American Language Supplement 2 (104 page)

The American Negroes, save in one small and isolated area, have dropped the names they brought with them from Africa, and also the Indian names that they picked up in the New World. That single area is the Gullah country along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, including the offshore islands. Its speech, as we have seen in Chapter VII, Section 4, has been studied by Dr. Lorenzo D. Turner, of Fisk University. Most of the 6,000 African words that survive in Gullah are personal names. “In some families on the Sea Islands,” writes Dr. Turner,
³
“the names of all the children are African. Many have no English names, though in most cases the African words in use are mere nicknames. Very few of the Gullahs of today know the meaning of these names; they use them because their parents and grandparents did so.” Some of Turner’s examples, with their languages of origin and original meanings, are:

Abeshe (Yoruba): worthless.

Aditi (Yoruba): deaf.

Agali (Wolof): welcome.

Alamisa (Bambara): born on Thursday.

Alovizo (Jeji): inflamed fingers or toes.

Anika (Vai): very beautiful.

Arupe (Yoruba): short.

Asigbe (Ewe): market day.

Bafata (Mende): high tide.

Bambula (Kongo): to transfer by witchcraft.

Boi (Mende): a first-born girl.

Dodo (Ewe): a forest.

Dutala (Mandinka): midnight.

Foma (Mende): a whip.

Hama (Mende): the rainy season.

Hawa (Mende): lazy.

Holima (Mende): patience.

Ishi (Kimbundu): the ground.

Kowai (Mende): war.

Kuta (with the
u
like
oo
in
foot
): a salt-water turtle, the totem of some of the clans of Gambia.

Lainde (Fula): a forest.

Mandze (Mende): a girl born at night.

Maungau (Kongo): a hill.

Momo (Bambara): to ry into.

Mumu (Mende): dumo.

Randa (Wolof): a thicket.

Sanko (Mende): one of triplets.

Simung (Mandinka): time to eat.

Sina (Mende): a female twin.

Suango (Mende): proud.

Suni (Bambara): fasting.

Sukuta (Mandinka): night is arriving.

Tiwauni (Yoruba): it is yours.

Winiwini (Jeji): delicate.

It will be noted that many of these relate to personal characteristics or to the place or circumstances of birth. Turner reports that the Gullahs carry this habit of name-making into English. “In addition to the names of the months and day,” he says, “the following are typical:
Blossom
(born when the flowers were in bloom),
Wind, Hail, Storm, Freeze, Morning, Cotton
(born in cotton-picking time),
Easter
and
Harvest
.” He does not include the once familiar
Cuffy
in the list of names he sends me, but I am told by Mr. Marcus Neville, of London,
¹
that it is in common use on the Gold Coast, and is there thought to be derived from a Fanti word,
cofi
. The DAE traces it to 1713 and calls it “of African origin.” It died out after the Civil War.
²
In my boyhood in Maryland the name commonly applied to a colored girl whose actual name was unknown was
Liza
, and a strange colored boy was similarly called
Sam
or
Rastus
, but both are now extinct.

The Mormons, in their early days, extracted a roster of names for their male offspring from the Book of Mormon, and to this day some of them are still called
Nephi, Mahonri, Lehi, Laman
and
Moroni;
also, the custom survives among them of naming the seventh
son of a seventh son
Doctor
.
¹
Other curious names, chiefly loans from afar,
e.g., Luana
and
Aloha
, testify to the fact that every pious Mormon must go on a missionary journey in his youth. But all these names are falling into disuse and the young of today bear the same fancy appellations that prevail among other Bible searchers,
e.g., Filna, Geneal, WaNeta, LeJeune, Janell
and
Myldredth
for girls;
Legene, Rondell, La Mar, Herald
(
Harold?
) and
Wildis
for boys, and
LaVon
and
LaVerne
for both sexes.
²
Indeed, it is possible that this murrain of made-up names was launched upon the country by the Saints, for as long ago as the 1836–44 era their prophet and martyr, Joseph Smith, had wives named
Presindia, Zina, Delcena
and
Almera
.
³

