Chapter IX: Miscellanea, 301 (12)

Such changes, chiefly based upon transliterations, are met with in all countries. The name of /Taaffe/, familiar in Austrian history, had an Irish prototype, probably /Taft/. General /Demikof/, one of the Russian commanders at the battle of Zorndorf, in 1758, was a Swede born /Themicoud/. Franz Maria von /Thugut/, the Austrian diplomatist, was a member of an Italian Tyrolese family named /Tunicotto/. This became /Thunichgut/ (=/do no good/) in Austria, and was changed to /Thugut/ (=/do good/) to bring it into greater accord with its possessor's deserts.[8] In [Pg273] /Bonaparte/ the Italian /buon(o)/ became the French /bon/. Many English surnames are decayed forms of Norman-French names, for example, /Sidney/ from /St. Denis/, /Divver/ from /De Vere/, /Bridgewater/ from /Burgh de Walter/, /Montgomery/ from /de Mungumeri/, /Garnett/ from /Guarinot/, and /Seymour/ from /Saint-Maure/. A large number of so-called Irish names are the products of rough-and-ready transliterations of Gaelic patronymics, for example, /Findlay/ from /Fionnlagh/, /Dermott/ from /Diarmuid/, and /McLane/ from /Mac Illeathiain/. In the same way the name of /Phoenix/ Park, in Dublin, came from /Fion Uisg/ (=/fine water/). Of late some of the more ardent Irish authors and politicians have sought to return to the originals. Thus, /O'Sullivan/ has become /O Suilleabháin/, /Pearse/ has become /Piarais/, /Mac Sweeney/ has become /Mac Suibhne/, and /Patrick/ has suffered a widespread transformation to /Padraic/. But in America, with a language of peculiar vowel-sounds and even consonant-sounds struggling against a foreign invasion unmatched for strength and variety, such changes have been far more numerous than across the ocean, and the legal rule of /idem sonans/ is of much wider utility than anywhere else in the world. If it were not for that rule there would be endless difficulties for the /Wises/ whose grandfathers were /Weisses/, and the /Leonards/ born /Leonhards/, /Leonhardts/ or /Lehnerts/, and the /Manneys/ who descend and inherit from /Le Maines/.

"A crude popular etymology," says a leading authority on surnames,[9] "often begins to play upon a name that is no longer significant to the many. So the /Thurgods/ have become /Thoroughgoods/, and the /Todenackers/ have become the Pennsylvania Dutch /Toothakers/, much as /asparagus/ has become /sparrow-grass/." So, too, the /Wittnachts/ of Boyle county, Kentucky, descendants of a Hollander, have become /Whitenecks/, and the /Lehns/ of lower Pennsylvania, descendants of some far-off German, have become /Lanes/.[10] Edgar Allan /Poe/ was a member of a family long settled in Western Maryland, the founder being one /Poh/ or /Pfau/, a native of the Palatinate. Major George [Pg274] /Armistead/, who defended Fort McHenry in 1814, when Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner," was the descendant of an /Armstädt/ who came to Virginia from Hesse-Darmstadt. General George A. /Custer/, the Indian fighter, was the great-grandson of one /Küster/, a Hessian soldier paroled after Burgoyne's surrender. William /Wirt/, anti-Masonic candidate for the presidency in 1832, was the son of one /Wörth/. William /Paca/, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the great-grandson of a Bohemian named /Paka/. General W. S. /Rosecrans/ was really a /Rosenkrantz/. Even the surname of Abraham /Lincoln/, according to some authorities, was an anglicized form of /Linkhorn/.[11]

Such changes, in fact, are almost innumerable; every work upon American genealogy is full of examples. The first foreign names to undergo the process were Dutch and French. Among the former, /Reiger/ was debased to /Riker/, /Van de Veer/ to /Vandiver/, /Van Huys/ to /Vannice/, /Van Siegel/ to /Van Sickle/, /Van Arsdale/ to /Vannersdale/, and /Haerlen/ (or /Haerlem/) to /Harlan/;[12] among the latter, /Petit/ became /Poteet/, /Caillé/ changed to /Kyle/, /De la Haye/ to /Dillehay/, /Dejean/ to /Deshong/, /Guizot/ to /Gossett/, /Guereant/ to /Caron/, /Soule/ to /Sewell/, /Gervaise/ to /Jarvis/, /Bayle/ to /Bailey/, /Fontaine/ to /Fountain/, /Denis/ to /Denny/, /Pebaudière/ to /Peabody/, /Bon Pas/ to /Bumpus/ and /de l'Hôtel/ to /Doolittle/. "Frenchmen and French Canadians who came to New England," says Schele de Vere, "had to pay for such hospitality as they there received by the sacrifice of their names. The brave /Bon Coeur/, Captain Marryatt tells us in his Diary, became Mr. /Bunker/, and gave his name to Bunker's Hill."[13] But it was the German immigration that provoked the first really wholesale slaughter. A number of characteristic German sounds--for example, that of /ü/ and the guttural in /ch/ and /g/--are almost impossible to the Anglo-Saxon pharynx, and so they had to go. Thus, /Bloch/ was changed to /Block/ or /Black/, /Ochs/ to [Pg275] /Oakes/, /Hock/ to /Hoke/, /Fischbach/ to /Fishback/, /Albrecht/ to /Albert/ or /Albright/, and /Steinweg/ to /Steinway/, and the /Grundwort/, /bach/, was almost universally changed to /baugh/, as in /Brumbaugh/. The /ü/ met the same fate: /Grün/ was changed to /Green/, /Führ/ to /Fear/ or /Fuhr/, /Wärner/ to /Warner/, /Düring/ to /Deering/, and /Schnäbele/ to /Snavely/, /Snabely/ or /Snively/. In many other cases there were changes in spelling to preserve vowel sounds differently represented in German and English. Thus, /Blum/ was changed to /Bloom/,[14], /Reuss/ to /Royce/, /Koester/ to /Kester/, /Kuehle/ to /Keeley/, /Schroeder/ to /Schrader/, /Stehli/ to /Staley/, /Weymann/ to /Wayman/, /Friedmann/ to /Freedman/, /Bauman/ to /Bowman/, and /Lang/ (as the best compromise possible) to /Long/. The change of /Oehm/ to /Ames/ belongs to the same category; the addition of the final /s/ represents a typical effort to substitute the nearest related Anglo-Saxon name. Other examples of that effort are to be found in /Michaels/ for /Michaelis/, /Bowers/ for /Bauer/, /Johnson/ for /Johannsen/, /Ford/ for /Furth/, /Hines/ for /Heintz/, /Kemp/ for /Kempf/, /Foreman/ for /Fuhrmann/, /Kuhns/ or /Coons/ for /Kuntz/, /Hoover/ for /Huber/, /Levering/ for /Liebering/, /Jones/ for /Jonas/, /Swope/ for /Schwab/, /Hite/ or /Hyde/ for /Heid/, /Andrews/ for /André/, /Young/ for /Jung/, and /Pence/ for /Pentz/.[15]

