American Language Supplement 2 (122 page)

The florid fancy which shows itself in bungalow names is also visible in those of eating-houses catering to the migratory trade. In 1939 Marguerite Cooke Goodner undertook a study of more than 4000 such establishments in fifteen Texas towns, ranging from Amarillo to Waco, and presented her findings as a thesis at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
²
She found that the banal attempts at humor visible in Summer camp names showed in many of their names,
e.g., Do Drive Inn, Snak-Shak, Chat-N-Nibble, Dime-a-Mite, Chat and Chew, Eatwell, Kool Kave, Elbow Room, Suits Us, Just-a-Bite, Goodie Goodie, Taste Rite
and
Tastee
. About “thirty-four per cent. carried the names of the owners in some form,”
e.g., Berry’s Thrifty Corner, Carroll’s Eat Shop, Jimmie’s Tamale House, Jerry’s Kitchen, Pete’s Hamburger Place, Pinkie’s Tin Shack
and
Irene’s Bar and Café
.
³
Miss Goodner reported that first names were most popular, as promoting “a bond of friendship and understanding.” “Men who are forced to eat day after day in commercial eating-houses,” she said, “are apt to seek the friendly establishment where they can call their host by his first name.” A feminine name, she added, was even more attractive, but in 1940 the
Texas mores
still frowned on the coupling of such a name with the word
bar
, though large numbers of the eateries employed young girls to serve both food and drink. The reappearance of
place
, an old American euphemism for
barroom
, was significant, but Miss Goodner did not record
shoppe
in
eat shop, sandwich shop
, etc. Mr. Don Bloch tells me
⁴
that similar fanciful names are given to grocery-stores in Denver,
e.g., Pay and Save, Sellrite, Save-a-Nickle, Rite Spot, Save-U-More, Best Yet
and
King Klean
.

In the early days of the railroad it was common to give names to locomotives, and in recent years some of the roads have revived this custom, but it is no longer general. Whether or not the mellifluous names of Pullman cars will survive, now that the Pullman
Company has been sawed in two by court order and the operating half turned over to a syndicate of the larger railroads, remains to be seen. But names for fast trains seem likely to go on; indeed, the introduction of stream-liners has promoted their invention. Some of them are merely gaudy, but others have no little charm,
e.g.
, the
Lark
, which is given to a night train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, arriving in the morning, and the
Flamingo
, on the Atlantic Coast Line. So far as I know, the only discussion of such train names in print is in an article by Charles Angoff, published in the
American Mercury
in 1928.
¹
He lists, among others, the
Chief
of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (now reinforced by a stream-lined
Super-Chief
), the
Panorama Special
of the Denver & Rio Grande, the
Pine Tree Limited
of the Boston & Maine, the
Red Bird
of the Chicago Great Western, the
Sooner
, of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, and the
Golden State Limited
of the Southern Pacific. To these may be added the
Hiawatha
of the Chicago & Milwaukee, the
South Wind
of the Atlantic Coast Line, the
Black Diamond
of the Lehigh, the
Rocky Mountain Rocket
of the Rock Island, the
Zephyr
of the Burlington, the
F.F.V
. (first families of Virginia) of the Chesapeake & Ohio, the
Royal Blue
of the Baltimore & Ohio, the
Argonaut
of the Southern Pacific, the
Twentieth Century Limited
and
Empire State Express
of the New York Central, the
Silver Meteor
and
Sun Queen
of the Seaboard Air Line, the
Royal Palm
and
Ponce de Leon
of the Southern, and the decorously named Washington-New York expresses of the Pennsylvania – the
Congressional
, the
Constitution
, the
Senator
, the
Speaker
, the
Judiciary
, the
Legislator
, the
Representative
, the
Executive
, the
Embassy
and the
President
, with the
Patriot
and the
Legion
thrown in to stir the heart. The Pennsylvania has a
Mount Vernon
and an
Arlington
, the Chesapeake & Ohio a
George Washington
, the Seaboard a
Robert E. Lee
, the Norfolk & Western a
Pocahontas
, the New York Central a
Commodore Vanderbilt
and a
Paul Revere
, and the Lehigh a
John Wilkes
and an
Asa Packer
. During the tire shortage of World War II the Florida East Coast put on a
Tire-saver. Express train
is not an Americanism, for the English were using it in 1841, whereas it is not traced beyond 1849 in this country. But
limited
, which is traced by the DAE to 1879, probably is, and
cannonball
, traced to 1888, undoubtedly is.

