San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-08-14

HOW THE SELECTIONS HAVE BEEN
AND STILL ARE MADE.

the Purtanical People of New England
What the Anglo-saxons Have Furnished
A Few Samples.
Mamma" said little blue eyed Edith
shaking her long curls and looking up with
an amusingly puzzled expression, why dc
people call their little girls such d'eadful
names in those days?"
She had been reading aloud from a book.
Dreadful names, child' Why, your own
mother has dreadful NAME as you would
call it. Yet don't think Naomi is such a
| dreadful name; nor is your grandmothers-
Zipporah."
Eyes, but why did you get such names,
| mammal They sound so odd-so awful
odd"
well, Edith, don't know"
And so mamma, who is none other than
Mrs. Naomi, the accomplished and amiable
wife of one of the shrewdest and most sue
cessful business men in town, with palatial
home on Michigan boulevard, sat down at
her Cscritoire of inlGid rosewood and pcnned
a few inquiSitive lines in her neat, old fash
Toned handwriting. T low an attempt is
made to give full ana unbiased answer to
her questions.
OLD BIBLE NAMES.
The resort to biblical names among the wo-
men of this land up to recent years was un-
doubtedly due to the feI'vent puritancal
spirit pervading our natiOu-or at least the
New England portion of it The male chill
dren were given the names Of Old Testament
heroes and the girl babies received names
that stood for types of cary Hebraic virtue,
beauty and gentencss. The Puritan mind of
New England had ii its SternnesS austeritv
and intieXible piety something which would
more approximate to the Old than to the New
Testament-which had closer spiritual re-
Iationship with the teachings and examples
of Moses than with those OF St Paul Hence
the Puritan's pronounced liking for those
old biblical names.
Glance over the record in prose and verse
Of New England and you will find every
where on the pages where women are mon
toned such names as Miriam, Salome Ruth,
Bathsheba, Rebekah, Sarah, Hagar, Adah,
Ziilah, Eve, Rachel Leah, Judith, lamar,
Deborah, Dinah, BilhQh and even Jezebel
And, note the fact! These names, many of
them with a grand meaning, have, too,
as if made to order to fit the women who
wore thean-statcly. rather severe in mien,
with no patience with their own faults and
no indulgence for those of others
The years went by and other views, other
manners began to find their way among the
descendants of these women. Then it was
we fell upon the evil days which gave us the
Sarah James, the Mary AIMS, the Martha
James and the Samanthas and other lngual
monstrosities. Happily, the reign of these
names was not a long one although to this
day there are many daughters of the land
who have survived the nominal abomina-
ton thrust upon them soon after their birth.
NAMES OF THE NEW ERA
Next in the course of events it became the
fashion to give girls resonant names taken
from the golden scriptures of the ancients.
All the shining records of ancient Greece and
Rome, even Of swarthy Egypt, were ransack-
ed in the search, and the hOary records were
made to give up their dead, SO to speak, to
serve the living. The dark and winding
paths of modipvH times were penetrated.
and the result Of all this was a deluge ofsuch
names as Corneiia Claudia, Aurelia. Catalla,
Mareella. Tcrentia, PfHcida, Lucretia. Sap
pho, SophroHisbc, Psyche. Phoebo, Leda. AS
pasta, Cleopatra, Lcona, ZenObia. Isabella,
rnez. No girl was considered stylish n the
name she was called by did not date back at
least a thousand years or more. 1t was
time when the achievements and the oivili-
cation of ancient Rome and Greece formed
more of a tavorite study with the American
youth than they do now, and to the reflex Of
this learning was doubtless due the fact OF
this prOfUSiOn of ancient names
Finally, however, new era in girks names
arose IN this country. The first traces of it
dawned III the horizon about ten years age.
This was simultaneous with the first faint Ii
dicatIOn of AnglOmania il this country The
craze for wearing ulsters and driving capes,
choking the neck in high, stiff collars and
coucealng thought in an idiOm largely made
up of "doncherknOws' and "deaAoovs," Of
fected cautious landing in New York ard
Boston and thence Travelled slowly. very
slowly, westward. 1t reached here only q
few years ago.
About the same time, too, the English and
their American cousins across the Wild waste
0f water hethought them that there once
lived a race OF men--the parent stock of their
own racS-yclept the Anglo-Saxon; and they
bcthought them that they-rude yellow
haired, beef gOrging barbarans though they
werc-had the good taste to give their slcn-
der daughters, with the skin Of SHOW, eyes Of
azure and hair Of gold, very pretty, poetic
names. Why not dig out these forgotten
names again and stick them on the girls OF
th, Ir+far ,fp1- r,rf,19 W. ,-..y 4