The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-19
WHAT'S I'M NAMEg

WHAT"0 IN A HAMBF Id.
LorG before the official days of poor old Gideon
Welles were numbered, II became chronic
fashion on all sides TO denounce that genial
gentleman for everything which he did or did
not do. His very birth seemed to have been q
blunder, and to the day of his death, IL he had
remained in office, he would have continued to
revel in the commission of the most egregious
Mistakes from the simple lack of capacity to
see the force of any passing event until the
world had quite forgotten its significance.
The latest evidence of this chronic state of com
plant against the unfortunate eX-Secrotary of
the Navy is found in the announcement from
Washington that Secretary Borie is about to
aim fatal blow at his predecessors reputation
for originality by depriving certain of our ves-
sells of war of their quaint Indian names, and
substitute for them the titles of the different
States, cities, towns, and rivers. Among the
vessels which are to be thus rechrstened are the
Agamenticus, Pasaconaway, Pompanoosuc,
Quinsigamund, Ammonoosuc, Catalpa, Chino,
Contocook, Keywadin, Kckapoo, Klawath,
Minnetonka, Mosholu, TunXis, Pushmataha,
Quinnebaug, and others which are regarded as
equally difficult of pronunciation and remem-
brance, except by full-booded Tuscarora.
Some of these cognomens certainly cause an
unnatural contortion of the organs of speech in
the utterance, but in the main they are musical
and attractive, and certainly far ahead of such
high-sounding titles as the Bull Dog Freebooter,
Terrapin, Titmouse, Terrible, Thunderbolt
Pantaloon, Skyrocket, and Skinhint which
have been so freely made use of in the nomen-
clature of the British navy. Each of them means
something, and if nobody knows what il does
mean, nobody can complain of its lack of
novelty, which is quite as desirable in the names
of vessels it is in the names of rivers and cities
Moreover many of the vessels whose names
it is now proposed to change to such threadbare
and unmeaning terms, when applied to ships,
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Camden,
and Confederate Cross Roads, have achieved
a conspicuous place in the history of the
worldly reason of the engagements in which they
figured during the war, and to transform their
names would be simply to rob them of their pres
tige as well as to confuse both the people of the
present day and the historian of the future. 1t
would not be less ridiculous to change the name
of the Kearsarge to Gunner's Run, after the noble
water-course which flows through the northern
suburbs of our city, than to substitute New Jeru-
salem for Chlckamauga, simply because that
town was named in honor of some illustrous
red-skinned warrior
As it is, too little care has been taken to pre-
serve traces of the aboriginal inhabitants of the
country and of their language in the designa-
tions of localities, and we think it would be well
to remedy this negligence by saddling an Indian
name on every vessel that we set afoat. If
Secretary Borie finds it impossible for him to
twist his tongue around Pasaconaway and
Klawath, let him remedy the defect in such
glaring cases, when but little or no confusion
will be created in the pages of history; but we
certainly think that man who has lived nearly
all his life in a city with such a long-drawn-out
name as Philadelphia can manage Contocook
and Tunxis. If, as is claimed, the application
of these Indian names to our vessels of war be
illegal the Ignorance of Gideon Welles and the
custom of eight momentous years have rendered
the prohibitory statutes obsolete. and it will be
much easier for Congress to change the law than
| it will be for the present Secretary of the Navy
to break fresh bottle of water over the stern of
| every vessel in our fleet.