The willingness of Jews to change their surnames, noted in Section 1 of the present chapter, is more than matched by their willingness to adopt non-Jewish given-names. This process is anything but new, for the Jewish exiles brought back many names from the Babylonian Captivity, and Moses himself apparently bore an Egyptian name.
⁴
Other names were borrowed from the other great nations of antiquity,
e.g., Feivl
and
Kalman
, from the Greek
Phoebus
and
Kelonymos
.
⁵
From medieval times onward borrowing and adaptation have gone on in all countries. Thus
Abraham
has been transformed in Russia into
Abrasha
, in France into
Armand
, in Germany into
Armin
, in Austria into
Adolf
, in England into
Bram
, and in the United States into
Albert, Arthur
and
Alvin
.
⁶
In the same way
Isaac
, an ancient Hebrew name meaning to laugh, has become
Ignatz
in Galicia,
Isidor
in France and Germany, and
Irving, Irwin, Edward
and even
Edmund
in the United States,
⁷
and
Samuel
has been supplanted by
Sidney, Stanley, Sylvan, Seymour, Sanford
and
Salwyn
or
Selwyn
, some of which also do duty as substitutes for
Solomon
. Even the sacred name of
Moses
has given way in Russia to
Misha
, in France and Italy to
Moïse
¹
or
Maurice
, in Germany to
Moritz
, and in the United States to
Morris, Morton, Mortimer, Marcus, Marvin, Melvin, Martin, Milton, Murray
and even
Malcolm
.

It will be noted that in nearly all these cases the initial letter is preserved.
²
Roback, lately cited, says that often the original Jewish name survives “underneath and complementary to the protective Gentile name” and “it is this original name that is pronounced over them, following a whispered conference between rabbi and relatives, just before the last remains are gathered to their fathers.” In many cases the widespread adoption of Gentile names by Jews has led to their abandonment by Gentiles. This is true, for example, of
Moritz
and
Harry
in Germany,
³
and it probably had something to do with the gradual disappearance of certain Old Testament names,
e.g., Abraham, Isaac
and
Moses
, in mid-Nineteenth Century America.
⁴
In not a few cases the Jews have adopted names of distinctively Christian character,
e.g
., the Yiddish
Nitul
, which is related to
Natalie
, meaning a child born at Christmas.
Dolores
, taken from
Mater Dolorosa
, one of the names of the Virgin Mary, offers another example. In the same way
Alexander
and
Julius
were borrowed from the heathen centuries ago.

Of late the Jews have taken to naming their sons
John, Thomas, Mark, James
and
Paul
, not to mention
Kenneth, Chester, Clifton, Bennett, Leslie, Lionel, Tracy
and
Vernon
.
⁵
Roback reports that of the four presidents of the leading Jewish theological seminaries
of the United States in 1946 three were named
Stephen, Louis
and
Julian
. Another distinguished rabbi has the name of
Beryl
,
¹
a late president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was
Edward
, and a rabbi who got into the
Congressional Record
with an Armistice Day address in 1945 was
Norman
.
²
The changes that have gone on during the past century and a half are well shown by the family-tree of the American Guggenheim family.
³
The founder was
Simon
, born in 1792, and his wife was
Rachel
. Their son was
Meyer
and their oldest grandson was
Isaac
. Among their other grandsons were
Daniel, Solomon
and
Benjamin
, but interspersed among them were
Murry, Robert
and
William
. In the fourth generation the
Stammhalter
was
Robert
. After that the male line began to languish, but meanwhile there were many daughters, and among them were
Lucille, Natalie, Diana, Margaret, Joan, Beulah, Edyth Helen, Marguerite, Eleanor
and
Gertrude
. Some of these daughters (not counting those who married
Goyim
) had children or grandchildren named
Jean, Jack, Roger, Norman, Betty, Gene, Janet, Terrence, Gwendolyn, Harold, Willard, Timothy
and
Mary Ann
. Thus Jewish given-names are being rapidly assimilated to the general American stock, including the stock of fancy names.
Shirley
is now probably more common among Jewish girls than among Christians, and
Tommie Mae, Luciel
and
V-Etta
may be only around the corner. The Sephardic or Spanish Jews seem to cling to their traditional given-names much more firmly than the Ashkenazim
⁴
e.g., Benjamin, Elias, Abraham, David, Emmanuel, Nathaniel, Solomon, Nathan, Isaac, Miriam, Rachel
and
Rebecca
,
⁵
but even the Sephardim have begun to weaken, and there are individuals of their proud clan in New York named
Ernest, William, Robert, Harold, Edgar
and
John
.
⁶

