[10] Harriet /Lane/ Johnston was of this family.
[11] /Cf./ Faust, /op. cit./, vol. ii, pp. 183-4.
[12] A Tragedy of Surnames, by Fayette Dunlap, /Dialect Notes/, vol.
iv, pt. 1, 1913, p. 7-8.
[13] Americanisms, p. 112.
[14] Henry Harrison, in his Dictionary of the Surnames of the United
Kingdom; London, 1912, shows that such names as /Bloom/, /Cline/,
etc., always represent transliterations of German names. They are
unknown to genuinely British nomenclature.
[15] A great many more such transliterations and modifications are
listed by Faust, /op. cit./, particularly in his first volume. Others
are in Pennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldemann; London, 1872, p. 60 /et
seq./, and in The Origin of Pennsylvania Surnames, by L. Oscar Kuhns,
/Lippincott's Magazine/, March, 1897, p. 395.
[16] I lately encountered the following sign in front of an automobile
repair shop:
For puncture or blow
Bring it to /Lowe/.
[17] /Baltimore Sun/, March 17, 1907.
[18] /Cf./ The Origin of Pennsylvania Surnames, /op. cit./
[19] /Koch/, a common German name, has very hard sledding in America.
Its correct pronunciation is almost impossible to Americans; at best
it becomes /Coke/. Hence it is often changed, not only to /Cook/, but
to /Cox/, /Koke/ or even /Cockey/.
[20] This is army slang, but promises to survive. The Germans, during
the war, had no opprobrious nicknames for their foes. The French were
always /die Franzosen/, the English were /die Engländer/, and so on,
even when most violently abused. Even /der Yankee/ was rare.
[21] /Cf./ Some Current Substitutes for Irish, by W. A. McLaughlin,
/Dialect Notes/, vol. iv, pt. ii.
[22] /Spiggoty/, originating at Panama, now means a native of any
Latin-American region under American protection, and in general any
Latin-American. It is navy slang, but has come into extensive civilian
use. It is a derisive daughter of "No /spik/ Inglese."
[23] /Cf./ Reaction to Personal Names, by Dr. C. P. Oberndorf,
/Psychoanalytic Review/, vol. v, no. 1, January, 1918, p. 47 /et seq./
This, so far as I know, is the only article in English which deals
with the psychological effects of surnames upon their bearers.
Abraham, Silberer and other German psychoanalysts have made
contributions to the subject. Dr. Oberndorf alludes, incidentally, to
the positive social prestige which goes with an English air, and, to a
smaller extent, with a French air in America. He tells of an Italian
who changed his patronymic of /Dipucci/ into /de Pucci/ to make it
more "aristocratic." And of a German bearing the genuinely
aristocratic name of /von Landsschaffshausen/ who changed it to "a
typically English name" because the latter seemed more distinguished
to his neighbors.
[24] The effects of race antagonism upon language are still to be
investigated. The etymology of /slave/ indicates that the inquiry
might yield interesting results. The word /French/, in English, is
largely used to suggest sexual perversion. In German anything
/Russian/ is barbarous, and /English/ education hints at flagellation.
The French, for many years, called a certain contraband appliance a
/capote Anglaise/, but after the /entente cordiale/ they changed the
name to /capote Allemande/. The common English name to this day is
/French letter/. /Cf./ The Criminal, by Havelock Ellis; London, 1910,
p. 208.
[25] /Cf./ The Jews, by Maurice Fishberg; New York, 1911, ch. xxii,
and especially p. 485 /et seq./
[26] The English Jews usually change /Levy/ to /Lewis/, a substitution
almost unknown in America. They also change /Abraham/ to /Braham/ and
/Moses/ to /Moss/. /Vide/ Surnames, Their Origin and Nationality, by
L. B. McKenna; Quincy (Ill.), 1913, pp. 13-14.
[27] For these observations of name changes among the Jews I am
indebted to Abraham Cahan.
[28] They arose in England through the custom of requiring an heir by
the female line to adopt the family name on inheriting the family
property. Formerly the heir dropped his own surname. Thus the ancestor
of the present Duke of Northumberland, born /Smithson/, took the
ancient name of /Percy/ on succeeding to the underlying earldom in the
eighteenth century. But about a hundred years ago, heirs in like case
began to join the two names by hyphenation, and such names are now
very common in the British peerage. Thus the surname of Lord Barrymore
is /Smith-Barry/, that of Lord Vernon is /Venables-Vernon/, and that
of the Earl of Wharncliffe is /Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie/.