The first Pullman cars bore numbers, and then letters, but the letters soon ran out, and the numbers conflicted with those of other railroad cars. The first to have a name was the
Pioneer
, which started out as
Car A
. It was hastily completed in 1865 for use in the train which bore Abraham Lincoln’s body on its long and eventful trip from Washington to Springfield, Ill. It cost $20,000 and was the first car built from top to bottom by George M. Pullman: its predecessors had all been converted day-coaches. When the Pullman Company took over the remains of the Wagner Company, in 1899, it was found that about 300 of the Wagner cars bore names duplicated by Pullmans. Richmond Dean, then a Pullman vice-president, was told off to get rid of this difficulty, and he did so by visiting the Chicago Public Library with a corps of clerks, and searching ancient history. The result was a rash of classical names for the Wagner cars, and for a number of years thereafter they astonished and enchanted the country. It was once widely reported that Mrs. Frank O. Lowden, the daughter of George M. Pullman, was in charge of naming the cars, at a fee variously estimated at from $1 to $100 apiece. There was no truth in this: they were actually named by the officials of the company, often following suggestions made by the railroads using them.

In 1943 the Pullman Company issued a revised list of its cars,
¹
and in 1944 a supplement followed.
²
These documents showed cars named
Ann McGinty, Arthur Brisbane, Babette, Beethoven, B’nai B’rith, Central Park, Chief Iron Tail, Chinatown, Civic Center, Diogenes, Eiffel Tower, Evening Star, Frugality, Game Cock, Gwladys, Huey
(without the
Long
),
Ibsen, Kentucky Home, La Boheme, Marco Polo, Milton H. Smith, Molasse
(no final
s
),
Night Glow, Okoboji, Roentgen, Skokie Club, Sunburst, Tsankawi, Umatilla, Vassar College, Wall Street, Wood Violet, Yvonne
and
Zeno
. But in general, the list revealed only a feeble fancy. Whenever the company’s onomasticians hit upon a name that suggests a whole series they throw away their aspirin, give thanks to God, and work it for all it is worth. Thus, when one of them thought of calling a car after a Scotch
glen
there ensued a long row of names in
Glen
, now running to more than 130 numbers, and including such painfully
un-Scotch forms as
Glen Beach, City, Hollow, Rapids
and
Rio. Cascade
produced almost as many,
e.g., Cascade Bluff, Den, Elf, Gully, Moon, Whirl
and
Whisper
, and so did
Clover, e.g., Clover Bed, Colony, Gem, Nest, Plot
and
Veldt
. The names in
Mc
are almost innumerable, and range from
McGonigle
and
McGillicuddy
to such curious forms as
McCreadyville
and
McZena
. The advantage of such serial names is that they serve to identify types of cars. Thus, nearly all the
Mc
cars are old-fashioned sleepers with twelve sections and one drawing-room, and all the
Cascades
are new models with ten roomettes and five double bedrooms.
¹
In 1937 the late Arthur Guiterman, a poet in large practise, was inspired by the Pullman nomenclature to a set of dithyrambs beginning as follows:

In the heyday of canals all the boats had names and some of them were alarming,
e.g., Bluddy Pirate, Wild Irishman, Bridge-smasher
and
Larger Bier
(lager beer).
³
The boats have now deteriorated into barges, and most of them have only numbers, but the naming of larger craft goes on apace, and during World War II it put considerable strain upon the onomastic engineers and poets of the Maritime Commission. This was the plan finally adopted:
⁴

Concrete barges were named for minerals or chemical elements.

The Maritime Commission built many vessels for the Army, the Navy, foreign governments and private owners, but had nothing to do with their naming. The Navy followed a system of naming its ships that goes back, in its essentials, to March 3, 1819, when Congress passed an act providing that “all ships of the first class … shall be called after the States of the Union, those of the second after the rivers, and those of the third after the principal cities and towns.” This act was amended on June 12, 1858, leaving the
first two classes untouched,
¹
but giving the President the right to name third-class ships “as he may direct.” There were further amendments in 1908, one of them providing that no first-class battleship should be named “for any city, place or person until the names of the States shall have been exhausted,” and another allowing the President discretion in naming monitors. These rules are still followed by the Navy, but as new types of ships have come in it has had to seek new kinds of names for them. The schedule followed during World War II was as follows:
²

All are named for States.

For American cities, the capitals of American territories and possessions, and those territories and possessions themselves.

For “deceased persons in the following categories: Naval, Marine Corps and Coast Guard personnel who rendered distinguished service to their country; Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of the Navy; members of Congress who were closely identified with naval affairs; inventors.”

For “personnel of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard killed by enemy action in World War II.”

After “fish and denizens of the deep.”
³

After monitors formerly on the Navy list.

After birds.
⁴