Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (97 page)
The official list just mentioned sanctions some far from dignified distortions of prophets’ and saints’ names,
e.g., Abe, Abie, Aggie, Al, Aleck, Alex, Alf, Alick, Allie, Andy, Annabelle, Archy
and
Atty
(from
Attracta
, the name of an Irish saint of the Fifth Century), to go no further than the
A
’s. It also permits
Dolores
, which is not a given-name at all, but comes from one of the titles of the Virgin Mary –
Mater Dolorosa
(Sorrowful Mother).
Virginia
, which is likewise permitted, gets in by much the same route. Such American favorites as
Homer, Horace
and
Ulysses
are banned, for they are the names of invincible heathen, but
Caesar
is admitted on the ground that there was a saintly Archbishop of Arles of that name in the Sixth Century, and
Virgil
because it was borne by an Irish missionary saint of the Eighth Century who helped to convert the heathen Germans and became Bishop of Salzburg. Even in Italy, I gather, there is some encroachment of non-canonical names. Consider, for example, the case of Monsignor
Amleto
Giovanni Cicognani, Archbishop of Laodicea in
partibus infidelium
, who became Apostolic Delegate to the United States in 1933. His Excellency was not only a high Roman dignitary; he was also a former professor of Canon Law and the author of a standard treatise on the subject;
1
yet the first of his two given names was the Italian form of the old Danish
Amleth
or
Hamleth
, the appellation of a probably fabulous heathen prince of the Second Century who has been immortalized by Shakespeare as
Hamlet
.
2
It was the English Puritans who, toward the end of the Sixteenth Century, staged the first revolt against saints’ names in Europe. They were opposed to honoring any of those on the Roman calendar who had lived since apostolic times,
3
and so turned to the Old Testament for names for their children.
4
It was then that
Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Samuel, Joshua
and their like began to have a vogue,
1
though they had been permissible names to Catholics all the while. Unhappily, that vogue extended to the unsaved,
2
and, as Bardsley says,
3
the sterner Puritan found a list of Bible names that he would gladly have monopolized, shared in by half the English population.
4
That a father should style his child
Nehemiah
, or
Abacuck
, or
Tabitha
, or
Dorcas
, he discovered with dismay, did not prove that that particular parent was under any deep conviction of sin. This began to trouble the minds and consciences of the elect. Fresh limits must be created. As
Richard
and
Roger
had given way to
Nathaniel
and
Zerrubabel
, so
Nathaniel
and
Zerrubabel
must now give way to
Learn-wisdom
and
Hate-evil
.
5
The more extreme Puritans made names of various other pious hopes and admonitions,
e.g., Fear-not, Faint-not, Stand-fast, Increase, More-trial, Joy-again, From-above, Free-gifts, Be-faithful, More-fruit, Hope-still, Sin-deny, Dust, The-Lord-is-near, Fly-fornication
, and
Praise-God
,
6
and many of these, along with the Old Testament names, were brought to America by immigrants to New England. Most such inventions were so clumsy that they had to be abandoned,
7
but a number survived into the Eighteenth Century,
e.g., Increase
and
Preserved
, and a few are occasionally encountered even today. The Old Testament names that preceded and accompanied them are now apparently more popular in the South than in New England, though even in the South they are going out. There must have been a revolt against them at the time New England Puritanism began to fade into Unitarianism, for it is recorded that
Noah
Webster, the lexicographer, disliked his given-name
1
and refused to let it be given to any of his male descendants. The Puritan names for girls,
e.g., Grace, Charity, Hope, Constance, Mercy
and
Faith
, were nearly all permissible for Catholics, for they had been borne by female martyrs in the early days of Christianity, but the Puritans gave them a new lease of life, and most of them are still much more frequent in the United States than anywhere else.
The chief competition that saints’ names encounter in the Republic today does not come, however, from Puritan names; it comes from the use of surnames as given-names and the wholesale invention of entirely new and unprecedented names in the Bible country of the South and Southwest. Many names of the former sort,
e.g., Howard, Dudley, Douglas, Stanley, Sidney, Clifford, Spencer
and
Russell
, are now in wide esteem in both England and the United States, but they did not appear in England until the latter part of the Sixteenth Century and were not imitated here until a little later. The first mention of them that I have been able to find is in William Camden’s “Remains Concerning Britain,” first published in 1605.
2
Camden noted that their use was then a novelty of “late years” and sneered at an unnamed “wayward old man” for alleging that it went back to the reign of Edward VI (1547–53). He also noted that it was purely English and was to be encountered “nowhere else in Christendom.” He gave twelve current examples, to wit,
Pickering, Worton
,
3
Grevil
,
4
Varney
,
5
Bassingburne
,
Gawdy, Calthorp, Parker, Pecsal
,
1
Brocas
,
2
Fitz-Raulf
and
Chamberlain
. Of these only
Parker
appears to have ever attained any marked popularity, and it has been swamped in recent years by
Cecil, Spencer, Seymour, Howard, Douglas, Dudley, Desmond, Stanley
and
Clifford
, to mention only a few shining examples. At the start, according to Camden, the use of given-names as surnames was confined to “worshipful ancient families,” and proceeded “from hearty good will, and affection of the godfathers to shew their love,” but it soon spread to lower and lower strata, and by the middle of the Seventeenth Century
Percy, Howard, Sidney
and
Cecil
had become common given-names in England, though not, apparently, in Scotland and Ireland.
