WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2293, 12 September 1870, Page 2

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

A constantly recurring trouble in the familar circle is that of naming children. In the large majority of cases it is resolved very simply. The first boy or girl is christened after the father or successors take the names tnSt have Oben handed down in the family from generation to generation—and this without a thought of the cruelty practised on the unconscious infant of fastening Adouiram or Mehitable on it for life. The Pilgrim Fathers named their children remorselessly out of the Old T stament, or else after the Christian viitues, and the custom still lingers among their posterity, as it appears in the tuneful lyric of Californ’a— I live at Table Mountain, A ml my name is Truthful James. The reaction from this ancient nsuage have taken many forms that arc more or Jess open to objection. The descendants of the Puritans have imitated the patriotic examples of their fellow-citizens of other lineage, and outraged their sons by baptising them George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin,'and John Quincy Adam', until thou a ulg and thousands have come to bear these prefixes to their patronymic, just as in Virginia every other boy is called John Randolph, or Thomas Jefferson, or Patrick Henry. Then there are the classical names, of which President Grant himself was one of the victims, entailing such dreadful wrongs as Tiberius Snooks and Fabius Maximus Popkins ; and the aristocratic names, out of the novels, of Marmiduke, and Lionel, and Orlando, and the 1 ke. For the girls, as an escape from the commonplace, the termination of ie has alarmingly prevailed of late years in Bessie. Fannie, Katie, Maggie, Sallie, and we suppose Patsie, Mollie, and Sukio (why not ? since this is but another form of Psyche) ; after which the most popular names are ta en from the garden and the field, as Rose, Pink, Daisy, Blossom, Violet, Lily, whiph are pretty, though a Lily with red hair and a pink with a sallow complexion strikes us as Miss-. Nomers, and a Lily spelt Lillie (as it is nine cases out of ten) becomes unendurable. Eccentricities of names and happy incrdents of names open so wide a field of playful speculation and research, that no limij; short of a magazine article will admit of ap excursion therein. Such conjunctions as Preserved Fish, Honor Bright, Mahogany Cofßu, Temperance Pledge, Virginia Weed, Last Chance, Dunn Brown, and Return Swift, may he multiplied indefinitely out of the directories. In High Holboru, London, there is a firm of Flint and Steel, which, if they were dealers in fireworks, would suggest danger, and a difficulty of obtaining insurance, and near the church of St. Dunstan's, in the City of London, the names of Ward and Lock may be seen on a sign over the door of a publishing house, though they might more appropriately refer to the business of bank safes. In other parts of London, Lamb and Hare, Holland and Sherry, and other odd combinations strike the attention of the passer-by. Some years ago, before the railway had been pushed through Alabama, the pr prictor of the regular line of stage coaches from Montgomery to Mobile rejoiced in the happy oprelatlve of Jehu Golightly, which the inincredulous passenger refused to believe accidental, and at this moment a ferry boat on the Ohio, between Louisville and Jeffersonvide, give o , in its name of John Shallcross, a p 'sitive assurance to the public of getting over. One of the most prominent politicians of

thn South, who held a place in the rebe Cabinet at llichmond, came to America with no name at all, having drifted ashore as an infant from a wreck in which both its parents had been lost, and having been christened from the name of the vessel which had gone down.

We all recollect the old story of the worthy lady who having named four sons successively Matthew, Marl?, Luke, and John, insisted on calling the fifth Acts, a perversity that can only be equalled hy the father of ten children who named them Moveovcr, Nevertheless, or Notwithstanding. But an odd case occurred the other day in Paris, which is well nigh as remarkable for obstinacy on the part of the parent. It was narrated hy our own correspondent in a letter published last week, and will he freshly remembered by the readers of the Evening Pont, In France, baptismal names can only be selected from, the saints in the calender, but names unhallowed with the sacrament are often given to children from some circumstances connected with the day of their birth. M. Macqneris, the son-in-law of Eugene Pellet an, had a son horn to hnn on the day of the plobiscitum. He went to register the new comer, and gave its name as Non. The clerk refused to accept either Non or Oui. The father did not try Pas. After all, was not the child’s name of necessity a Mockery ? — N. Y. Evening Post.