The American antipathy to accented letters, mentioned in the chapter on spelling, is particularly noticeable among surnames. An immigrant named /Fürst/ inevitably becomes plain /Furst/ in the United States, and if not the man, then surely his son. /Löwe/, in the same way, is transformed into /Lowe/ (pro. /low/),[16] [Pg276] /Lürmann/ into /Lurman/, /Schön/ into /Schon/, /Suplée/ into /Suplee/ or /Supplee/, /Lüders/ into /Luders/ and /Brühl/ into /Brill/. Even when no accent betrays it, the foreign diphthong is under hard pressure. Thus the German /oe/ disappears, and /Loeb/ is changed to /Lobe/ or /Laib/, /Oehler/ to /Ohler/, /Loeser/ to /Leser/, and /Schoen/ to /Schon/ or /Shane/. In the same way the /au/ in such names as /Rosenau/ changes to /aw/. So too, the French /oi/-sound is disposed of, and /Dubois/ is pronounced /Doo-bóys/, and /Boileau/ acquires a first syllable rhyming with /toil/. So with the /kn/ in the German names of the /Knapp/ class; they are all pronounced, probably by analogy with /Knight/, as if they began with /n/. So with /sch/; /Schneider/ becomes /Snyder/, /Schlegel/ becomes /Slagel/, and /Schluter/ becomes /Sluter/. If a foreigner clings to the original spelling of his name he must usually expect to hear it mispronounced. /Roth/, in American, quickly becomes /Rawth/; /Frémont/, losing both accent and the French /e/, become /Freemont/; /Blum/ begins to rhyme with /dumb/; /Mann/ rhymes with /van/, and /Lang/ with /hang/; /Krantz/, /Lantz/ and their cognates with /chance/; /Kurtz/ with /shirts/; the first syllable of /Gutmann/ with /but/; the first of /Kahler/ with /bay/; the first of /Werner/ with /turn/; the first of /Wagner/ with /nag/. /Uhler/, in America, is always /Youler/. /Berg/ loses its German /e/-sound for an English /u/-sound, and its German hard /g/ for an English /g/; it becomes identical with the /berg/ of /iceberg/. The same change in the vowel occurs in /Erdmann/. In /König/ the German diphthong succumbs to a long /o/, and the hard /g/ becomes /k/; the common pronunciation is /Cone-ik/. Often, in /Berger/, the /g/ becomes soft, and the name rhymes with /verger/. It becomes soft, too, in /Bittinger/. In /Wilstach/ and /Welsbach/ the /ch/ becomes a /k/. In /Anheuser/ the /eu/ changes to a long /i/. The final /e/, important in German, is nearly always silenced; /Dohme/ rhymes with /foam/; /Kühne/ becomes /Keen/.

In addition to these transliterations, there are constant translations of foreign proper names. "Many a Pennsylvania /Carpenter/," says Dr. Oliphant,[17] "bearing a surname that is English, from the French, from the Latin, and there a Celtic loan-word [Pg277] in origin, is neither English, nor French, nor Latin, nor Celt, but an original German /Zimmermann/."[18] A great many other such translations are under everyday observation. /Pfund/ becomes /Pound/; /Becker/, /Baker/; /Schumacher/, /Shoemaker/; /König/, /King/; /Weisberg/, /Whitehill/; /Koch/, /Cook/;[19] /Neuman/, /Newman/; /Schaefer/, /Shepherd/ or /Sheppard/; /Gutmann/, /Goodman/; /Goldschmidt/, /Goldsmith/; /Edelstein/, /Noblestone/; /Steiner/, /Stoner/; /Meister/, /Master(s)/; /Schwartz/, /Black/; /Weiss/, /White/; /Weber/, /Weaver/; /Bucher/, /Booker/; /Vogelgesang/, /Birdsong/; /Sontag/, /Sunday/, and so on. Partial translations are also encountered, /e. g./, /Studebaker/ from /Studebecker/, and /Reindollar/ from /Rheinthaler/. By the same process, among the newer immigrants, the Polish /Wilkiewicz/ becomes /Wilson/, the Bohemian /Bohumil/ becomes /Godfrey/, and the Bohemian /Kovár/ and the Russian /Kuznetzov/ become /Smith/. Some curious examples are occasionally encountered. Thus Henry /Woodhouse/, a gentleman prominent in aeronautical affairs, came to the United States from Italy as Mario Terenzio Enrico /Casalegno/; his new surname is simply a translation of his old one. And the /Belmonts/, the bankers, unable to find a euphonious English equivalent for their German-Jewish patronymic of /Schönberg/, chose a French one that Americans could pronounce.