[29] B. W. Green: Word-Book of Virginia Folk-Speech; Richmond, 1899,
pp. 13-16.
[30] The one given name that they have clung to is /Karl/. This, in
fact, has been adopted by Americans of other stocks, always, however,
spelled /Carl/. Such combinations as /Carl/ Gray, /Carl/ Williams and
even /Carl/ Murphy are common. Here intermarriage has doubtless had
its effect.
[31] /Cf./ Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, by Charles W.
Bardsley; London, 1880.
[32] /Cf./ Bardsley, /op. cit./, p. 205 /et seq./
[33] The Geographic Board has lately decided that /Kenesaw/ should be
/Kennesaw/, but the learned jurist sticks to one /n/.
[34] Thornton reprints a paragraph from the /Congressional Globe/ of
June 15, 1854, alleging that in 1846, during the row over the Oregon
boundary, when "Fifty-four forty or fight" was a political slogan,
many "canal-boats, and even some of the babies, ... were christened
/54° 40′/."
[35] The Irish present several curious variations. Thus, they divide
/Charles/ into two syllables. They also take liberties with various
English surnames. /Bermingham/, for example, is pronounced
/Brimmingham/ in Ireland.
[36] Issued annually in July, with monthly supplements.
[37] The latest report is the fourth, covering the period 1890-1916;
Washington, 1916.
[38] The authority here is River and Lake Names in the United States,
by Edmund T. Ker; New York, 1911. Stephen G. Boyd, in Indian Local
Names; York (Pa.), 1885, says that the original Indian name was
/Pootuppag/.
[39] P. 17.
[40] /Cf./ Dutch Contributions to the Vocabulary of English in
America, by W. H. Carpenter, /Modern Philology/, July, 1908.
[41] Our Naturalized Names, /Lippincott's Magazine/, April, 1899. It
will be recalled how Pinaud, the French perfumer, was compelled to
place advertisements in the street-cars, instructing the public in the
proper pronunciation of his name.
[42] The same compromise is apparent in the pronunciation of
/Iroquois/, which is /Iro-quoy/ quite as often as it is /Iro-quoys/.
[43] /Vide/ its Fourth Report (1890-1916), p. 15.
[44] The Geographic Board is composed of representatives of the Coast
and Geodetic Survey, the Geological Survey, the General Land Office,
the Post Office, the Forest Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the
Biological Survey, the Government Printing Office, the Census and
Lighthouse Bureaus, the General Staff of the Army, the Hydrographic
Office, Library and War Records Office of the Navy, the Treasury and
the Department of State. It was created by executive order Sept. 4,
1890, and its decisions are binding upon all federal officials. It has
made, to date, about 15,000 decisions. They are recorded in reports
issued at irregular intervals and in more frequent bulletins.
[45] Every-Day English, p. 100.
[46] I have often noted that Americans, in speaking of the familiar
/Worcestershire/ sauce, commonly pronounce every syllable and
enunciated /shire/ distinctly. In England it is always /Woostersh'r/.
[47] The English have a great number of such decayed pronunciations,
/e. g./, /Maudlin/ for /Magdalen College/, /Sister/ for /Cirencester/,
/Merrybone/ for /Marylebone/. Their geographical nomenclature shows
many corruptions due to faulty pronunciation and the law of
Hobson-Jobson, /e. g./, /Leighton Buzzard/ for the Norman French
/Leiton Beau Desart/.
[48] Curiously enough, Americans always use the broad /a/ in the first
syllable of /Albany/, whereas Englishmen rhyme the syllable with
/pal/. The English also pronounce /Pall Mall/ as if it were spelled
/pal mal/. Americans commonly give it two broad /a/'s.
[49] Our Street Names, /Lippincott's Magazine/, Aug., 1897, p. 264.
[50] Ch. i.
[51] There are, of course, local exceptions. In Baltimore, for
example, /avenue/ used to be reserved for wide streets in the suburbs.
