Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1894-05-03
TlME-WoRN NAMES.
English People Have Rounded on Some @
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Their Corners.
An Englishman who had been utter.
ing some vigorous opinions upon Amer
lean taste in naming places, as ex-
pressed in such appellations as Tomb
stone, Bumbletee, Flagstaff, Dead,
Horse canyon and others, concluded his
onslaught with a half-apologeticl 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-worn into something better after.
century or SO.
s'Time-wornY queried an American
listener.
"Yes timeworn. They would be
with us, and ! should suppose they.
would be with you," said the amiable
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-
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and it will end by being something
else. If England had had a Bloody
Gulch, named in the time of the invad-
ing Danes, do You suppose it would
still be Bloody Gulch to-day? Not at
ALI 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!
Every body laughed at suggestion
which seemed to partake of the nature
OF the word-compressing experiments
in "Alice in Wonderland" Neverthe-
less, it was founded on solid British
experience.
English names are as smooth as
pebbles 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
large number of them which are of
but one syllable and that syllable FREE
quently most expressive, quaint or
melodious, with 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-all 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
field"
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 is
spoken innepesaukee.
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 slide of speech will
carry them down unspoiled through
the centuries
Let us keep the Monongahela, the
Susquehanna and the Juniata in theil
full pride; and surely not even the
flashing Dart nor the lapsing Dee have
sung themselves into language as
sweetly as the Sawanee river.-Youth's
Companies.