American Language Supplement 2 (110 page)

3
Oklahoma City
Oklahoman
, Aug. 8, 1944.

4
I am indebted here to Mr. Leonard G. Pardue, of Jacksonville, Fla.

5
I get news of him from Dr. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., of Greenville, S. C., whose information comes from the officiating clergyman.

1
On the Side, by E. V. Durling, Baltimore
News-Post
, July 13, 1945. Anson, says Durling, “thanked the Lord his mother had not been born in Ypsilanti and his father in Kalamazoo.”

2
A Study in Negro Onomastics,
American Speech
, Aug., 1930, pp. 463–67.

1
Negro Names,
Journal of Negro History
, Jan., 1938, pp. 35–48. In Names of American Negro Slaves, to be noticed presently, Puckett found that the order of frequency in names among Negro college students of today runs
James, William, John, Robert, Charles, George, Edward, Joseph, Thomas, Henry, Samuel
and
Walter
for the men, and
Mary, Annie, Ruth, Helen, Dorothy, Thelma, Louise, Alice, Katherine, Elizabeth, Lillian
and
Ethel
for the women.

1
Dark Town, by J. Andrew Gaulden,
Negro Digest
, June, 1945, p. 11.

2
From Louisiana. Chicago
Tribune
, Feb. 10, 1939, p. 8.

3
Reported by Mrs. R. C. Coffy, of Muskogee, Okla. Reduced familiarly to
Feemy
.

4
American Mercury
, March, 1927, p. 305.

5
Reported from Texas by Mr. Stanley Walker.

6
From Louisiana. Chicago
Tribune
, Feb. 10, 1939, p. 8.

7
Found in Georgia by Mr. Thomas Caldecot Chubb, of New York City.

8
Some Curious Negro Names, by Arthur Palmer Hudson,
Southern Folklore Quarterly
, Dec., 1938, p. 188.

9
Reported from Georgia by Mr. S. B. Tolar, Jr., of Waycross.

10
Oklahoma City
Oklahoman
, July 1, 1940.

11
The last two are from Some Curious Negro Names, before cited, p. 188.

12
Georgia’s Health
, Sept., 1942, p. 3.

13
The last two are from a list compiled by the Atlanta police and discussed in Names, Raleigh (N. C.)
News-Observer
, Aug. 19, 1940. It is probable that they are not given-names at all, but merely criminal monikers.

14
American Mercury
, March, 1927, p. 305.

15
Reported by Mr. Donald Moffatt, of Brookline, Mass.

16
Reported from Pine Bluff, Ark., by Miss Helen Cockrum, of Little Rock.

17
Reported by Mrs. Louise B. Ellison, of Charleston, S. C.

18
A steward’s mate in the Navy, reported by Rear Admiral T. H. Robbins, Jr.

19
Reported from Florida by Dr. Herman H. Horne, of New York University.

20
Found in North Carolina by Miss Beverly Entsler, of Goldsboro.

21
Found in Florida by Dr. Thomas B. Shoup, of the University of Florida. Its bearer registered for the draft as
M. B
.

22
Found at Plymouth, N. C. As we have seen, titles are often used as given-names by whites also. But they cover a somewhat wider range among the blacks,
e.g., Judge, Sergeant, Preacher, Deputy
and
Rabbi
. The last is reported from Texas by Mrs. D. J. Condit, of Tulsa, Okla.

23
Some Curious Negro Names, before cited, p. 188.

24
Some Curious Negro Names, before cited, p. 185.

25
From Tulsa, Okla.

1
Dark Town, before cited.

2
The last three are from Some Curious Negro Names, before cited.

3
Dark Town, before cited.

4
The last two are from Some Curious Negro Names, before cited.

5
From Louisiana. Chicago
Tribune
, Feb. 10, 1939, p. 8.

6
Some Curious Negro Names, by Arthur Palmer Hudson,
Southern Folklore Quarterly
, Dec., 1938, pp. 179–93.

7
Willie
for short.

8
Called
Torial
for short. Reported from Greensburg, Pa., by Miss Lenora Lund.

9
On Aug. 16, 1936, R. L. Ripley reported a Negro in Pilot Grove, Tex., named
Daniel’s Wisdom May I Know Stephen’s Faith and Spirit Choose John’s Divine Communion Seal Moses Meekness Joshua’s Zeal Win the Day and Conquer All
Murphy, Jr. When he went to war, according to
This Week
, Sept. 12, 1943, he was entered upon his company books as
D. C
. Murphy, Jr., and answered to
Dan
.

