The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-16


"He doth nothing but talk Of his horse, and
can shoe him. ! am afraid his mother played
false with a sBih."
Tate wrtes:--
"Lawiess, man the anvil dares profane; -
And forge that stcel by which man Is slain,
Which earth, at first, for ploughshares did
Nor yet the smith had learned to form
sword"
As showing the wider sense of the word, as
applied to the makers or doers Of anything
Dryden has a couplet in point
"The doves repented, though too late,
Become the smiths of their own foolish fate"
But Verstegan brings us directly to the origin
of the name Of Smith, as applied to persons
rather than to their emplOyments. Re-
ferring to the root, Smitdn, to Smlte, he de-
clares:-
"From whence comes Smith, all be he knight
But from the smith that forges at the nro2"
A brief statement of the high estimation in
which smiths were held among the ancients
will, no doubt, be acceptable to the Smith
family. Therefore l will proceed to give this
as preliminary to an attempt to trace both its
etymology and geneaogy.
As already limited, the term "smith" was
originally applied to artihcers in wood as well
as in metallic substances, in fact to all
artisans. Hence the great frequency of
the adoption of the name in all coun-
tries. Among the Scottish Highlanders the
smith ranked not less than third in dig
nifty to the chief of the clan, because of
his skill in making military weapons, and his
deXterity in teaching the use of the same. In
Wales there were formerly three sciences which
a villein, or tenant, could not teach to his
own child without an express license from his
| lord. These were classed as Scholarship,
Bardism, and SmiHTdf. The last named was
| one of the ''hberal Sciences the term ''smith-
aIaaynu ufrya
| meaning than as now understood. For the
| smith then was expected to unite, in his single
| profession, different branches of knowledge
now pursued separately, such as the mining,
smelling, and working of the metal, as we'll as
fashioning it into the forms desired after it was
ready for use.
Arthur, in order to account for so great a
frequency of the name of Smith, asserts ''that
the term, as designation of handicraft, was
applied originally to artiiicers in wood as well
as metal-in fact, to all mechanical workmen."
But do not think this probables in view
| of the accepted significance of the term among
| all the peoples whose orthography | have
| already given on the highest authority and
| which carries with it the idea of shifting, or
striking, or beating, and not saving, or planning,
| drawing, or splitting even.
From this view of the case we are safely
brought to the Psychological inference that the
name of Smith was given to the original of
|
| lowed the craft of a smith. lhus-"John
the smith" was so designated to distinguish
| him from "John the shepherd, " "John the
| miller, F" "John the hunter" "John under the
| hill, " "John the farmer" aud so on, there
| being no other mode as yet for distinguishing
| so many persons subjected to the primitive
| Hebrew custom of having but one name-a
| custom growing out of the instinctively
| selfish disposition of fathers to prolong their
personal identity through their sons,
which Goodwin, in his Enquirer, insists
On considering as the handspring of parental
| care, disinterested as mankind generally are
| inclined to consider 1t, as shown by the COM
mon expression, parental love" In the
course Of time "JOhn the smith came to be
called, for shortness and convenience John
Smith; just as "John the shepherd" became
John Shepperd; "John the hunter" John
| Hunter; "John under the hill" " John Under
hill; and so through the other examples /
have supposed, and many others that will
| suggest themselves to readers curious enough
to follow out this line of inference.
So much for the origin of the family name
| Of the Smiths. Now, a few words about the
| genealogy of the race of the Smiths and the
| reason of their extensive diffusion throughout
the Kingdoms and principalities and powers
of the world. One of the best things of this
import we give on the authority of writer in
| the Providence Journal, who once played the
philologist with the name of Smith through
some thirty columns % thereby proving it to
be as "the harp of thousand strings" and
brought himself at length-to his own satisfac-
tion, apparently, if nobody else's-to this con-
clusion, so far as there could be any conclusion
for he admits himself exhausted rather than
his subect-that "from what has been
| hitherto discovered, the great and formidable
| family of the Smiths are the veritable descen-
dants, in direct line, of Shem, the son of
Noah, the father of the Shemitish tribe, or
the tribe of Shem; and that it Chat
| is, the name of Smith) is thus derived:
Shem, Shemit, Shmit, Smith" Another
newspaper writer, who found vent for his
pathological lore through the old Philadelphia
Gazette, contended for the universally of the
name of not only "Smith" without the
"John," but "Smith'' with the "John;" yes,
John Smith himself--to individualize him,
suppose-found as it is not only in Great
Britain and North America, but among the
people of "all the world and the rest of man
kind" as President Taylor once said. He
called attention gravely TO the fact that the
ancient Hebrews had no Christian names. In
| view of this, it were useless TO seek for the
eminently Christian first name of John Smith
among the direct descendants of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob q carry out the idea
in my own words), and that therefore,
we must be satisfied with the deri-
vatiOn of the patrOnymic of "Smith" without
the aforesaid Christian afix of "John, " from
the name of Shem or Shemit, as so satisfac-
tOrily made out above. And this we surely
ought to be contented to do in John Smiths
behalf seeing that, among all the Christian
Notwithstanding those of pagan Greece and
| ROmp-tla .TOhD with only some Slipht varia.