In part, as I say, these changes in surname are enforced by the sheer inability of Americans to pronounce certain Continental consonants, and their disinclination to remember the Continental vowel sounds. Many an immigrant, finding his name constantly mispronounced, changes its vowels or drops some of its consonants; many another shortens it, or translates it, or changes it entirely for the same reason. Just as a well-known Graeco-French poet changed his Greek name of /Papadiamantopoulos/ to /Moréas/ because /Papadiamantopoulos/ was too much for Frenchmen, and as an eminent Polish-English novelist [Pg278] changed his Polish name of /Korzeniowski/ to /Conrad/ because few Englishmen could pronounce /owski/ correctly, so the Italian or Greek or Slav immigrant, coming up for naturalization, very often sheds his family name with his old allegiance, and emerges as /Taylor/, /Jackson/ or /Wilson/. I once encountered a firm of Polish Jews, showing the name of /Robinson & Jones/ on its sign-board, whose partners were born /Rubinowitz/ and /Jonas/. I lately heard of a German named /Knoche/--a name doubly difficult to Americans, what with the /kn/ and the /ch/--who changed it boldly to /Knox/ to avoid being called /Nokky/. A Greek named /Zoyiopoulous/, /Kolokotronis/, /Mavrokerdatos/ or /Constantinopolous/ would find it practically impossible to carry on amicable business with Americans; his name would arouse their mirth, if not their downright ire. And the same burden would lie upon a Hungarian named /Beniczkyné/ or /Gyalui/, or /Szilagyi/, or /Vezercsillagok/. Or a Finn named /Kyyhkysen/, or /Jääskelainen/, or /Tuulensuu/, or /Uotinen/,--all honorable Finnish patronymics. Or a Swede named /Sjogren/, or /Schjtt/, or /Leijonhufvud/. Or a Bohemian named /Srb/, or /Hrubka/. Or, for that matter, a German named /Kannengiesser/, or /Schnapaupf/, or /Pfannenbecker/.

But more important than this purely linguistic hostility, there is a deeper social enmity, and it urges the immigrant to change his name with even greater force. For a hundred years past all the heaviest and most degrading labor of the United States has been done by successive armies of foreigners, and so a concept of inferiority has come to be attached to mere foreignness. In addition, these newcomers, pressing upward steadily in the manner already described, have offered the native a formidable, and considering their lower standards of living, what has appeared to him to be an unfair competition on his own plane, and as a result a hatred born of disastrous rivalry has been added to his disdain. Our unmatchable vocabulary of derisive names for foreigners reveals the national attitude. The French /boche/, the German /hunyadi/ (for Hungarian),[20] and the old English /froggy/ (for Frenchman) seem lone and feeble beside our great repertoire: [Pg279] /dago/, /wop/, /guinea/, /kike/, /goose/, /mick/, /harp/,[21] /bohick/, /bohunk/, /square-head/, /greaser/, /canuck/, /spiggoty/,[22] /chink/, /polack/, /dutchie/, /scowegian/, /hunkie/ and /yellow-belly/. This disdain tends to pursue an immigrant with extraordinary rancor when he bears a name that is unmistakably foreign and hence difficult to the native, and open to his crude burlesque. Moreover, the general feeling penetrates the man himself, particularly if he be ignorant, and he comes to believe that his name is not only a handicap, but also intrinsically discreditable--that it wars subtly upon his worth and integrity.[23] This feeling, perhaps, accounted for a good many changes of surnames among Germans upon the entrance of the United States into the war. But in the majority of cases, of course, the changes so copiously reported--/e. g./, from /Bielefelder/ to /Benson/, and from /Pulvermacher/ to /Pullman/--were merely efforts at protective coloration. The immigrant, in a time of extraordinary suspicion and difficulty, tried to get rid of at least one handicap.[24] [Pg280]

This motive constantly appears among the Jews, who face an anti-Semitism that is imperfectly concealed and may be expected to grow stronger hereafter. Once they have lost the faith of their fathers, a phenomenon almost inevitable in the first native-born generation, they shrink from all the disadvantages that go with Jewishness, and seek to conceal their origin, or, at all events, to avoid making it unnecessarily noticeable.[25] To this end they modify the spelling of the more familiar Jewish surnames, turning /Levy/ into /Lewy/, /Lewyt/, /Levitt/, /Levin/, /Levine/, /Levey/, /Levie/[26] and even /Lever/, /Cohen/ into /Cohn/, /Cahn/, /Kahn/, /Kann/, /Coyne/ and /Conn/, /Aarons/ into /Arens/ and /Ahrens/ and /Solomon/ into /Salmon/, /Salomon/ and /Solmson/. In the same way they shorten their long names, changing /Wolfsheimer/ to /Wolf/, /Goldschmidt/ to /Gold/, and /Rosenblatt/, /Rosenthal/, /Rosenbaum/, /Rosenau/, /Rosenberg/, /Rosenbusch/, /Rosenblum/, /Rosenstein/, /Rosenheim/ and /Rosenfeldt/ to /Rose/. Like the Germans, they also seek refuge in translations more or less literal. Thus, on the East Side of New York, /Blumenthal/ is often changed to /Bloomingdale/, /Schneider/ to /Taylor/, /Reichman/ to /Richman/, and /Schlachtfeld/ to /Warfield/. /Fiddler/, a common Jewish name, becomes /Harper/; so does /Pikler/, which is Yiddish for /drummer/. /Stolar/, which is a Yiddish word borrowed from the Russian, signifying /carpenter/, is often changed to /Carpenter/. /Lichtman/ and /Lichtenstein/ become /Chandler/. /Meilach/, which is Hebrew for /king/, becomes /King/, and so does /Meilachson/. The strong tendency to seek English-sounding equivalents for names of noticeably foreign origin changes /Sher/ into /Sherman/, /Michel/ into /Mitchell/, /Rogowsky/ into /Rogers/, /Kolinsky/ into /Collins/, /Rabinovitch/ into /Robbins/, /Davidovitch/ into /Davis/, /Moiseyev/ into /Macy/ or /Mason/, and /Jacobson/, /Jacobovitch/ and /Jacobovsky/ into /Jackson/. This last [Pg281] change proceeds by way of a transient change to /Jake/ or /Jack/ as a nickname. /Jacob/ is always abbreviated to one or the other on the East Side. /Yankelevitch/ also becomes /Jackson/, for /Yankel/ is Yiddish for /Jacob/.[27]

