American Language (102 page)

The masculine given-names of the Bible Belt are not quite so fanciful as the feminine names, but nevertheless they often depart widely from the accepted standards of the cities. American statesmen named
Hoke, Ollie, Finis
and
Champ
(a shortening of
Beau-champ
, pro. to rhyme with
lamp
) will be recalled. Miss Buxbaum reports pupils baptized
Osey, Thorrel, Burl, Hadwen, Oriel, Lath, Zotas, Koith
and
Iloah
(pro.
I-lo
), and “two stalwart young men named
Merl
and
Verl.
”
¹²²
From the Cumberlands of Tennessee James A. Still reports
Oder, Creed, Waitzel, Esco, Oarly, Oral, Osie, Irby, Cam
and
Mord
. Sometimes the pet-names of infancy persist, as in
the cases of young men named
Pee Wee, Poke, Cap, Babe
and
Hoss
. Kentucky, which produced the himalayan
Ollie
James, now has a
Cap
R. Carden (b. 1866) in the House of Representatives (1935). Says Mr. Still:

Excessive inbreeding among the mountain people may be responsible in part for this vogue for strange given-names. “When forty-seven persons in one hollow,” says Miss Miriam M. Sizer, of Sperry-ville, Va.,
¹²⁴
“possess identical surnames, the given-name becomes the common distinguishing factor.” Many of the usual American given-names are in use, but sometimes the supply that is locally familiar seems to run out. Miss Sizer’s novelties include
Nias, Bloomer, Tera, Malen, Lony, Geurdon, Brasby, Ather, Delmer, Rector, Doley, Elzie, Ivason
and
Elmer Catholic
. “A man who was a great admirer of the James brothers,” she says, “named his boy
Jesse-James-and-Frank
. Another … named his boy
Christopher-Columbus-Who-Discovered-America.
” At Wetumka, Ala., near Montgomery, there is a tombstone to the memory of “
Henry Ritter Ema Ritter Dema Ritter Sweet Potatoe Creamatartar Caroline
Bostick, daughter of Bob and Suckey Catlen; born at Social Circle, 1843; died at Wetumka, 1852.” Obviously, Bob and Suckey admired the whole Ritter family.

