ORIGINS OF NAMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 8

ORIGINS OF NAMES

NEW PROBLEM ARISES

The difficulty, which is interesting South Africa about the origins and birthplace of the Rorke of Rorke's Drift is one which is likely to recur with increasing frequency in our own Empire and also in the United States, says the "Manchester Guardian." It is not likely that there will ever be any great 'difficulty in tracing the origins of Harrismith or Ladysmith, of places named after H. M. Stanley or after Livingstone. Rhodesia will not present any difficulty, but there will be numbers of small places named in pioneer times which, as the years pass,-will present plenty of opportunity for speculation. (A tale has been told recently of a young gentleman who thought that Melba took her name from Peche Melba.)

But it is surely in America that these things will present the greatest difficulty. Washington, Pittsburg, and New York may be easy enough, but, especially in the West, there must already be many places where the origin of the name is even now misty and will grow more doubtful.

Even in the Old World there are difficulties. We heard a. great deal last summer about the Quai d'Orsay, but how much is known of the history of the originator of the name? There is something to be said on the other side, too. The most curious case is that of Henry Hudson, of whom it is recorded in the "Dictionary of National Biography" that "the river, strait, bay, and vast tract of land which bear his name have kept his memory alive, but in point of fact not one of them was discovered by Hudson."