Among the immigrants of other stocks some extraordinarily radical changes in name are to be observed. Greek names of five, and even eight syllables shrink to /Smith/; Hungarian names that seem to be all consonants are reborn in such euphonious forms as /Martin/ and /Lacy/. I have encountered a /Gregory/ who was born /Grgurevich/ in Serbia; a /Uhler/ who was born /Uhlyarik/; a /Graves/ who descends from the fine old Dutch family of /'sGravenhage/. I once knew a man named /Lawton/ whose grandfather had been a /Lautenberger/. First he shed the /berger/ and then he changed the spelling of /Lauten/ to make it fit the inevitable American mispronunciation. There is, again, a family of /Dicks/ in the South whose ancestor was a /Schwettendieck/--apparently a Dutch or Low German name. There is, yet again, a celebrated American artist, of the Bohemian patronymic of /Hrubka/, who has abandoned it for a surname which is common to all the Teutonic languages, and is hence easy for Americans. The Italians, probably because of the relations established by the Catholic church, often take Irish names, as they marry Irish girls; it is common to hear of an Italian pugilist or politician named /Kelly/ or /O'Brien/. The process of change is often informal, but even legally it is quite facile. The Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906, authorizes the court, as a part of the naturalization of any alien, to make an order changing his name. This is frequently done when he receives his last papers; sometimes, if the newspapers are to be believed, without his solicitation, and even against his protest. If the matter is overlooked at the time, he may change his name later on, like any other citizen, by simple application to a court of record.

Among names of Anglo-Saxon origin and names naturalized long before the earliest colonization, one notes certain American peculiarities, setting off the nomenclature of the United States [Pg282] from that of the mother country. The relative infrequency of hyphenated names in America is familiar; when they appear at all it is almost always in response to direct English influences.[28] Again, a number of English family names have undergone modification in the New World. /Venable/ may serve as a specimen. The form in England is almost invariably /Venables/, but in America the final /s/ has been lost, and every example of the name that I have been able to find in the leading American reference-books is without it. And where spellings have remained unchanged, pronunciations have been frequently modified. This is particularly noticeable in the South. /Callowhill/, down there, is commonly pronounced /Carrol/; /Crenshawe/ is /Granger/; /Hawthorne/, /Horton/; /Heyward/, /Howard/; /Norsworthy/, /Nazary/; /Ironmonger/, /Munger/; /Farinholt/, /Fernall/; /Camp/, /Kemp/; /Buchanan/, /Bohannan/; /Drewry/, /Droit/; /Enroughty/, /Darby/; and /Taliaferro/, /Tolliver/.[29] The English /Crowninshields/ pronounce every syllable of their name; the American /Crowninshields/ commonly make it /Crunshel/. /Van Schaick/, an old New York name, is pronounced /Von Scoik/. A good many American Jews, aiming at a somewhat laborious refinement, change the pronunciation of the terminal /stein/ in their names so that it rhymes, not with /line/, but with /bean/. Thus, in fashionable Jewish circles, there are no longer any /Epsteins/, /Goldsteins/ and /Hammersteins/ but only /Epsteens/, /Goldsteens/ and /Hammersteens/. The American Jews differ further from the English in pronouncing /Levy/ to make the first syllable rhyme with /tea/; the English Jews always make the name /Lev-vy/. To match such [Pg283] American prodigies as /Darby/ for /Enroughty/, the English themselves have /Hools/ for /Howells/, /Sillinger/ for /St. Leger/, /Sinjin/ for /St. John/, /Pool/ for /Powell/, /Weems/ for /Wemyss/, /Kerduggen/ for /Cadogen/, /Mobrer/ for /Marlborough/, /Key/ for /Cains/, /Marchbanks/ for /Marjoribanks/, /Beecham/ for /Beauchamp/, /Chumley/ for /Cholmondeley/, /Trosley/ for /Trotterscliffe/, and /Darby/ for /Derby/, not to mention /Maudlin/ for /Magdalen/.

§ 2

/Given Names/--The non-Anglo Saxon American's willingness to anglicize his patronymic is far exceeded by his eagerness to give "American" baptismal names to his children. The favorite given names of the old country almost disappear in the first native-born generation. The 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.