The impact of Hitler made the American Jews acutely race-conscious, and from 1933 onward there was some tendency to go back to Jewish names.
⁷
But it did not proceed very far. Among
the refugees in Palestine, however, it went to great lengths and is still in progress.
¹
The
Palestine Gazette
is full of notices of changes of name registered with the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics,
e.g., Leopold
to
Bezalel, Adolf
to
Abraham
or
Zeev, Stefan
to
Yaaqov, Bernhard
to
Dov, Eugen
and
Leo
to
Yehuda, Dora
to
Devora, Kurt
to
Yoel
or
Amnon, Felicia
to
Ilana, Gottfried
to
Yedidya, Franz
to
Yehiel, Wilhelm
and
Felix
to
Uri, Nina
to
Suad, Mendel
to
Menahem, Veronica
to
Adina, Edith
to
Dina, Zelda
to
Yardena, Frida
to
Tsipora, Irma
to
Miriam
or
Naomi, Clara
and
Rose
to
Shoshana
and
Sylvia
to
Shifrah
.
²
Moses Levene, in a pamphlet designed to interest English Jews in their ancient given-names,
³
says that the following, among others, have been revived in Palestine:

Among the first German immigrants to America such characteristic given-names as
Johann, Hans, Franz, Conrad, Caspar, Gottfried, Andreas, Otto, Herman, August, Anton
and
Dietrich
were
very common,
¹
but with the flight of the years most of them have been transformed into their British equivalents or abandoned altogether. The former process was facilitated, of course, by the fact that not a few were already identical with British names in spelling, though usually not in pronunciation,
e.g., Robert
and
Arnold
. The one brilliant exception to this obliteration has been mentioned before, to wit,
Carl
, which is now quite as common in the United States as it ever was in Germany.
²
I suspect that German influence may have helped to popularize certain girls’ names,
e.g., Anna, Elsa, Emma, Ernestine, Gertrude, Ida, Irma, Meta, Regina
and
Selma
, but it certainly did not suffice to naturalize
Kunigunde, Waldburgia, Irmingard
and
Sieglinde
.
³
The Scandinavians in the Northwest have added
Helma, Karen
⁴
and
Ingeborg
to the American répertoire, especially in that region, but for every name they have thus managed to preserve they have lost dozens. So with their boys’ names,
e.g., Olaf, Gunnar, Axel, Nils, Anders, Holger, Knut, Jens:
of the whole lot only
Erik
, spelled
Eric
, seems to have been adopted by Americans.

Dr. Nils Flaten, of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., in a study of the given-names of the students enrolled there in 1937–38, found that though nearly all of them were of Norwegian ancestry, wholly or in part, only 42 of their 702 different names were genuinely Norwegian.
⁵
Anders, Fritjof, Halvor, Leif, Nils
and
Thorvald
each appeared but once, even among males whose parents were both Norwegian; among those with but one Norwegian parent they were lacking altogether. Among the girls
Astri, Ragna, Sigrid
and
Solveig
likewise appeared but once, and again only in children of pure
Norwegian stock. The favorite boys’ names were
Arthur, Clifford, Clarence, Donald, Gordon, Harold
(from
Harald
),
Kenneth, Lloyd, Norman, Orville, Paul, Robert, Thomas
and
William:
these, taken together, were found no less than 124 times. The favorite girls’ names, with the number of their occurrences, were
Helen
, 17;
Margaret
, 15;
Ruth
, 14;
Dorothy
and
Marion
, 12 each;
Lois
and
Mary
, 9 each;
Mildred
, 8;
Elaine
and
Esther
, 7 each;
Charlotte, Eunice, Irene
and
June
, 6 each. Fancy names of the sort we have been admiring in the Dust Bowl were numerous,
e.g., Brunell, Daryl, Durwood, Erliss, Glendor, Judean, Kermon, Murley, Selmer
and
Theos
among the males, and
Alette, Ardis, Edellyn, Erdine, Ferne, Juella, La Vaughn, La Verne, Marolyn, Monne Fay, Ninnie, Norena
and
Selpha
among the females.
¹
Dr. Flaten says that when the early Norwegian immigrants sent their American-born children to the public-schools it was not uncommon for the schoolma’ams to give them “American” names. Thus
Knut
Larson became
Kenneth
and
Nils
Olson became
Nelson
. Some of these children kept both names through life, one for family and
Landsleute
and the other “to serve when dealing with Yankee neighbors.”