Among the Negroes there is naturally a considerable exaggeration of this reaching out for striking and unprecedented names. They have, rather curiously, inherited no given-names from their African ancestors. It is possible that
Cuffy
, which was a common Negro name in the Eighteenth Century, and became a generic name for Negroes later on, was of African origin, but it seems more likely that it was derived from the Dutch
koffie
(coffee). The early slaves were given such names as
Cato, Caesar, Hector, Pompey, Jupiter
and
Agamemnon
.
¹²⁵
But when they began to assume their masters’ surnames
they also took all the more usual American given-names, and today the nomenclature of the educated portion of them is indistinguishable from that of the whites. Here are the given-names of the clergy mentioned on the church page of a single issue of the Pittsburgh
Courier
, one of the principal Negro newspapers:
Frederick, John, Talmadge, James, Allen, Miles, Louis, Arthur, Wilbur, George, Claude
. Even in the South, according to Urban T. Holmes of the University of North Carolina,
¹²⁶
Negro parents “have, for the most part, kept to standard names.” But when they depart from the standard they sometimes go even further than their fellow Methodists and Baptists of the dominant race. In Rockingham county, North Carolina, Mr. Holmes unearthed
Agenora, Alferita, Artice, Audri-valus, Earvila, Eldeese, Julina, Katel, Limmer, Louvenia, Ludie, Mareda, Margorilla, Matoka, Orcellia, Princilla, Reada, Roanza, Ven-ton Orlaydo
and
Vertie Ven
, and elsewhere in the total immersion country other Marco Polos have discovered
Clendolia, Deodolphus, Pernella, Delsey, Nazarene, Zion, Vashti, Sociamelia
and
Messiah
. Medical men making a malaria survey of Northampton county, North Carolina, staggered back to civilization with the news that they had found male Aframericans named
Handbag
Johnson,
Squirrel
Bowes,
Prophet
Ransom,
Bootjack
Webb and
Solicitor
Ransom, and females named
Alimenta, Iodine, Zooa, Negolia, Abolena, Arginta
and
Dozine
.
¹²⁷
And from New Orleans, at about the same time, came news of two Negro babies who, born during a flood, were christened
Highwater
and
Overflow
.
¹²⁸
A similar catastrophe produced
William McKinley Louisiana Levee Bust
Smith, reported by Miss Naomi C.
Chappell, of Richmond, Va.
¹²⁹
On Miss Chappell’s list are also
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Harry Stringfellow
Johnson,
Charlotte County
Roberts,
Theophilus Otis Israbestis
Tott,
Claude St. Junius Eugene Leech Abraham Bonaparte Springer Hartsfield Love Gray
Nixon, and
Matthew Mark Luke John Acts-of-the-Apostles Son-of-Zebedee Garden-of-Gethsemane
Hill, this last the name of a colored pastor’s son. But Miss Chappell’s prize discovery is
Pism
C
. Jackson — named by a devout mother after the Hundredth Psalm (
Psalm
C
)! Other investigators of Afro-American onomatology have favored me,
inter alia
, with the following specimens:
Himself
Yubank,
Slaughter
Bugg,
Lingo D
. Graham,
Notre Dame
Richards,
Erie Canal
Jackson,
Lemon
Mitchell,
Munsing Underwear
Johnson,
Gentle Judge
McEachern,
King Solomon
Ray,
Nazro
Barefoot,
Magazine
Shaw,
Pictorial Review
Jackson (called
Torial
for short),
Tennessee Iron and Coal
Brown,
Earthly
Gaskin,
Hebrew
Hill,
Lutheran
Liggon,
Utensil Yvonne
Johnson,
Savannah
Satan,
Missouri
Soup and
Fate
Cutts.
¹³⁰
Three of the sisters of Joe Louis the pugilist are
Eammarell, Eulalia
and
Vunies.
¹³¹
The name of
Positive Wassermann
Johnson, reported from Evanston, Ill., probably represents the indelicate humor of a medical student. The young brethren who deliver colored mothers in the vicinity of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore sometimes induce the mothers to give their babies grandiose physiological and pathological names, but these are commonly expunged later on by watchful social workers and colored pastors.
Placenta, Granuloma
and
Gonadia
, however, seem to have survived in a few cases.

“There is no part of the world,” said Robert Louis Stevenson,
¹³²
“where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous and picturesque as the United States of America. All times, races and languages have brought their contribution.
Pekin
is in the same State with
Euclid
, with
Bellfontaine
, and with
Sandusky
. The names of the States themselves form a chorus of sweet and most romantic vocables:
Delaware,
Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, Minnesota
and the
Carolinas:
there are few poems with a nobler music for the ear: a songful, tuneful land.” A glance at the latest United States Official Postal Guide
¹³³
or report of the United States Geographic Board
¹³⁴
quite bears out this encomium. The map of the country is besprinkled with place-names from at least half a hundred languages, living and dead, and among them one finds examples of the most daring and charming fancy. There are Spanish, French and Indian names as melodious and charming as running water; there are names out of the histories and mythologies of all the great races of man; there are names grotesque and names almost sublime. “
Mississippi!
” rhapsodized Walt Whitman; “the word winds with chutes — it rolls a stream three thousand miles long … 
Monongahela!
it rolls with venison richness upon the palate.” Nor was Whitman the first to note this loveliness: Washington Irving was writing about it in the
Knickerbocker Magazine
so long ago as 1839,
¹³⁵
and in 1844 Henry R. Schoolcraft printed an appreciative treatise upon the Indian names in New York State.
¹³⁶
Between the end of the Civil War and the end of the century about thirty studies of American place-names appeared, and since then the number has run to nearly a hundred. The majority of these works have been of small value, but Lewis H. Mc-Arthur’s “Oregon Geographic Names”
¹³⁷
is a treatise worthy of the highest praise, and since the appearance of Allen Walker Read’s very judicious “Plans for the Study of Missouri Place-Names” in 1928
¹³⁸
the investigation of the subject has been put upon a really scientific basis.
¹³⁹