The names of the second class we have already briefly observed. They are betrayed in many cases by the prefix /New/; more than 600 such postoffices are recorded, ranging from /New Albany/ to /New Windsor/. Others bear such prefixes as /West/, /North/ and /South/, or various distinguishing affixes, /e. g./, /Bostonia/, /Pittsburgh Landing/, /Yorktown/ and /Hartford City/. One often finds eastern county names applied to western towns and eastern town names applied to western rivers and mountains. Thus, /Cambria/, which is the name of a county but not of a postoffice in Pennsylvania, is a town name in seven western states; /Baltimore/ is the name of a glacier in Alaska, and /Princeton/ is the name of a peak in Colorado. In the same way the names of the more easterly states often reappear in the west, /e. g./, in /Mount Ohio/, Colo., /Delaware/, Okla., and /Virginia City/, Nev. The tendency to name small American towns after the great capitals of antiquity has excited the derision of the English since the earliest days; there is scarcely an English book upon the states without some fling at it. Of late it has fallen into abeyance, though sixteen /Athenses/ still remain, and there are yet many /Carthages/, /Uticas/, /Syracuses/, /Romes/, /Alexandrias/, /Ninevahs/ and /Troys/. The third city of the nation, /Philadelphia/, got its name from the ancient stronghold of Philadelphus of Pergamun. To make up for the falling off of this old and flamboyant custom, the more recent immigrants have brought with them the names of the capitals and other great cities of their fatherlands. Thus the American map bristles with /Berlins/, /Bremens/, /Hamburgs/, /Warsaws/ and /Leipzigs/, and is beginning to show /Stockholms/, /Venices/, /Belgrades/ and /Christianias/.

The influence of Indian names upon American nomenclature is quickly shown by a glance at the map. No less than 26 of the states have names borrowed from the aborigines, and the same thing is true of most of our rivers and mountains. There was an effort, at one time, to get rid of these Indian names. Thus [Pg290] the early Virginians changed the name of the /Powhatan/ to the /James/, and the first settlers in New York changed the name of /Horicon/ to /Lake George/. In the same way the present name of the /White Mountains/ displaced /Agiochook/, and /New Amsterdam/, and later /New York/, displaced /Manhattan/, which has been recently revived. The law of Hobson-Jobson made changes in other Indian names, sometimes complete and sometimes only partial. Thus, /Mauwauwaming/ became /Wyoming/, /Maucwachoong/ became /Mauch Chunk/, /Ouabache/ became /Wabash/, /Asingsing/ became /Sing-Sing/, and /Machihiganing/ became /Michigan/. But this vandalism did not go far enough to take away the brilliant color of the aboriginal nomenclature. The second city of the United States bears an Indian name, and so do the largest American river, and the greatest American water-fall, and four of the five great Lakes, and the scene of the most important military decision ever reached on American soil.

The Dutch place-names of the United States are chiefly confined to the vicinity of New York, and a good many of them have become greatly corrupted. /Brooklyn/, /Wallabout/ and /Gramercy/ offer examples. The first-named was originally /Breuckelen/, the second was /Waale Bobht/, and the third was /De Kromme Zee/. /Hell-Gate/ is a crude translation of the Dutch /Helle-Gat/. During the early part of the last century the more delicate New Yorkers transformed the term into /Hurlgate/, but the change was vigorously opposed by Washington Irving, and so /Hell-Gate/ was revived. The law of Hobson-Jobson early converted the Dutch /hoek/ into /hook/, and it survives in various place-names, /e. g./, /Kinderhook/ and /Sandy Hook/. The Dutch /kill/ is a /Grundwort/ in many other names, /e. g./, /Catskill/, /Schuylkill/, /Peekskill/, /Fishkill/ and /Kill van Kull/; it is the equivalent of the American /creek/. Many other Dutch place-names will come familiarly to mind: /Harlem/, /Staten/, /Flushing/, /Cortlandt/, /Calver Plaat/, /Nassau/, /Coenties/, /Spuyten Duyvel/, /Yonkers/, /Hoboken/ and /Bowery/ (from /Bouvery/).[40] /Block/ Island was originally /Blok/, and Cape /May/, according to Schele de Vere, was /Mey/, both Dutch. [Pg291] A large number of New York street and neighborhood names come down from Knickerbocker days, often greatly changed in pronunciation. /Desbrosses/ offers an example. The Dutch called it /de Broose/, but in New York today it is commonly spoken of as /Dez-bros-sez/.

French place-names have suffered almost as severely. Few persons would recognize /Smackover/, the name of a small town in Arkansas, as French, and yet in its original form it was /Chemin Couvert/. Schele de Vere, in 1871, recorded the degeneration of the name to /Smack Cover/; the Postoffice, always eager to shorten and simplify names, has since made one word of it and got rid of the redundant /c/. In the same way /Bob Ruly/, a Missouri name, descends from /Bois Brulé/. "The American tongue," says W. W. Crane, "seems to lend itself reluctantly to the words of alien languages."[41] This is shown plainly by the history of French place-names among us. A large number of them, /e. g./, /Lac Superieur/, were translated into English at an early day, and most of those that remain are now pronounced as if they were English. Thus /Des Moines/ is /dee-moyns/, /Terre Haute/ is /terry-hut/, /Beaufort/ is /byu-fort/, /New Orleans/ is /or-leens/, /Lafayette/ has a flat /a/, /Havre de Grace/ has another, and /Versailles/ is /ver-sales/. The pronunciation of /sault/, as in /Sault Ste. Marie/, is commonly more or less correct; the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad is popularly called the /Soo/. This may be due to Canadian example, or to some confusion between /Sault/ and /Sioux/. The French /Louis/, in /St. Louis/ and /Louisville/, is usually pronounced correctly. So is the /rouge/ in /Baton Rouge/, though the /baton/ is commonly boggled. It is possible that familiarity with /St. Louis/ influenced the local pronunciation of /Illinois/, which is /Illinoy/, but this may be a mere attempt to improve upon the vulgar /Illin-i/.[42]

