WORDS FROM NATIONAL CHARACTER.
There is one group of metaphorical words which is specially
interesting for the stories of the past which they tell us if we
examine into their meaning. Many names of ancient tribes and nations,
and some names of modern peoples, have come to be used as general
words; but the new meanings they have now tell us what other peoples
have thought of the nations bearing these names in history.
One of the best things that can be said about a boy or a girl is that
he or she is "frank," by which we mean open and straightforward. The
Franks were, of course, the Teutonic tribe which conquered Gaul (the
country we now call France) in the sixth century. Unlike the English
when they conquered the Britons, the Franks mixed with the Gauls and
the Roman population which they conquered; but for a long time the
Franks were the only people who were altogether free. From this fact
the word _frank_ came into use, meaning "free." A "frank" person is
one who speaks out freely and without restraint.
The name _Frank_ has given us a word with a very pleasant meaning, but
this was not the case with all the Teutonic tribes which broke in upon
the Roman Empire. A person who is very uncivilized in his manners is
sometimes called a "Goth." The word is often especially used to
describe a person who does not appreciate pictures and books and works
of art. Sometimes architects will pull down beautiful old buildings to
make place for new, and the people who appreciate beautiful things
describe them as "Goths." More often, perhaps, the word _Vandal_ is
used to describe such people. The Goths and Vandals were two of the
fiercest and most barbaric of the German tribes which overran the
Roman Empire from the third to the fifth century. They showed no
respect for the beautiful buildings and the great works of art which
were spread over the empire. They robbed and burned like savages, and
in a few years destroyed many of the beautiful things which had been
made with so much care and skill by the Greek and Roman artists. So
deep an impression did their destructiveness make on the world of that
time that their names have been handed down through sixteen centuries,
and are used to-day in the unpleasant sense of wilful destroyers of
beautiful things.
The words _barbarian_ and _barbarous_ are used in the same way. We
describe a child who behaves in a rough way as "a little barbarian,"
or a grown-up person without ordinary good manners as "a mere
barbarian." And the word _barbarous_ has an even worse meaning. It is
used to describe very coarse, uncivilized behaviour; but most often it
has also the sense of cruelty as well as coarseness. Thus we speak of
the barbarous behaviour of the Germans in Belgium. But when the word
_barbarous_ was first used it meant merely "foreign."
To the Greeks there were only two classes of people--Greeks, and
non-Greeks or "barbarians." The name _barbarian_ meant a bearded man,
and came from the Greek word _barbaros_. The Greeks were clean-shaven,
and distinguished themselves from the "bearded" peoples who knew
nothing of Greek civilization. The Romans conquered Greece, and
learned much from its civilization. To them all who were not Greeks or
Romans were "barbarians." Some Roman writers, like Cicero, use the
word in the modern sense of unmannerly or even savage, but this was
not a common use. St. Paul was a Roman citizen, for he belonged to
Tarsus, a city in Asia Minor which had been given full Roman rights;
but he was a Greek by birth, and he uses the word in the Greek way. He
speaks of all men being equal according to the Christian religion,
saying, "There is neither Greek nor ... barbarian, bond nor free."
The word _slave_, again, contains in itself whole chapters of European
history. It comes from the word _Slav_. The Slavs are the race of
people to which the Russians, Poles, and many other nations in the
East of Europe belong. The Great War has been partly fought for the
freedom of the small Slav nations, of which Serbia is one. The Slavs
have a long history of oppression and tyranny behind them. They have
been subject to stronger nations, such as the Turks, and, in Hungary,
the Magyars. The first "slaves" in mediæval Europe belonged to this
race, and the word "slave" is only another form of _Slav_. The word
gives us an idea of the impression which the misfortunes of the Slavs
made on the people of the Middle Ages.
