American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-08-17
NOMENCLATURE.

IKE.
, Our names are part of ourselves. The,
were settled on us long before recoliec
ton, and have always belonged to us
They come through our parents from Ion.
lines of ancestry, and seem, through TIN
vista of descent, to belong to the eterna
fitness of things. And yet, in many in
stances, they have their origin in the oc
cupation or other accident of him VIII,
first bore tie paironymic. Names ar,
the keys of family history, unlocking fo
us the secrets of ancestral lineage. Be
slowed in the early dawn of society, they
were taken either from trade and Occupa
ton, or from localities; from character
istics Of mind or body; from hero-wor
ship; from the animal, mineral, OF
vegetable kingdom; from war or peace,
or from some one of the many thousand
causes which attach themselves to the
personality of the human race. Trades
and occupations have given name to
more of the inhabitants of the earth than
any other cause; perhaps more than all
other causes put tOgether-as, for exam
pie, the inpumerable Smith family.
An honorable calling is that of the
smith; he was the leading workman of
his tribe, when early genius first suggest
ed the sharpening of flint row-head,
or tried to construct weapon out of
metal. That Smith founded more fami-
lies than any other man that ever lived.
1t was trade, too, that first gave name to
our T-ylors, our Carpenters, our Bakers
and MasOns, our Brewers, Sawyers, and
Coopers, our Wrights, BARRIERS, Chan
dlers, Buffers, Carriers, Boardmans, Sla-
tiers, Chapmans, Poundstones, Braziers,
| Brewsters, Bankers, Clothiers, CourIers,
binders, Cutters, Arkwrights, Bootmans,
Sawins, Cutters, Carriers, Cartwrights,
Golfers, Curriers', etc.
Rightly to understand the individuality
of names, we should study their record in
the Directory The New York Directory
of last year contains the names of two
| thousand and fifty-nine Smiths, five hun
bred and thirty scmidts, and over one
hundred Smyths, Smythes, etc, all con-
nected by relationship somewhere this
side of Adam-probably, indeed, this side
of Noah. One hundred and fifty-nine of
these residents of our cosmopolitan city
are John Smiths; and we hardly envy the
letter-carrier who has to distinguish John
Smith the seventeenth from John Smith
the one hundredth and fifty-eighth. What
is he to do with letter dSected to Mr..
John Smith, New York, n. Y.?" Is he to
run the gamut of the whole hundred
and fifty nine till the right man is found?
And what tales and secrets those miscar-
ried letters must tell To be sure, they
are all about the Smith family, and there
fore every Smith reader is interested in
hushing them up. We all remember the
case of the gentleman who came too late
to the Broadway Theatre to find vacant
seat Looking round for an instant upon
the crowded house before him, he quietly
exclaimed: ''Mr Smiths house is on
fire" There was a great rush from that
pit, and the gentleman had large num-
Der of vacant seats to choose from.
But Smitheries" abound elsewhere
than in America. 1t is but few years
since that bet was laid in London that
no Old Bailey session had passed two
years without the trial and condemnation
of John Smith. And, alas for the family
namel the records of the court were
searched, and the bet was won. In En-
gland, every seventy-third person one
meets is Smith; and it is estimated that
two hundred and fifty-three thousand per-
sons in the mother-country are called.
And should some humble Debrett trace
back their lineage to its hidden source,
that name would be found in every in
stance to be struck out from the sparks
of a smithy.
Next to the Smith family come the
Joneses. St John has given more Chris
tian names to Christian babes than all the
other Evangelists. And Johns son natu-
rally takes the patrOnymic of either John
son, or Jones, or Johns. Over two hun
dred and forty thousand persons in En-
gland bear the name of Jones, besides the
numerous families of their first cousins,
the Johns and the Johnsons. A host of
surnames are derived from Christian
names, such as the Wiliamses, the Will
sons, the Williamsons, the Thomases, and
the Thompsons, the Jameses, and the
Jamesons. Generally the patronymic
bears the fathers name but sometimes
the mother transmits the name of NePs
son.
Time and habit have great influence in
sOftening the harsh ideas under which
our ancestry first assumed their titles; and
a foreign language often elevates demo-
cratic origin into most aristOcratic soci
ETY.. The Male-branches of England
would decidedly object tc being known as
the Badarms MANY fair reader of
"Ivanhoe" would find her cultured taste
shocked by the conversion of Front-de
B9uf into Bullock's-head. The cele
brated engineer Todleben would thus be
anglicised into Mr.. Death-in-life; a peril
nent name by-the-way, for one who sent
such slaughter into French and English
ranks. Notwithstanding what Shaks-
peare says, rose often does smell sweeter
to its possessor than if its name had vul-
gar associations. Thus the aristocratic
FOljambes would decidedly object Into
having their young ladies SaXoniZed into
the Miss Badlegs.
All history tells us that the early dwell
ers upon earth erected their tenements on
the shores of lakes, along the banks of
rivers, or close by the sea, whence so much
of their food was drawn. A fortunate
pscator would naturally bear the name
of his tinny prey And so we have the
numerous Fish families, at the head of
whom may be put the father of our Sec
rotary of State, Preserved Fish, Fisher,
Hook, Bate, Bateman, Sholes, Dolphin,
Thrasher, Eels, Conger, Salmon, Halle,
Bass, Goldman, Pike Roach, Rotch, Place,
Whiting, Herring, Mullet, Ray, Lamprey,
Pollock, Haddock, Trout, Roe, Spratt,
Chubb, Turtle, FiEney, Cookie, and Crabb,
all of them good old English names.
There are fashions in names as in all
earthly things. In Cromwell's time, Pur-
itanism weighed very heavily on the ten
der babes brought to the baptismai font
Hume gives us the names of n jury in the
following age, among whom we find
Stand fast-on- high Stringer, Kill-sin PIN
pie, F'lv-debate Roberts, Fight the good
fight of-faith White, More fruit Fowler,
Sleep-not Billings, and many other such
biblical worthless. These names indicate
the wishes of the parents rather than the
piety of the children. And we are not
aware that the Parsons, the Priests, the
Christians, Deacons, Creeds, Churches, or
DevOtions, have any better children than
have the Hogs, the Hams, the Bawns,
the Clays, the Mudds, or the Nettles. y
member of Congress reioices in the name
of GOdlove, but is scarcely more pious
than his Congressional fellow sinners
Isaiah, Daniel, jeremiah, Matthew, Mark,