Thus Charles /street/, on passing the old city boundary, became
Charles /street-avenue/. Further out it became the Charles
/street-avenue-road/--probably a unique triplication. But that was
years ago. Of late many fifth-rate streets in Baltimore have been
changed into avenues.
[Pg301]
IX
Miscellanea
§ 1
/Proverb and Platitude/--No people, save perhaps the Spaniards, have a
richer store of proverbial wisdom than the Americans, and surely none
other make more diligent and deliberate efforts to augment its riches.
The American literature of "inspirational" platitude is enormous and
almost unique. There are half a dozen authors, /e. g./, Dr. Orison
Swett Marden and Dr. Frank Crane, who devote themselves exclusively,
and to vast profit, to the composition of arresting and uplifting
apothegms, and the fruits of their fancy are not only sold in books
but also displayed upon an infinite variety of calendars, banners and
wall-cards. It is rarely that one enters the office of an American
business man without encountering at least one of these wall-cards. It
may, on the one hand, show nothing save a succinct caution that time
is money, say, "Do It Now," or "This Is My Busy Day"; on the other
hand, it may embody a long and complex sentiment, ornately set forth.
The taste for such canned sagacity seems to have arisen in America at
a very early day. Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac," begun
in 1732, remained a great success for twenty-five years, and the
annual sales reached 10,000. It had many imitators, and founded an
aphoristic style of writing which culminated in the essays of Emerson,
often mere strings of sonorous certainties, defectively articulated.
The "Proverbial Philosophy" of Martin Farquhar Tupper, dawning upon
the American public in the early 40's, was welcomed with enthusiasm;
as Saintsbury says,[1] its success [Pg302] on this side of the
Atlantic even exceeded its success on the other. But that was the last
and perhaps the only importation of the sage and mellifluous in bulk.
In late years the American production of such merchandise has grown so
large that the balance of trade now flows in the other direction.
Visiting Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain in the spring
of 1917, I found translations of the chief works of Dr. Marden on sale
in all those countries, and with them the masterpieces of such other
apostles of the New Thought as Ralph Waldo Trine and Elizabeth Towne.
No other American books were half so well displayed.
The note of all such literature, and of the maxims that precipitate
themselves from it, is optimism. They "inspire" by voicing and
revoicing the New Thought doctrine that all things are possible to the
man who thinks the right sort of thoughts--in the national phrase, to
the /right-thinker/. This right-thinker is indistinguishable from the
/forward-looker/, whose belief in the continuity and benignity of the
evolutionary process takes on the virulence of a religious faith. Out
of his confidence come the innumerable saws, axioms and /geflügelte
Worte/ in the national arsenal, ranging from the "It won't hurt none
to try" of the great masses of the plain people to such exhilarating
confections of the wall-card virtuosi as "The elevator to success is
not running; take the stairs." Naturally enough, a grotesque humor
plays about this literature of hope; the folk, though it moves them,
prefer it with a dash of salt. "Smile, damn you, smile!" is a typical
specimen of this seasoned optimism. Many examples of it go back to the
early part of the last century, for instance, "Don't monkey with the
buzz-saw" and "It will never get well if you pick it." Others are
patently modern, /e. g./, "The Lord is my shepherd; I should worry"
and "Roll over; you're on your back." The national talent for
extravagant and pungent humor is well displayed in many of these
maxims. It would be difficult to match, in any other folk-literature,
such examples as "I'd rather have them say 'There he goes' than 'Here
he lies,'" or "Don't spit: remember the Johnstown flood," or "Shoot it
in the arm; your leg's full," or "Cheer up; [Pg303] there ain't no
hell," or "If you want to cure homesickness, go back home." Many very
popular phrases and proverbs are borrowings from above. "Few die and
none resign" originated with Thomas Jefferson; Bret Harte, I believe,
was the author of "No check-ee, no shirt-ee," General W. T. Sherman is
commonly credited with "War is hell," and Mark Twain with "Life is one
damn thing after another." An elaborate and highly characteristic
proverb of the uplifting variety--"So live that you can look any man
in the eye and tell him to go to hell"--was first given currency by
one of the engineers of the Panama Canal, a gentleman later retired,
it would seem, for attempting to execute his own counsel. From humor
the transition to cynicism is easy, and so many of the current sayings
are at war with the optimism of the majority. "Kick him again; he's
down" is a depressing example. "What's the use?" a rough translation
of the Latin "Cui bono?" is another. The same spirit is visible in
"Tell your troubles to a policeman," "How'd you like to be the
ice-man?" "Some say she do and some say she don't," "Nobody loves a
fat man," "I love my wife, but O you kid," and "Would you for fifty
cents?" The last originated in the ingenious mind of an advertisement
writer and was immediately adopted. In the course of time it acquired
a naughty significance, and helped to give a start to the amazing
button craze of ten or twelve years ago--a saturnalia of proverb and
phrase making which finally aroused the guardians of the public morals
and was put down by the police.