The words _Turk_ and _Tartar_ have almost the opposite meaning to
_slave_ when they are used in a general sense. We call an unmanageable
baby a "young Turk," and in this expression we have the idea of all
the trouble the Turks have given the people of Europe since they
swarmed in from the East in the twelfth century. The word _Turk_ in
this sense is now generally used amusingly to describe a troublesome
child; but a grown-up person with a very quick temper or very
difficult to get on with is often described also, chiefly in fun, as a
"Tartar." Tartar is the name of the race of people to which the Turks,
Cossacks, and several other peoples belong. The name by which they
called themselves was _Tatar_; but Europeans changed it to _Tartar_,
from the Latin word _Tartarus_, which means "hell." This gives us some
idea of the impression these fierce people made on mediæval Europe--an
impression which is kept in memory by the present humorous use of the
word.
It is chiefly Eastern peoples whose names have passed into common
words meaning fierce and cruel people. Our fairy tales are full of
tales of "ogres." It is not quite certain, but it is probable that
this word comes from _Hungarian_. The chief people of Hungary are the
Magyars; but the first person who used the name _Hungarian_ in the
sense of "ogre" probably did not know this, but thought of them as
Huns, or perhaps Tartars, and therefore as very fierce, cruel people.
The first person who is known to have used it is Perrault, a French
writer of fairy tales in the seventeenth century.
The Great War has given us another of these national names used in a
new way. Many people referred to the Germans all through the war as
the "Huns." The Huns were half-savage people, who in the early Middle
Ages moved about in great hordes over Europe killing and burning. They
were at last conquered in East and West, and finally disappeared from
history. But their name remained as a synonym for cruelty. The Kaiser,
in an unfortunate speech, exhorted his soldiers to make themselves as
terrible as Huns; and when people heard of the ill-treatment of the
Belgians when their country was invaded at the beginning of the war,
they said that the Germans had indeed behaved like the Huns of long
ago. The name clung to them, and during the war, when people spoke of
the "Huns," they generally meant the Germans, and not the fierce,
half-savage little men who followed their famous chief Attila,
plundering and burning through Europe about fifteen centuries ago.
Another name with a somewhat similar meaning is _assassin_, which most
people would not guess to have ever been the name of a collection of
people. An assassin is a person who arranges beforehand to take some
one by surprise and kill him. But the original assassins were an
Eastern people who believed that the murder of people of a religion
other than their own was pleasing to their God. The Arabs first called
this sect by the name _hashshash_, which the scholars of the Middle
Ages translated into the Latin _assassinus_. The Arab name was given
because these people were great eaters of "hashish" or dry herbs.
The name _Arab_ itself has come to be used with a special meaning
which has nothing to do with the people whose name it is. A rough
little boy who spends most of his time in the streets is described as
a "street Arab," and this comes from the fact that we think of the
Arabs as a wandering people. The "street Arab" is a wanderer also, of
another sort.
Another name of a wandering people has also come to have a special
meaning in English. The French word for gipsy is _bohemien_, and from
this we have the English word _Bohemian_. When we say a person is "a
Bohemian," we mean that he lives in the way he really likes, and does
not care whether other people think he is quite respectable or not.
It was the novelist Thackeray who first used the word _Bohemian_ in
this sense.
_Bohemia_ is, of course, the name of a country in Germany, but it is
also used figuratively to describe the region or community in which
"Bohemian" or unconventional people live.
The word _gipsy_ itself is used to describe a very dark person, or
almost any kind of people travelling round the country in caravans.
But _gipsy_ really means "Egyptian." When the real gipsies first
appeared in England, in the sixteenth century, people thought they
came from Egypt, and so gave them this name.
Another name often given to very dark people is _blackamoor_, a name
by which negroes are sometimes described. This really means "Black
Moor," and shows us how confused the people who first used the word
were about different races of people. The Moors were a quite different
people from the negroes, being related to the Arabs. But to some
people every one who is not white is a "nigger." _Nigger_ comes, of
course, from _negro_.