In the English colonies in America the favorite English names were soon reinforced by American additions,
e.g., Chauncey
(originally
Chauncy
),
Clinton, Eliot, Dwight, Schuyler, Cotton, Bradford, Endicott, Leverett
and
Winthrop
, and by the time of the Revolution the custom of naming children after conspicuous persons, not relatives, was already sufficiently noticeable to be remarked in the newspapers. Says Dr. Arthur M. Schlesinger:
The meeting of the first Continental Congress in the Fall of 1774 … crystallized the growing sense of nationality, helped to dissolve intercolonial prejudices, and highlighted leaders hitherto of only local renown. Thenceforth the giving of patriotic names to infants became a newsworthy event, reported by the press along with the latest political developments.… From the outset John
Hancock
proved a prime favorite on baptismal occasions.… Though his bold chirography was yet to appear on the Declaration of Independence he was president of the First Continental Congress (and later of the Second), and therefore personified the united colonial effort. Before 1774 drew to an end his namesakes were recorded in Providence, R. I., and Marblehead, Mass.
8
But the outbreak of actual war, as Dr. Schlesinger records, offered stiff competition to Hancock’s popularity, and thereafter the favorite name for male babies was
Washington
. The first upon whom it was bestowed seems to have been the infant son of Col.
John Robinson of Dorchester, Mass., who was christened toward the end of July, 1775. After that infants named for the commander of the American forces began to be reported in all directions, and in April Alexander Anderson of New York, on being presented with twins of opposite sexes, named one
George Washington
and the other
Martha Dandridge
. The first real hero of the Revolution was Joseph Warren, who was killed at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. He was scarcely in his grave before babies were being named after him, and by the next year the custom was so firmly established that thousands were being baptized
Franklin, Jefferson, Otis
and
Adams
,
1
to be followed in due course by
Hamilton, Marshall, Jackson, Harrison, Lincoln, Grant, Lafayette
,
2
Madison, Tyler, Scott, Lee, Sherman, Sheridan
and so on, not to mention
Irving
, leading down to the
Grover Cleveland, George Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt
and
Franklin Delano
of our own era.
3
Among the thirty-two Presidents of the United States up to 1947, three had surnames as given-names, and seven had them as middle-names. Of the latter, three dropped their given-names and used their middle-names. The long survival of names taken over during the Revolutionary period
was shown by the cases of
Franklin
Pierce,
Warren
Harding and
Franklin
Roosevelt. Rather curiously, the most popular nomenclature relic of that time in vogue today, not excepting
Washington
, is
Elmer
, which is said to be derived from the name of two heroes so far forgotten otherwise that it does not appear in any of the ordinary reference books. Of it the New York
Herald-Tribune
said in 1935:
The name does not occur in Burke’s or any other peerage, knightage or companionage. Nor is it found in any easily available English or American histories; but if the curious inquirer will delve into old collections of biography or into American histories written in the middle of the last century, he will soon encounter the brothers Ebenezer and Jonathan
Elmer
, of Cumberland county, New Jersey. They were Revolutionary pamphleteers, organizers of Revolutionary militia, surgeons and officers in command of troops throughout the Revolution, members of Congress and fierce debaters of a hundred stirring issues of their times, enjoying a fame and popularity that is easier to understand than their present oblivion. The name
Elmer
therefore has such an honorable genealogy that it is time for America’s countless
Elmers
to know it and stand up for it.
1
Elmer
is encountered from end to end of the United States, but it seems to be most popular in the Middle West. In 1940, traveling through Central Indiana by automobile, I found that it was in common use there as a greeting-name for strangers.
2
Waldo
, though it is not unknown elsewhere, is a specialty of New England: it seems to have come in as a surname, but its early history is obscure.
3
In the same way
Truman
is mainly found in the Pennsylvania German country and its colonies,
Clay
in Kentucky,
Randolph
in Virginia,
Harlan
in Iowa
1
and
Pinckney
in South Carolina.
2
On the origin of
Chester
as a given-name (it has been borne by one President of the United States) I can throw no light. The names of the Protestant heroes,
Luther, Calvin
and
Wesley
, have become so common in the United States that they are often borrowed by immigrants of non-British stock, usually in an attempt to Americanize names they have brought with them,
e.g., Wesley
for the Czech
Václav
.
3
All three sometimes appear in Catholics, though Canon 761 forbids them, just as it forbids
Jupiter, Mohammed
and
Satan
.
4
Though the English invented the use of surnames as given-names, and have acquired a large répertoire of them, they make less frequent and less bold additions to it than we do. Nevertheless, such additions are not unknown among them, as the cases of
Rudyard
Kipling,
Nassau
W. Senior,
Hartley
Coleridge,
Hallam
Tennyson,
Aldous
Huxley,
Almroth
Wright and
Garnet
Wolsley bear witness.
5
Where they run ahead of us is in the multiplication of given-names, sometimes all of them saints’ names but usually a mixture of saints’ names and family names. Those of the Duke of Windsor are
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David
, and those of the Earl of Carrick are
Theobald Walter Somerset Henry
. The American custom of giving a boy his mother’s surname as a middle-name originated in England, but is now far more widespread in this country. Many girls are similarly named, and in the South, at least, some are given surnames as their first-names,
e.g., Sidney
and
Beverly
. The English eschew the American custom whereby
a woman, at marriage, drops her baptismal middle-name and substitutes her maiden surname. This custom was launched, though perhaps not established, before the Civil War.
1
After Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, the sister of Henry Ward Beecher, married the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe in 1836 she thus dropped the
Elizabeth
in her name and substituted
Beecher
. Said an English commentator in 1867, apparently forgetting (or unaware) that Mrs. Stowe no longer used
Elizabeth
:
