Morning journal and courier., 1891-07-10
Hou SIeeniug.Car.a are Named.

From the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph
 There is a young man in one of the off ces of each of the great sleeping-car com panies who is engaged every day, except Sunday, of course, in bending over an at las searching for suitable names for the sleeping, dining and parlor-coaches which are turned out by the company. It is no small matter when you come to under stand that every name must signify some thing, and that there are already on the road something like many hundreds of such coaches and new ones being turned out at the rate of two or three hundred a year.
 When the first sleepers were built the owners took the alphabet, lettering the first one "A" and so on until the alpha bet ran out. Then commenced the search for names. The first sleepsrs to be named were those run on the Pennsylvania hmi ted between New York and Chicago. They were named for the various nations, that of America being the first one chosen. The original sleepers are those first named) America, England, France, Russia, Scot land, Germany, and so on.
 The next names wore taken from tho va- rious towns through which the road runs. If the road was in Ohio, for example, the sleepers on such roads were named for some of the principal towns and cities in that state. This plan, however, was soon deemed inadvisable, as it sometimes be- came necessary to transfer the sleepers to roads in other states Then came the plan of naming the coaches after the sections of the country. Those which run on the roads of the west were given Indian names.
 As far as possible, it is now the rule for the names of the palace coaches to bear some sort of relation to the nature of the business in the section where sleepers run. For instance, on the roads running out of Washington there are such names on the sleepers as Senator, /" ''Diplomste," Con gress," etc. On few lines which travel noted battle fields some of the sleepers are named in honor of famous generals. The books of one of the principal companies show that Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses had been honored on wheels.
 The present is an age of colleges. These institutions have associated with their curriculum boating. football and other athletic exercises. This same company concluded for while to smbalm the names of the leading literary institutes by paint ing their names on their sleeping cars. This was the most popular idea which the company had adopted. But there is a limit to noted schools in America, just as there is a limit to the alphabet. and it was soon discovered that there were not enough colleges to go round, or, which is the same thing, there were too many sleeping cars. Then commenced the hunt on the atlas for names. The system of naming is now followed in this manner: A young man is employed to make out an alphabetical list from the atlas. Having selected his name, he goes to the root of it and ascertsius its origin and significance. When 6 list is prepared it is passed to the vice president of the company, who adopts or rejects. Sometimes suggestions are sent in by out siders. They are filed away in order, and if any of the names thus suggested are adopted in the course of construction,
 they find their way to the gaze of the tray cling public.
 Dining cars are named, as far as the | names signify, for rivers lakes and bays. l In the west for Indian chiefs. Parlor- cars | are nearly always feminine in nomencla- | ture. The mythological deities on the l feminine side have been liberally honored. | The names of some of the more notable | female characters in history and fiction have been transferred to these palace-cars | of the rail
 The instruction to the young man whose | business it is to keep up the list is to get
 the shortest names where they have any significance, keeping in mind at the same l time those which are most euphonious. | This is busy age. It not only costs less | to paint 8 short name, but you do not
 want to stop to read or write such 6 word
 as Assinnaboine when there are so many
 shorter ones, and ones which are so much
 smoother to speak, and which mean more.
 The naming of these cars is no small job,
 and the man who has triplets to christen
 is not half so much worried about names
 as the vice president of sleeping-csr 1 company.