[31] /Cf./ Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, by Charles W.
Bardsley; London, 1880.
[32] /Cf./ Bardsley, /op. cit./, p. 205 /et seq./
[33] The Geographic Board has lately decided that /Kenesaw/ should be
/Kennesaw/, but the learned jurist sticks to one /n/.
[34] Thornton reprints a paragraph from the /Congressional Globe/ of
June 15, 1854, alleging that in 1846, during the row over the Oregon
boundary, when "Fifty-four forty or fight" was a political slogan,
many "canal-boats, and even some of the babies, ... were christened
/54° 40′/."
[35] The Irish present several curious variations. Thus, they divide
/Charles/ into two syllables. They also take liberties with various
English surnames. /Bermingham/, for example, is pronounced
/Brimmingham/ in Ireland.
[36] Issued annually in July, with monthly supplements.
[37] The latest report is the fourth, covering the period 1890-1916;
Washington, 1916.
[38] The authority here is River and Lake Names in the United States,
by Edmund T. Ker; New York, 1911. Stephen G. Boyd, in Indian Local
Names; York (Pa.), 1885, says that the original Indian name was
/Pootuppag/.
[39] P. 17.
[40] /Cf./ Dutch Contributions to the Vocabulary of English in
America, by W. H. Carpenter, /Modern Philology/, July, 1908.
[41] Our Naturalized Names, /Lippincott's Magazine/, April, 1899. It
will be recalled how Pinaud, the French perfumer, was compelled to
place advertisements in the street-cars, instructing the public in the
proper pronunciation of his name.
[42] The same compromise is apparent in the pronunciation of
/Iroquois/, which is /Iro-quoy/ quite as often as it is /Iro-quoys/.
[43] /Vide/ its Fourth Report (1890-1916), p. 15.
[44] The Geographic Board is composed of representatives of the Coast
and Geodetic Survey, the Geological Survey, the General Land Office,
the Post Office, the Forest Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the
Biological Survey, the Government Printing Office, the Census and
Lighthouse Bureaus, the General Staff of the Army, the Hydrographic
Office, Library and War Records Office of the Navy, the Treasury and
the Department of State. It was created by executive order Sept. 4,
1890, and its decisions are binding upon all federal officials. It has
made, to date, about 15,000 decisions. They are recorded in reports
issued at irregular intervals and in more frequent bulletins.
[45] Every-Day English, p. 100.
[46] I have often noted that Americans, in speaking of the familiar
/Worcestershire/ sauce, commonly pronounce every syllable and
enunciated /shire/ distinctly. In England it is always /Woostersh'r/.
[47] The English have a great number of such decayed pronunciations,
/e. g./, /Maudlin/ for /Magdalen College/, /Sister/ for /Cirencester/,
/Merrybone/ for /Marylebone/. Their geographical nomenclature shows
many corruptions due to faulty pronunciation and the law of
Hobson-Jobson, /e. g./, /Leighton Buzzard/ for the Norman French
/Leiton Beau Desart/.
[48] Curiously enough, Americans always use the broad /a/ in the first
syllable of /Albany/, whereas Englishmen rhyme the syllable with
/pal/. The English also pronounce /Pall Mall/ as if it were spelled
/pal mal/. Americans commonly give it two broad /a/'s.
[49] Our Street Names, /Lippincott's Magazine/, Aug., 1897, p. 264.
[50] Ch. i.
[51] There are, of course, local exceptions. In Baltimore, for
example, /avenue/ used to be reserved for wide streets in the suburbs.
Thus Charles /street/, on passing the old city boundary, became
Charles /street-avenue/. Further out it became the Charles
/street-avenue-road/--probably a unique triplication. But that was
years ago. Of late many fifth-rate streets in Baltimore have been
changed into avenues.
[Pg301]
IX
Miscellanea
§ 1
/Proverb and Platitude/--No people, save perhaps the Spaniards, have a
richer store of proverbial wisdom than the Americans, and surely none
other make more diligent and deliberate efforts to augment its riches.
The American literature of "inspirational" platitude is enormous and
almost unique. There are half a dozen authors, /e. g./, Dr. Orison
Swett Marden and Dr. Frank Crane, who devote themselves exclusively,