The original English settlers, it would appear, displayed little imagination in naming the new settlements and natural features of the land that they came to. Their almost invariable tendency, at the start, was to make use of names familiar at home, or to invent banal compounds.
Plymouth Rock
at the North and
Jamestown
at the South are examples of their poverty of fancy; they filled the narrow tract along the coast with new
Bostons, Cambridges, Bristols
and
Londons
, and often used the adjective as a prefix. But this was only in the days of beginning. Once they had begun to move back from the coast and to come into contact with the aborigines and with the widely dispersed settlers of other races, they encountered rivers, mountains, lakes and even towns that bore far more engaging names, and these, after some resistance, they perforce adopted. The native names of such rivers as the
James
, the
York
and the
Charles
succumbed, but those of the
Potomac
, the
Patapsco
, the
Merrimac
and the
Penobscot
survived, and they were gradually reinforced as the country was penetrated. Most of these Indian names, in getting upon the early maps, suffered somewhat severe simplifications.
Potowan-meac
was reduced to
Potomack
and then to
Potomac; Unéaukara
became
Niagara; Reckawackes
, by folk etymology, was turned into
Rockaway
, and
Pentapang
into
Port Tobacco
.
¹⁴⁰
But, despite such
elisions and transformations, the charm of thousands of them remained, and today they are responsible for much of the characteristic color of American geographical nomenclature. Such names as
Tallahassee, Susquehanna, Mississippi
,
¹⁴¹
Allegheny, Chicago, Kennebec, Patuxent
and
Kalamazoo
give a barbaric brilliancy to the American map.

The settlement of the continent, once the Eastern coast ranges were crossed, proceeded with unparalleled speed, and so the naming of the new rivers, lakes, peaks and valleys, and of the new towns and districts, strained the inventiveness of the pioneers. The result is the vast duplication of names that shows itself in the Postal Guide. No less than eighteen imitative
Bostons
and
New Bostons
still appear, and there are nineteen
Bristols
, twenty-eight
Newports
, and twenty-two
Londons
and
New Londons
. Argonauts starting out from an older settlement on the coast would take its name with them, and so we find
Fhiladelphias
in Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee,
Richmonds
in Iowa, Kansas and nine other Western States, and
Princetons
in fifteen. Even when a new name was hit upon it seems to have been hit upon simultaneously by scores of scattered bands of settlers; thus we find the whole land bespattered with
Washingtons, Lafayettes, Jeffersons
and
Jacksons
, and with names suggested by common and obvious natural objects,
e.g., Bear Creek, Bald Knob
and
Buffalo
. The Geographic Board, in its fourth report, made a belated protest against this excessive duplication. “The names
Elk, Beaver, Cottonwood
and
Bald
,” it said, “are altogether too numerous.” Of postoffices alone there are fully a hundred embodying
Elk
; counting in rivers, lakes, creeks, mountains and valleys, the map of the United States probably shows at least twice as many such names.

A study of American place-names reveals eight general classes, as follows: (
a
) those embodying personal names, chiefly the surnames of pioneers or of national heroes; (
b
) those transferred from other and older places, either in the Eastern States or in Europe; (
c
) Indian names; (
d
) Dutch, Spanish, French, German and Scandinavian names; (
e
) Biblical and mythological names; (
f
) names descriptive of localities; (g) names suggested by local flora, fauna or geology; (
h
) purely fanciful names. The names of the first class are perhaps the most numerous. Some consist of surnames standing alone, as
Washington, Cleveland, Bismarck, Lafayette, Taylor
and
Randolph
; others consist of surnames in combination with various old and new
Grundwörter
, as
Pittsburgh, Knoxville, Bailey’s Switch, Hagers-town, Franklinton, Dodge City, Fort Riley, Wayne Junction
and
McKeesport
; and yet others are contrived of given-names, either alone or in combination, as
Louisville, St. Paul, Elizabeth, Johnstown, Charlotte, Williamsburg
and
Marysville
. All our great cities are surrounded by grotesque
Bensonhursts, Bryn Joneses, Smithvales
and
Krauswoods
. The number of towns in the United States bearing women’s given-names is enormous. I find, for example, eleven post-offices called
Charlotte
, ten called
Ada
and no less than nineteen called
Alma
. Most of these places are small, but there is an
Elizabeth
with nearly 125,000 population, an
Elmira
with 50,000, and an
Augusta
with more than 60,000.