For a number of years the Geographic Board has been seeking [Pg292] vainly to reestablish the correct pronunciation of the name of the /Purgatoire/ river in Colorado. Originally named the /Rio de las Animas/ by the Spaniards, it was renamed the /Rivière du Purgatoire/ by their French successors. The American pioneers changed this to /Picketwire/, and that remains the local name of the stream to this day, despite the effort of the Geographic Board to compromise on /Purgatoire/ river. Many other French names are being anglicized with its aid and consent. Already half a dozen /Bellevues/ have been changed to /Belleviews/ and /Bellviews/, and the spelling of nearly all the /Belvédères/ has been changed to /Belvidere/. /Belair/, La., represents the end-product of a process of decay which began with /Belle Aire/, and then proceeded to /Bellaire/ and /Bellair/. All these forms are still to be found, together with /Bel Air/. The Geographic Board's antipathy to accented letters and to names of more than one word[43] has converted /Isle Ste. Thérèse/, in the St. Lawrence river, to /Isle Ste. Therese/, a truly abominable barbarism, and /La Cygne/, in Kansas, to /Lacygne/, which is even worse. /Lamoine/, /Labelle/, /Lagrange/ and /Lamonte/ are among its other improvements; /Lafayette/, for /La Fayette/, long antedates the beginning of its labors.

The Spanish names of the Southwest are undergoing a like process of corruption, though without official aid. /San Antonio/ has been changed to /San Antone/ in popular pronunciation and seems likely to go to /San Tone/; /El Paso/ has acquired a flat American /a/ and a /z/-sound in place of the Spanish /s/; /Los Angeles/ presents such difficulties that no two of its inhabitants agree upon the proper pronunciation, and many compromise on simple /Los/, as the folks of /Jacksonville/ commonly call their town /Jax/. Some of the most mellifluous of American place-names are in the areas once held by the Spaniards. It would be hard to match the beauty of /Santa Margarita/, /San Anselmo/, /Alamogordo/, /Terra Amarilla/, /Sabinoso/, /Las Palomas/, /Ensenada/, /Nogales/, /San Patricio/ and /Bernalillo/. But they are under a severe and double assault. Not only do the present lords of the soil debase them in speaking them; in many cases they are formally displaced by native names of the utmost harshness and banality. Thus, [Pg293] one finds in New Mexico such absurdly-named towns as /Sugarite/, /Shoemaker/, /Newhope/, /Lordsburg/, /Eastview/ and /Central/; in Arizona such places as /Old Glory/, /Springerville/, /Wickenburg/ and /Congress Junction/, and even in California such abominations as /Oakhurst/, /Ben Hur/, /Drytown/, /Skidoo/, /Susanville/, /Uno/ and /Ono/.

The early Spaniards were prodigal with place-names testifying to their piety, but these names, in the overwhelming main, were those of saints. Add /Salvador/, /Trinidad/ and /Concepcion/, and their repertoire is almost exhausted. If they ever named a town /Jesus/ the name has been obliterated by Anglo-Saxon prudery; even their use of the name as a personal appellation violates American notions of the fitting. The names of the Jewish patriarchs and those of the holy places in Palestine do not appear among their place-names; their Christianity seems to have been exclusively of the New Testament. But the Americans who displaced them were intimately familiar with both books of the Bible, and one finds copious proofs of it on the map of the United States. There are no less than seven /Bethlehems/ in the Postal Guide, and the name is also applied to various mountains, and to one of the reaches of the Ohio river. I find thirteen /Bethanys/, seventeen /Bethels/, eleven /Beulahs/, nine /Canaans/, eleven /Jordans/ and twenty-one /Sharons/. /Adam/ is sponsor for a town in West Virginia and an island in the Chesapeake, and /Eve/ for a village in Kentucky. There are five postoffices named /Aaron/, two named /Abraham/, two named /Job/, and a town and a lake named /Moses/. Most of the /St. Pauls/ and /St. Josephs/ of the country were inherited from the French, but the two /St. Patricks/ show a later influence. Eight /Wesleys/ and /Wesleyvilles/, eight /Asburys/ and twelve names embodying /Luther/ indicate the general theological trend of the plain people. There is a village in Maryland, too small to have a postoffice, named /Gott/, and I find /Gotts Island/ in Maine and /Gottville/ in California, but no doubt these were named after German settlers of that awful name, and not after the Lord God directly. There are four /Trinities/, to say nothing of the inherited Spanish /Trinidads/. [Pg294]

Names wholly or partly descriptive of localities are very numerous throughout the country, and among the /Grundwörter/ embodied in them are terms highly characteristic of America and almost unknown to the English vocabulary. /Bald Knob/ would puzzle an Englishman, but the name is so common in the United States that the Geographic Board has had to take measures against it. Others of that sort are /Council Bluffs/, /Patapsco Neck/, /Delaware Water Gap/, /Curtis Creek/, /Walden Pond/, /Sandy Hook/, /Key West/, /Bull Run/, /Portage/, /French Lick/, /Jones Gulch/, /Watkins Gully/, /Cedar Bayou/, /Keams Canyon/, /Parker Notch/, /Sucker Branch/, /Fraziers Bottom/ and /Eagle Pass/. /Butte Creek/, in /Montana/, is a name made up of two Americanisms. There are thirty-five postoffices whose names embody the word /prairie/, several of them, /e. g./, /Prairie du Chien/, Wis., inherited from the French. There are seven /Divides/, eight /Buttes/, eight town-names embodying the word /burnt/, innumerable names embodying /grove/, /barren/, /plain/, /fork/, /center/, /cross-roads/, /courthouse/, /cove/ and /ferry/, and a great swarm of /Cold Springs/, /Coldwaters/, /Summits/, /Middletowns/ and /Highlands/. The flora and fauna of the land are enormously represented. There are twenty-two /Buffalos/ beside the city in New York, and scores of /Buffalo Creeks/, /Ridges/, /Springs/ and /Wallows/. The /Elks/, in various forms, are still more numerous, and there are dozens of towns, mountains, lakes, creeks and country districts named after the /beaver/, /martin/, /coyote/, /moose/ and /otter/, and as many more named after such characteristic flora as the /paw-paw/, the /sycamore/, the /cottonwood/, the /locust/ and the /sunflower/. There is an /Alligator/ in Mississippi, a /Crawfish/ in Kentucky and a /Rat Lake/ on the Canadian border of Minnesota. The endless search for mineral wealth has besprinkled the map with such names as /Bromide/, /Oil City/, /Anthracite/, /Chrome/, /Chloride/, /Coal Run/, /Goldfield/, /Telluride/, /Leadville/ and /Cement/.