That neglect which marks the study of the vulgate generally extends to
the subject of popular proverb-making. The English publisher, Frank
Palmer, prints an excellent series of little volumes presenting the
favorite proverbs of all civilized races, including the Chinese and
Japanese, but there is no American volume among them. Even such
exhaustive collections as that of Robert Christy[2] contain no
American specimens--not even "Don't monkey with the buzz-saw" or
"Root, hog, or die." [Pg304]
§ 2
/American Slang/--This neglect of the national proverbial philosophy
extends to the national slang. There is but one work, so far as I can
discover, formally devoted to it,[3] and that work is extremely
superficial. Moreover, it has been long out of date, and hence is of
little save historical value. There are at least a dozen careful
treatises on French slang,[4] half as many on English slang,[5] and a
good many on German slang, but American slang, which is probably quite
as rich as that of France and a good deal richer than that of any
other country, is yet to be studied at length. Nor is there much
discussion of it, of any interest or value, in the general
philological literature. Fowler and all the other early native
students of the language dismissed it with lofty gestures; down to the
time of Whitney it was scarcely regarded as a seemly subject for the
notice of a man of learning. Lounsbury, less pedantic, viewed its
phenomena more hospitably, and even defined it as "the source from
which the decaying energies of speech are constantly refreshed," and
Brander Matthews, following him, has described its function as that of
providing "substitutes for the good words and true which are worn out
by hard service."[6] But that is about as far as the investigation has
got. Krapp has some judicious paragraphs upon the matter in his
"Modern English,"[7] there are a few scattered essays upon the
underlying psychology,[8] and various uninforming magazine articles,
but that is all. The practising authors of the country, like its
philologians, have always shown [Pg305] a gingery and suspicious
attitude. "The use of slang," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is at once
a sign and a cause of mental atrophy." "Slang," said Ambrose Bierce
fifty years later, "is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage
carts on their way to the dumps." Literature in America, as we have
seen, remains aloof from the vulgate. Despite the contrary examples of
Mark Twain and Howells, all the more pretentious American authors try
to write chastely and elegantly; the typical literary product of the
country is still a refined essay in the /Atlantic Monthly/, perhaps
gently jocose but never rough--by Emerson, so to speak, out of Charles
Lamb--the sort of thing one might look to be done by a somewhat
advanced English curate. George Ade, undoubtedly one of the most adept
anatomists of the American character and painters of the American
scene that the national literature has yet developed, is neglected
because his work is grounded firmly upon the national speech--not that
he reports it literally, like Lardner and the hacks trailing after
Lardner, but that he gets at and exhibits its very essence. It would
stagger a candidate for a doctorate in philology, I daresay, to be
told off by his professor to investigate the slang of Ade in the way
that Bosson,[9] the Swede, has investigated that of Jerome K. Jerome,
and yet, until something of the sort is undertaken, American philology
will remain out of contact with the American language.
Most of the existing discussions of slang spend themselves upon
efforts to define it, and, in particular, upon efforts to
differentiate it from idiomatic neologisms of a more legitimate type.