10
Reported by Mr. Durward King, of Leaksville, N. C.

11
Reported from Bladen county, N. C., by Mr. Worth B. Baldwin, of Laurinburg.

12
I am indebted for this to Mr. A. Wilson Dods, of Fredonia, N. Y.

13
Mistaken for a name.
Cf
. Matthew VI, 18.

14
Found by Mrs. Louise B. Ellison, of Charleston, S. C.

15
Reported from Virginia by Mrs John Allen Leathers, of Louisville, Ky.

1
The last five are from Some Curious Negro Names, by Arthur Palmer Hudson, before cited. He says that
Constipation’s
stable-name is
Consto
.

2
Reported from Oklahoma. A Negro maid. Pronounced
You-reen
, with the accent on the second syllable.

3
Associated Press dispatch from Crowley, La., Aug. 12, 1940.

4
From Smithfield, N. C., reported by Mr. Don Wharton, of New York City.

5
On July 4, 1940 the Associated Press reported that Negro twins born at Franklin, Texas, had been christened
Blitz
and
Krieg
.

6
Reported from Pike county, Miss., by the Jackson
Daily News
, Dec., 1941. I am indebted here to Miss Anabel Power, of Jackson.

7
Pronounced
Nira
. Reported by Mr. Harris Booge Peavey, of Maple-wood, N. J.

8
Found in a law report by Mr. Manuel Prenner.

9
Negro’s Liquor Sentence is 18 Days a Gallon, Oklahoma City
Oklahoman
, Sept. 23, 1941.

10
Names of American Negro Slaves, in Studies in the Science of Society Presented to Albert Galloway Keller; New Haven, 1937, pp. 471–94. A previous study by Miss Blanche Britt Armfield, of Concord, N. C., is noted in AL4, p. 523, n. 3.

1
Acts XVIII, 24.

2
Puckett gives authorities for all these names.

3
Private communication, June 5, 1944.

1
Private communication, Feb. 1, 1943.

2
Big as
Cuffy
, by George Stimpson,
Negro Digest
, Jan., 1947, p. 194.

1
I am indebted here to Mr. J. F. Hill, of Salinas, Calif.

2
I am indebted here to Mrs. George Lucas, of Ogden, Utah.

3
No Man Knows My History, by Fawn M. Brodie; New York, 1945, pp. 335–36.

4
Exodus II, 10 seeks to relate it to the Hebrew root
mashah
, to draw out, but most scholars reject this etymology as fanciful. Its actual source seems to lie in the Egyptian
mes
or
messu
, a son or child. Indeed, the late Sigmund Freud wrote a book seeking to prove that Moses was not a Jew at all, but an Egyptian.

5
Sarah
to
Sylvia
to
Shirley
, by A. A. Roback,
Commentary
, Sept., 1946, p. 272.

6
Roback, just cited, predicts that “the next phase will be
Aldrich
.”

7
“Next in line,” says Roback, “are
Eugene, Evan
and heaven knows what.” He adds: “
Irving
came into vogue some sixty years ago. Lately, it has fallen from grace – for the obvious reason that too many Jews bear it.”

1
I am indebted here to Mr.
Moïse
K. Cohen, of New York.
Moïse
is common among the Jews of Louisiana, and in South Carolina it is a surname.

2
“Usually,” says Jane Doe in Concerning Hebrew Names,
Reflex
, Nov., 1928, p. 29, “a Jewish child is named after some ancestor. It has become a recognized custom of loyalty to take the first letter of the ancestor’s given-name and give the newly born an Anglo-Saxon name beginning with the same letter.”

3
Harry
, there, is a diminutive of
Hershel
, a derivative of
Hersh
or
Hirsh
, which is not Jewish at all, but German. Roback says that in the United States it has generated
Henry, Herbert, Harold, Howard
and
Harvey
.

4
In later years
Max
seems to have fallen under the same blight. I once knew a politician named
Max
in Baltimore who lost an election because his opponents spread the report that he was a Jew.

5
Earl and Samuel G. Wiener, in On Naming the Baby,
Zeta Beta Tau Quarterly
, Dec., 1926, call such names as the last eight baronial. See AL4, pp. 507–08.

