Part 22 (1/2)

”What a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names--_Higginbottom_, _Stiggins_, _Bugg_.”

As a matter of fact, _Wragg_ is the first element in the heroic Ragnar; _Bugg_ is the Anglo-Saxon Bucga; _Stiggins_ is the ill.u.s.trious Stigand, and _Higginbottom_ is purely geographical.

We owe a great many of our names in disguise to the paladins and of course to the Bible. _Pankhurst_ is Pentecost, _Chubb_ and _Jupp_ are derived from Job, _Cradock_ from Caradoc (Caractacus), _Maddox_ from Madoc, _Izzard_ from Isolt, _Rome_ from Roland.

Metronymics, as Professor Weekley hastens to a.s.sure us, are not always a sign of moral depravity: in mediaeval times the children of a widow often a.s.sumed the mother's name.

From Matilda we get Tillotson, from Beatrice Betts, from Isabel Ibbotson, from Avice Haweis.

With regard to local surnames we have to accustom ourselves to the idea that the name of a county, town or village was acquired when the locality was left. _Scott_ is an English name, _English_ or _Inglis_ is Scottish; _Cornish_ and _Cornwallis_ first became common in Devons.h.i.+re, _French_ and _Francis_ are English ... for the same reason _Cutler_ is a rare name in Sheffield. The great exception _Curnow_ in Cornwall may stand for those who could only speak the old Cornish language.

Morris (Moorish) is probably a nickname due to complexion.

”In _ford_, in _ham_, in _ley_ and _tun_ The most of English surnames run.”

It is true that we owe many names to ”spots.” It is curious how _Field_, _Lake_, _Pool_, _Spring_, _Street_ and _Marsh_ persist in the singular, while _Meadows_, _Rivers_, _Mears_, _Wells_, _Rhodes_ and _Myers_ hang on to the plural. So we get _Nokes_, but _Nash_: monosyllables tend to the plural. There are certain Celtic words connected with scenery--_Lynn_, _Carrick_, _Craig_ are common examples.

_Beerbohm Tree_ is pleonastic, meaning pear-tree tree. _Thackeray_ means the corner where the thatch was stored. _Kellogg_ is derived from kill hog. _Cazenove_ and _Newbolt_ have the same meaning. _Rothschild_ means red s.h.i.+eld, _Hawtrey_ comes from Hauterive, but Norman ancestry is not always to be a.s.sumed because we find French spot-names so common in England (_Neville_, _Villiers_, etc.). _Boyes_ and _Boyce_ may spring from a man of pure English descent who happened to be described _del bois_ instead of _atte wood_, but this is rare. _Roach_ is not a fish-name, but corresponds to _Delaroche_. _Pew_, if not _Ap Hugh_, was a _Dupuy_.

Occupative names become a natural surname, but _Knight_ is not always knightly, for Anglo-Saxon _cuiht_ means servant; _Labouchere_ was the lady butcher, _Cordner_ the worker in Cordovan leather; _Muir_ was _le muur_, who had charge of the mews in which the hawks were kept while moulting. _Reader_ and _Booker_ have nothing to do with literature: the former thatched, the latter was a butcher.

Professor Weekley devotes one whole chapter to show the difficulties that beset the etymologist in his search to derive one single word accurately. The specimen name he takes is _Rutter_, which he eventually traces to fiddler.

From the lower orders of the church we get _Lister_, a reader; _Bennet_, an exorcist; and _Collet_, an acolyte.

In trades we get _Fuller_ in the south, _Tucker_ (toucher) in the west, and _Walker_ in the north. _Secker_ means sackmaker, _Parmenter_ a parchmenter, _Pargater_ a dauber, _Straker_ a maker of tires. _Grieve_, _Graves_ and _Greaves_ was a land agent, _Coster_ dealt in costards--_i.e._ apples; _Jagger_ worked draught-horses for hire; _Stewart_ was the sty-ward; _Todhunter_ hunted the fox; _Toller_ collected the tolls.

Among nicknames _Earnes_ means uncle, and _Neave_ nephew. Who would recognise _Halfpenny_ in _MacAlpine_? _Coffin_ means bald, _Lloyd_ grey, and _Russell_ red; _Oliphant_ elephant; _Hinks_, from Hengst, a stallion; _Stott_, a bullock; _Luttrell_, an otter; _Talbot_, a hound; _Colfox_, a black fox; _Fitch_, a polecat.

Fish-names are usually not genuine.

IV

_THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_--BY LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

There are few of us so learned that we can afford to dispense with the aid given by the small volumes in the Home University Library in any subject, and Mr Pearsall Smith's philological book is one of the most informative and interesting of the series.

Here we learn of the tendency in English to put the accent on borrowed French words on the first syllable when we decide to p.r.o.nounce them in our own way: later borrowings are accented according to what we imagine the native p.r.o.nunciation to be: so we get _gentle_, _dragon_, _gallant_, _baron_, _b.u.t.ton_ and _mutton_ of old time against the newer words _genteel_, _dragoon_, _gallant_, _buffoon_, _cartoon_, _balloon_. In like manner words like _message_ and _cabbage_ show their antiquity when compared with _ma.s.sage_, _mirage_ and _prestige_. _Police_ has kept its English accent only in Ireland and Scotland.

Mr Pearsall Smith, like Professor Wyld, has much to say against the pedants, and shows us how letters like the _b_ in _debt_, the _l_ in _fault_, the _p_ in _receipt_, the _d_ in _advance_ and _advantage_, the _c_ in _scent_ and _scissors_ have been inserted incorrectly by English scholars who ought to have known better.

In the course of an enthusiastic defence of a mixed language as against a pure national home-bred speech he makes the valuable point that we are richer than most nations in that we can express subtle shades of difference of meaning, of emotional significance between such pairs of words as _paternal_ and _fatherly_, _fortune_ and _luck_, _celestial_ and _heavenly_, _royal_ and _kingly_ by reason of this intermixture of foreign elements.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is on ”Makers of English Words,” which gives us yet another avenue of approach to the study of the language.

Not only interesting, but surprising, are some of the results gleaned from this: that Sir Isaac Newton was the first to use _centrifugal_ and _centripetal_; that Jeremy Bentham coined _international_; Huxley was responsible for _Agnostic_; _cyclone_ was created in 1848 by a meteorologist, but _anti-cyclone_ had to wait for Sir Francis Galton.

Whewell invented _scientist_ and Macaulay was responsible for _const.i.tuency_. Other words created in the nineteenth century are _Eurasian_, _esogamy_, _folklore_, _hypnotism_, _telegraph_, _telephone_, _photograph_ and a host of other scientific terms. To go back to the cla.s.sics: we owe the formation of many new words to Sir Thomas Browne, among them _hallucination_, _insecurity_, _retrogression_, _precarious_, _antediluvian_. Milton coined _infinitude_, _liturgical_, _gloom_, _pandemonium_, _echoing_, _rumoured_, _moonstruck_, _Satanic_. Shakespeare coined more than all the rest of the poets put together. To Coverdale and Tindale we owe a great number of new compounds, like _loving-kindness_, _long-suffering_, _broken-hearted_. It is delightful to think that we owe _irascibility_ to Doctor Johnson, _persiflage_ and _etiquette_ to Lord Chesterfield, _bored_ and _blase_ to Byron, _colonial_ and _diplomacy_ to Burke, and _pessimism_ to Coleridge. After Keats (whose creations are miniature poems in themselves) there is a remarkable decline in word-creation.