There was a time, particularly during the gold rush to California, when the rough humor of the country showed itself in the invention of extravagant and often highly felicitous place-names, but with the growth of population and the rise of civic spirit they have tended to be replaced with more seemly coinages. [Pg295] /Catfish/ creek, in Wisconsin, is now the /Yahara/ river; the /Bulldog/ mountains, in Arizona, have become the /Harosomas/; the /Picketwire/ river, as we have seen, has resumed its old French name of /Purgatoire/. As with natural features of the landscape, so with towns. Nearly all the old /Boozevilles/, /Jackass Flats/, /Three Fingers/, /Hell-For-Sartains/, /Undershirt Hills/, /Razzle-Dazzles/, /Cow-Tails/, /Yellow Dogs/, /Jim-Jamses/, /Jump-Offs/, /Poker Citys/ and /Skunktowns/ have yielded to the growth of delicacy, but /Tombstone/ still stands in Arizona, /Goose Bill/ remains a postoffice in Montana, and the Geographic Board gives its imprimatur to the /Horsethief/ trail in Colorado, to /Burning Bear/ creek in the same state, and to /Pig Eye/ lake in Minnesota. Various other survivors of a more lively and innocent day linger on the map: /Blue Ball/, Ark., /Cowhide/, W. Va., /Dollarville/, Mich., /Oven Fork/, Ky., /Social Circle/, Ga., /Sleepy Eye/, Minn., /Bubble/, Ark., /Shy Beaver/, Pa., /Shin Pond/, Me., /Rough-and-Ready/, Calif., /Non Intervention/, Va., /Noodle/, Tex., /Nursery/, Mo., /Number Four/, N. Y., /Oblong/, Ill., /Stock Yards/, Neb., /Stout/, Iowa, and so on. West Virginia, the wildest of the eastern states, is full of such place-names. Among them I find /Affinity/, /Annamoriah/ (/Anna Maria?/), /Bee/, /Bias/, /Big Chimney/, /Billie/, /Blue Jay/, /Bulltown/, /Caress/, /Cinderella/, /Cyclone/, /Czar/, /Cornstalk/, /Duck/, /Halcyon/, /Jingo/, /Left Hand/, /Ravens Eye/, /Six/, /Skull Run/, /Three Churches/, /Uneeda/, /Wide Mouth/, /War Eagle/ and /Stumptown/. The Postal Guide shows two /Ben Hurs/, five /St. Elmos/ and ten /Ivanhoes/, but only one /Middlemarch/. There are seventeen /Roosevelts/, six /Codys/ and six /Barnums/, but no /Shakespeare/. /Washington/, of course, is the most popular of American place-names. But among names of postoffices it is hard pushed by /Clinton/, /Centerville/, /Liberty/, /Canton/, /Marion/ and /Madison/, and even by /Springfield/, /Warren/ and /Bismarck/.

The Geographic Board, in its laudable effort to simplify American nomenclature, has played ducks and drakes with some of the most picturesque names on the national map. Now and then, as in the case of /Purgatoire/, it has temporarily departed from this policy, but in the main its influence has been thrown against the fine old French and Spanish names, and against the [Pg296] more piquant native names no less. Thus, I find it deciding against /Portage des Flacons/ and in favor of the hideous /Bottle portage/, against /Cañada del Burro/ and in favor of /Burro canyon/ against /Canos y Ylas de la Cruz/ and in favor of the barbarous /Cruz island/. In /Bougére landing/ and /Cañon City/ it has deleted the accents. The name of the /De Grasse river/ it has changed to /Grass/. /De Laux/ it has changed to the intolerable /Dlo/. And, as we have seen, it has steadily amalgamated French and Spanish articles with their nouns, thus achieving such forms as /Duchesne/, /Eldorado/, /Deleon/ and /Laharpe/. But here its policy is fortunately inconsistent, and so a number of fine old names has escaped. Thus, it has decided in favor of /Bon Secours/ and against /Bonsecours/, and in favor of /De Soto/, /La Crosse/ and /La Moure/, and against /Desoto/, /Lacrosse/ and /Lamoure/. Here its decisions are confused and often unintelligible. Why /Laporte/, Pa., and /La Porte/, Iowa? Why /Lagrange/, Ind., and /La Grange/, Ky.? Here it would seem to be yielding a great deal too much to local usage.

