The Lafayette gazette. [volume] (Lafayette, La.) 1893-1921, 1894-06-09
TIME.woRN NAMES.


T.ME-woRN NAMES.
Enelish People Have Rounded or so.as q.
Their Corners.
An Englishman who had been utter.
ing some vigorous opinions upon Amer.
pressed in such appellations as Tomb
stone, Bumbletee, Flagstaff, Dead
Horse canyon and Others concluded his
onslaught with a half-apologetic laugh
and good-tempered:
But, after all, don't know as it
matters much, Some of those names
will be changed deliberately, as the in
habitants come to think them ridic-
ulous, and most of the rest will be
time-vvorn into something better after
q century or So"
s'Time-worn2'' queried an American
listener.
Eyes timeworn. They would DO
with us, and I should suppose they
would be with you," said the amiablo
Briton- Then seeing that he was not
fully understood, he added: There's
Bloody Gulch. for instance. The name
is harsh and not easily spoken, as well
as hideous in it's suggestions. People
will hurry it and clip it and run it to-
gether and toss it from mouth to mouth
and it will end by being something
else. If England had had Bloody
Gulch, named in the time of the invad-
ing Danes, do you suppose it would
still be Bloody Gulch to-day? Not at
all! It might be Bluggies or it might
be Butch. The one thing sure is that
it wouldn't be gulch and it wouldn't be
bloody!
Everybody laughed at a suggestion
which seemed to partal<e of the nature
of the workmanship experiments
in ''Alice in Wonderland" Neverthe-
less, it was founded on solid British
experience.
s.E,orl;s1, r,,,oe oro Su,oo%1,
pc bibles at the bottom of an English
river,'' said one eminent writer. ''They
have been rolled on the tide of speech
till the edges are all worn away"
He cited especially the names of Eng.
lish rivers and called attention to the
but one syllable and that syllable fre-
quent1y most expressive, quaint or
melodious, with a charm in the mere
sound. Running over rapidly those OF
which he thought at the moment, he
named the Lea the ley, the Ouse,
Wear, Cam, Taw, Wye, Teign, Blyth,
Rye, Till, Don, Dart and Dee.
Beside these are the Exc, the Yare
are the Alne-a1l unfamiliar to Yankee
ears; yet from the little Exc, the En-
glish Exeter, Exmouth, Exmoor-the
scene of Lorna Doone"-together with
its seventeen American namesakes, all
take their names. From the Yare our
Yarmouth is named, and its famous
English original, upon whose sands lay
the fascinating stranded boat inhabited
by Little Emily in David Copper
feld''
And how many sturdy descendants
of the pilgrims have ever even heard
the name of the little Plym, at whose
mouth lay the English town the name
of which, like that of stagnant old Bos-
ton of the Lincolnshire fens, has risen
to newer and wider honors in the New
England?
Our harsher and longer names may
be 'time-worn to advantage. Indeed,
here and there we can see the process
beginning, oftenest with name of In
dian origin too cumbrous for our
tongues Lake Winnipiseogee, with
the spelling OF which school children
had such difficulty, was once doubtless
pronounced according to that spelling.
Then the sound changed, while the
written syllables remained; and now
we see it oftenest written as it il
spoken-Winnepesa
There is amply room in our geog-
raphy for simplifying and abbreviating,
though it is also true that some of the
longest names are easily spoken and
are pleasant to the ear, but these have
no rough edges to wear off and we may
hope that the tide of speech will
carry them down unspoiled through
the centuries
Let us keep the Monongahela, the
Susquehanna and the Juniata in their
| full pride; and surely not even the
flashing Dart nor the lapsing Dee have
sung themselves into a language as
sweetly as the Sawanee river.-Youth's