This effort is largely in vain; the border-line is too vague and
wavering to be accurately mapped; words and phrases are constantly
crossing it, and in both directions. There was a time, perhaps, when
the familiar American counter-word, /proposition/, was slang; its use
seems to have originated in the world of business, and it was soon
afterward adopted by the sporting fraternity. But today it is employed
without much feeling that it needs apology, and surely without any
feeling that it is low. [Pg306] /Nice/, as an adjective of all work,
was once in slang use only; today no one would question "a /nice/
day," or "a /nice/ time" or "a /nice/ hotel." /Awful/ seems to be
going the same route. "/Awful/ sweet" and "/awfully/ dear" still seem
slangy and school-girlish, but "/awful/ children," "/awful/ weather"
and "an /awful/ job" have entirely sound support, and no one save a
pedant would hesitate to use them. Such insidious purifications and
consecrations of slang are going on under our noses all the time. The
use of /some/ as a general adjective-adverb seems likely to make its
way in the same manner. It is constantly forgotten by purists of
defective philological equipment that a great many of our most
respectable words and phrases originated in the plainest sort of
slang. Thus, /quandary/, despite a fanciful etymology which would
identify it with /wandreth/ (=/evil/), is probably simply a
composition form of the French phrase, /qu'en dirai-je?/ Again, to
turn to French itself, there is /tête/, a sound name for the human
head for many centuries--though its origin was in the Latin /testa/
(=/pot/), a favorite slang-word of the soldiers of the decaying
empire, analogous to our own /block/, /nut/ and /conch/. The word
/slacker/, recently come into good usage in the United States as a
designation for an unsuccessful shirker of conscription, is a
substantive derived from the English verb /to slack/, which was born
as university slang and remains so to this day. Brander Matthews, so
recently as 1901, thought /to hold up/ slang; it is now perfectly good
American.
The contrary movement of words from the legitimate vocabulary into
slang is constantly witnessed. Some one devises a new and intriguing
trope or makes use of an old one under circumstances arresting the
public attention, and at once it is adopted into slang, given a host
of remote significances, and ding-donged /ad nauseam/. The
Rooseveltian phrases, /muck-raker/, /Ananias Club/, /short and ugly
word/, /nature-faker/ and /big-stick/, offer examples. Not one of them
was new and not one of them was of much pungency, but Roosevelt's vast
talent for delighting the yokelry threw about them a charming air, and
so they entered into current slang and were mouthed idiotically for
months. Another example is to be found in /steam-roller/. [Pg307] It
was first heard of in June, 1908, when it was applied by Oswald F.
Schuette, of the /Chicago Inter-Ocean/, to the methods employed by the
Roosevelt-Taft majority in the Republican National Committee in
over-riding the protests against seating Taft delegates from Alabama
and Arkansas. At once it struck the popular fancy and was soon heard
on all sides. All the usual derivatives appeared, /to steam-roller/,
/steam-rollered/, and so on. Since then, curiously enough, the term
has gradually forced its way back from slang to good usage, and even
gone over to England. In the early days of the Great War it actually
appeared in the most solemn English reviews, and once or twice, I
believe, in state papers.
Much of the discussion of slang by popular etymologists is devoted to
proofs that this or that locution is not really slang at all--that it
is to be found in Shakespeare, in Milton, or in the Revised Version.
These scientists, of course, overlook the plain fact that slang, like
the folk-song, is not the creation of people in the mass, but of
definite individuals, and that its character /as/ slang depends
entirely upon its adoption by the ignorant, who use its novelties too
assiduously and with too little imagination, and so debase them to the
estate of worn-out coins, smooth and valueless. It is this error,
often shared by philologists of sounder information, that lies under
the doctrine that the plays of Shakespeare are full of slang, and that
the Bard showed but a feeble taste in language. Nothing could be more
absurd. The business of writing English, in his day, was unharassed by
the proscriptions of purists, and so the vocabulary could be enriched
more facilely than today, but though Shakespeare and his
fellow-dramatists quickly adopted such neologisms as /to bustle/, /to
huddle/, /bump/, /hubbub/ and /pat/, it goes without saying that they
exercised a sound discretion and that the slang of the Bankside was
full of words and phrases which they were never tempted to use. In our
own day the same discrimination is exercised by all writers of sound
taste. On the one hand they disregard the senseless prohibitions of
school-masters, and on the other hand they draw the line with more or
less watchfulness, according as they are of conservative or liberal
habit. I [Pg308] find /the best of the bunch/ and /joke-smith/ in
Saintsbury;[10] one could scarcely imagine either in Walter Pater. But
by the same token one could not imagine /chicken/ (for young
girl),[11] /aber nit/, /to come across/ or /to camouflage/ in
Saintsbury.