The Moors inhabited a part of North-west Africa. It was also a North
African people, the Algerians, who gave us the word _Zouave_. Every
one has seen since the Great War began pictures of the handsome and
quaintly-dressed French soldiers called "Zouaves." Perhaps some
children wondered why they wore such a strange Eastern dress. It is
because the Zouave regiments, which are now chiefly composed of
Frenchmen, were originally formed from an Algerian mountain tribe
called the Zouaves--Algeria being a French possession. The name is
almost forgotten as that of a foreign tribe, but has become instead
the name of these light infantry French regiments.
The name of the most famous of Eastern nations now spread all over the
world, the Jews, has become a term of reproach. For hundreds of years
after the spread of Christianity over Europe the Jews were looked upon
as a wicked and hateful people. In many countries they were not
allowed to live at all; in others a portion of the towns was set apart
for them, and they were allowed to live there because they were useful
as money-lenders.
Naturally the Jews, persecuted and distrusted, made as much profit as
they could out of the people who treated them in this way. Perhaps
with the growth of their wealth they grew to love money for its own
sake. In any case, before long the Jews were looked upon as people who
were decidedly ungenerous in the matter of money. Everybody knows the
story of the Jew Shylock in Shakespeare's great play "The Merchant of
Venice." Nowadays a person who is not really a Jew is often described
contemptuously as a "Jew" if he shows himself mean in money matters;
and some people even use a slang expression, "to jew," meaning to
cheat or be very mean over a money affair.
Another name of a nation which stands for dishonesty of another sort
(and much more excusable) is _Gascon_. The Gascons are the natives of
Gascony, a province in the south of France. It is proverbial among
other Frenchmen that the Gascons are always boasting, and even in
English we sometimes use the word _Gascon_ to describe a great
boaster, while _gasconade_ is now a common term for a boastful story.
Another word which we use to describe this sort of thing is _romance_.
We often hear the expression, "Oh, he is only romancing," by which we
mean that a person is saying what is not true, inventing harmless
details to improve his story. The word _romance_ has now many
meanings, generally containing the idea of _imagination_. A person is
called "romantic" when he or she is full of imaginings of great deeds
and events. Or we say a person is a "romantic figure" when we mean
that from his looks or speech, or from some other qualities, he seems
fit for adventures.
But _romance_, from which we get romantic, was at first merely an
adjective used to describe the languages which are descended from the
Latin language, like French, Italian, and Spanish. In the Middle Ages
scholars wrote in Latin, but poets and taletellers began to write in
the language of the people--the _romance_ languages in France and
Italy. The tales of adventure and things which we should now call
"romantic" were written in the "romance" languages; and from being
used to describe the language, the word came to be used to describe
the kind of story contained in these poems and tales. Gradually the
words _romantic_ and _romance_ got the meaning which they have to-day.
We have seen in another chapter that we have a number of words taken
from the names of persons in ancient history. We have also a modern
and special use of words formed from the names of some of the ancient
nations. We saw that we use the word _Spartan_ to describe any very
severe discipline, or a person who willingly uses such discipline for
himself.
There are several other such names used in a more or less
complimentary way. We speak of "Roman" firmness, and every one who has
read Roman history will agree that this is a good use of the word. On
the other hand, we have the expression "Punic faith" to describe
treachery. The Romans had had many reasons for mistrusting their great
enemy, the Carthaginians, and they used this expression, _Fides
Punica_, which we have simply borrowed from the Latin.
We use the expression "Attic (or Athenian) salt" to describe a very
refined wit or humour. The Romans used the word _sal_, or "salt," in
this sense of _wit_, and their expression _sal Atticum_ shows the high
opinion they had of the Athenians, from whom, indeed, they learned
much in art and in literature. It is this same expression which we use
to-day, having borrowed and translated it also from the Latin.
We speak of a "Parthian shot" when some one finishes a conversation or
an argument with a sharp or witty remark, leaving no chance for an
answer. This expression comes from the story of the Parthians, a
people who lived on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and were famous as
good archers among the ancient nations.
The way in which the names of nations and peoples have taken on more
general meanings gives us many glimpses into history.