Part 30

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.

[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, and to vast profit, to the composition of arresting and uplifting apothegms, and the fruits of their fancy are not only sold in books but also displayed upon an infinite variety of calendars, banners and wall-cards. It is rarely that one enters the office of an American business man without encountering at least one of these wall-cards. It may, on the one hand, show nothing save a succinct caution that time is money, say, "Do It Now," or "This Is My Busy Day"; on the other hand, it may embody a long and complex sentiment, ornately set forth. The taste for such canned sagacity seems to have arisen in America at a very early day. Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac," begun in 1732, remained a great success for twenty-five years, and the annual sales reached 10,000. It had many imitators, and founded an aphoristic style of writing which culminated in the essays of Emerson, often mere strings of sonorous certainties, defectively articulated. The "Proverbial Philosophy" of Martin Farquhar Tupper, dawning upon the American public in the early 40's, was welcomed with enthusiasm; as Saintsbury says,[1] its success [Pg302] on this side of the Atlantic even exceeded its success on the other. But that was the last and perhaps the only importation of the sage and mellifluous in bulk. In late years the American production of such merchandise has grown so large that the balance of trade now flows in the other direction. Visiting Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain in the spring of 1917, I found translations of the chief works of Dr. Marden on sale in all those countries, and with them the masterpieces of such other apostles of the New Thought as Ralph Waldo Trine and Elizabeth Towne. No other American books were half so well displayed.

The note of all such literature, and of the maxims that precipitate themselves from it, is optimism. They "inspire" by voicing and revoicing the New Thought doctrine that all things are possible to the man who thinks the right sort of thoughts--in the national phrase, to the /right-thinker/. This right-thinker is indistinguishable from the /forward-looker/, whose belief in the continuity and benignity of the evolutionary process takes on the virulence of a religious faith. Out of his confidence come the innumerable saws, axioms and /geflügelte Worte/ in the national arsenal, ranging from the "It won't hurt none to try" of the great masses of the plain people to such exhilarating confections of the wall-card virtuosi as "The elevator to success is not running; take the stairs." Naturally enough, a grotesque humor plays about this literature of hope; the folk, though it moves them, prefer it with a dash of salt. "Smile, damn you, smile!" is a typical specimen of this seasoned optimism. Many examples of it go back to the early part of the last century, for instance, "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw" and "It will never get well if you pick it." Others are patently modern, /e. g./, "The Lord is my shepherd; I should worry" and "Roll over; you're on your back." The national talent for extravagant and pungent humor is well displayed in many of these maxims. It would be difficult to match, in any other folk-literature, such examples as "I'd rather have them say 'There he goes' than 'Here he lies,'" or "Don't spit: remember the Johnstown flood," or "Shoot it in the arm; your leg's full," or "Cheer up; [Pg303] there ain't no hell," or "If you want to cure homesickness, go back home." Many very popular phrases and proverbs are borrowings from above. "Few die and none resign" originated with Thomas Jefferson; Bret Harte, I believe, was the author of "No check-ee, no shirt-ee," General W. T. Sherman is commonly credited with "War is hell," and Mark Twain with "Life is one damn thing after another." An elaborate and highly characteristic proverb of the uplifting variety--"So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell"--was first given currency by one of the engineers of the Panama Canal, a gentleman later retired, it would seem, for attempting to execute his own counsel. From humor the transition to cynicism is easy, and so many of the current sayings are at war with the optimism of the majority. "Kick him again; he's down" is a depressing example. "What's the use?" a rough translation of the Latin "Cui bono?" is another. The same spirit is visible in "Tell your troubles to a policeman," "How'd you like to be the ice-man?" "Some say she do and some say she don't," "Nobody loves a fat man," "I love my wife, but O you kid," and "Would you for fifty cents?" The last originated in the ingenious mind of an advertisement writer and was immediately adopted. In the course of time it acquired a naughty significance, and helped to give a start to the amazing button craze of ten or twelve years ago--a saturnalia of proverb and phrase making which finally aroused the guardians of the public morals and was put down by the police.

That neglect which marks the study of the vulgate generally extends to the subject of popular proverb-making. The English publisher, Frank Palmer, prints an excellent series of little volumes presenting the favorite proverbs of all civilized races, including the Chinese and Japanese, but there is no American volume among them. Even such exhaustive collections as that of Robert Christy[2] contain no American specimens--not even "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw" or "Root, hog, or die." [Pg304]

§ 2