The Board proceeds to the shortening and simplification of native names by various devices. It deletes such suffixes as /town/, /city/ and /courthouse/; it removes the apostrophe and often the genitive /s/ from such names as /St. Mary's/; it shortens /burgh/ to /burg/ and /borough/ to /boro/; and it combines separate and often highly discreet words. The last habit often produces grotesque forms, /e. g./, /Newberlin/, /Boxelder/, /Sabbathday lake/, /Fallentimber/, /Bluemountain/, /Westtown/, /Threepines/ and /Missionhill/. It apparently cherishes a hope of eventually regularizing the spelling of /Allegany/. This is now /Allegany/ for the Maryland county, the Pennsylvania township and the New York and Oregon towns, /Alleghany/ for the mountains, the Colorado town and the Virginia town and springs, and /Allegheny/ for the Pittsburgh borough and the Pennsylvania county, college and river. The Board inclines to /Allegheny/ for both river and mountains. Other Indian names give it constant concern. Its struggles to set up /Chemquasabamticook/ as the name of a Maine lake in place of /Chemquasabamtic/ and /Chemquassabamticook/, and /Chatahospee/ as the name of an Alabama creek in place of /Chattahospee/, [Pg297] /Hoolethlocco/, /Hoolethloces/, /Hoolethloco/ and /Hootethlocco/ are worthy of its learning and authority.[44]

The American tendency to pronounce all the syllables of a word more distinctly than the English shows itself in geographical names. White, in 1880,[45] recorded the increasing habit of giving full value to the syllables of such borrowed English names as /Worcester/ and /Warwick/. I have frequently noted the same thing. In Worcester county, Maryland, the name is usually pronounced /Wooster/, but on the Western Shore of the state one hears /Worcest-'r/.[46] /Norwich/ is another such name; one hears /Nor-wich/ quite as often as /Norrich/.[47] Yet another is /Delhi/; one often hears /Del-high/. White said that in his youth the name of the /Shawangunk/ mountains, in New York, was pronounced /Shongo/, but that the custom of pronouncing it as spelled had arisen during his manhood. So with /Winnipiseogee/, the name of a lake; once /Winipisaukie/, it gradually came to be pronounced as spelled. There is frequently a considerable difference between the pronunciation of a name by natives of a place and its pronunciation by those who are familiar with it only in print. /Baltimore/ offers an example. The natives always drop the medial /i/ and so reduce the name to two syllables; the habit identifies them. /Anne Arundel/, the name of a county in Maryland, [Pg298] is usually pronounced /Ann 'ran'l/ by its people. /Arkansas/, as everyone knows, is pronounced /Arkansaw/ by the Arkansans, and the Nevadans give the name of their state a flat /a/. The local pronunciation of /Illinois/ I have already noticed. /Iowa/, at home, is often /Ioway/.[48] Many American geographical names offer great difficulty to Englishmen. One of my English acquaintances tells me that he was taught at school to accent /Massachusetts/ on the second syllable, to rhyme the second syllable of /Ohio/ with /tea/, and to sound the first /c/ in /Connecticut/. In Maryland the name of /Calvert/ county is given a broad /a/, whereas the name of /Calvert/ street, in Baltimore, has a flat /a/. This curious distinction is almost always kept up. A Scotchman, coming to America, would give the /ch/ in such names as /Loch Raven/ and /Lochvale/ the guttural Scotch (and German) sound, but locally it is always pronounced as if it were /k/.

Finally, there is a curious difference between English and American usage in the use of the word /river/. The English invariably put it before the proper name, whereas we almost as invariably put it after. /The Thames river/ would seem quite as strange to an Englishman as /the river Chicago/ would seem to us. This difference arose more than a century ago and was noticed by Pickering. But in his day the American usage was still somewhat uncertain, and such forms as /the river Mississippi/ were yet in use. Today /river/ almost always goes after the proper name.

§ 4

/Street Names/--"Such a locality as 'the /corner/ of /Avenue H/ and /Twenty-third/ street,'" says W. W. Crane, "is about as distinctively American as Algonquin and Iroquois names like /Mississippi/ and /Saratoga/."[49] Kipling, in his "American Notes,"[50] gives testimony to the strangeness with which the [Pg299] number-names, the phrase "the corner of," and the custom of omitting /street/ fall upon the ear of a Britisher. He quotes with amazement certain directions given to him on his arrival in San Francisco from India: "Go six blocks north to [the] corner of /Geary/ and /Markey/ [/Market?/]; then walk around till you strike [the] corner of /Gutter/ and /Sixteenth/." The English always add the word /street/ (or /road/ or /place/ or /avenue/) when speaking of a thoroughfare; such a phrase as "/Oxford/ and /New Bond/" would strike them as incongruous. The American custom of numbering and lettering streets is almost always ascribed by English writers who discuss it, not to a desire to make finding them easy, but to sheer poverty of invention. The English apparently have an inexhaustible fund of names for streets; they often give one street more than one name. Thus, /Oxford/ street, London, becomes the /Bayswater/ road, /High/ street, /Holland Park/ avenue, /Goldhawke/ road and finally the /Oxford/ road to the westward, and /High Holborn/, /Holborn/ viaduct, /Newgate/ street, /Cheapside/, the /Poultry/, /Cornhill/ and /Leadenhall/ street to the eastward. The Strand, in the same way, becomes /Fleet/ street, /Ludgate/ hill and /Cannon/ street. Nevertheless, there is a /First/ avenue in /Queen's Park/, and parallel to it are /Second/, /Third/, /Fourth/, /Fifth/ and /Sixth/ avenues--all small streets leading northward from the Harrow road, just east of Kensal Green cemetery. I have observed that few Londoners have ever heard of them. There is also a /First/ street in Chelsea--a very modest thoroughfare near Lennox gardens and not far from the Brompton Oratory.

Next to the numbering and lettering of streets, a fashion apparently set up by Major Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's plans for Washington, the most noticeable feature of American street nomenclature, as opposed to that of England, is the extensive use of such designations as /avenue/, /boulevard/, /drive/ and /speedway/. /Avenue/ is used in England, but only rather sparingly; it is seldom applied to a mean street, or to one in a warehouse district. In America the word is scarcely distinguished in meaning from /street/.[51] /Boulevard/, /drive/ and /speedway/ are almost [Pg300] unknown to the English, but they use /road/ for urban thoroughfares, which is very seldom done in 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.