1
Block’s Book Bulletin
, Jan.–Feb., 1945, p. 18.

2
Nov. 16, p. A5291.

3
The Guggenheims: The Making of an American Dynasty, by Harvey O’Connor; New York, 1937.

4
Originally applied to the Jews of Germany, but later extended to those of Eastern Europe. The Sephardim hail from the Latin countries, Holand and the Levant.

5
I am indebted here to the late Benjamin De Casseres.

6
De Casseres himself admitted to having two female cousins named
Lulu
.

7
Mr. Marcus Rosenblum, of New York, tells me of a Jewish woman who had changed her own name of
Sarah
to
Karen
at the age of sixteen, but named her daughters
Drazia
and
Avram
, both ancient Jewish names.

1
Says William B. Ziff in The Rape of Palestine; New York, 1938, p. 189: “In Palestine, when a Jew changes his name, which is frequent, he selects the most Jewish one he can find.”

2
I am indebted here to Mr. G. Agronsky, editor of the
Palestine Post
, Jerusalem. But apparently this movement has its limits. On June 11, 1947, a Major
Wesley
Aron, of Palestine, appeared in Baltimore to advocate the unrestricted immigration of Jews.

3
Hebrew Names: Their Meaning and Historical Connections; London, 1944.

4
Levene calls attention to the curious fact that
Shem
, from whom the Jews are supposed to be descended, has had very few namesakes among them. Some traditional Jewish given-names, he says, are not Biblical, but originated in the Middle Ages,
e.g., Chaim, Hamina, Meyer, Nachman, Pesach. Chaim
, which means life, may have had forerunners in the period of the Babylonian Exile. An analogue was the Latin
Vitalis. Haym
is a modern form. Levene says that it is added to the names of sick people to stave off death. This change of name at a time of crisis is common among orthodox Jews. I am indebted here to Mr. R. G. Wasson, of New York, and Miss Dorothy C. Walter, of Providence, R. I.

1
A Collection of Upwards of 30,000 Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French and Other Immigrants in Pennsylvania From 1727 to 1776, by I. Daniel Rupp; second edition; Philadelphia, 1927.

2
Dr. Alfred Senn says in Unsere Namen,
Schweizer Journal
(San Francisco), Nov. 8, 1944, p. 1, that
Carl
or
Karl
was unknown in Germany until relatively recent times. In a list of 100,000 names from Breslau,
c
. 1400, it does not occur once. It first appeared in German Switzerland, in the form of
Carli
, in 1688.

3
An excellent list of German given-names, with their meanings, is in Reclams Namenbuch, a pamphlet in the Reclam series; Leipzig, 1938.

4
In 1947 Dr. Clifford R. Adams, of Pennsylvania State College, reported that
Karen
was the favorite of the co-eds there assembled, followed by
Dianne, Catherine, Linda, Ellen, Barbara, Gail, Carol, Margot
and
Kathleen
in order.

5
Dr. Flaten’s report has not been published, but I have had access to it by his courtesy.

1
Miss Magda Houkon, of New York, the daughter of a Norwegian pastor in Minnesota, tells me that her father once baptized two sisters, one named
Lutine Clipporine Blanchine Annie-Ann
and the other
Purl
.

2
p. 508.

3
I am indebted here to Mr. Hugh Morrison, who says that this addition of
o
occurs in other cases.

4
I am indebted here to Mr. J. Marvin Hunter, editor of the
Frontier Times
(Bandera, Texas).

1
I am indebted here to Mr. L. Clark Keating, of Minneapolis.

2
Personal Names in Hawaii, by John E. Reinecke,
American Speech
, Dec., 1940, p. 350.

3
An interesting note upon given-names in Brazil, where anti-clericalism has warred upon the ancient saints’ names, and brought in
Milton, Jefferson, Newton, Gladstone
and even
Calvin
and
Luther
, is in Brazil: an Interpretation, by Gilberto Freyre, New York, 1945, pp. 130–31. In Names on Puerto Rico, by Lawrence S. Thompson,
American Notes & Queries
, Sept., 1945, pp. 83–86, there is a discussion of the nomenclature that has displaced the old formal Spanish name system among the lower classes of the island.

4
pp. 511–12.

5
The pronunciation is changed to make it rhyme with
fan
.

6
The Americanization of Slovak Surnames,
Slovak Review
, Autumn, 1946, p. 70.