Name

“ A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment of lovers. ”

“ Say, what's thy name? Thou has a grim appearance, and thy face Bears a command in't; though thy tackle's torn, Thou show'st a noble vessel: what's thy name? ”

“ What’s in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. ”

“ I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which—men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning—a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. ”

“ For it might be argued that the first name is meant to be an individual and even isolated thing; but the last name is certainly meant, by all logic and history, to link a man with his human origins, habits, or habitation. ”

“ In looking at the long string of titles fastened like the tail of a kite to the name of some Don or other grandee, one is puzzled to tell whether it is the man that belongs to the name, or the name to the man. ”

“ It is impossible to keep one’s name out of print. Or even one’s portrait. This veil and this hat of my maid furnish me with an incog. You should have seen the chauffeur stare at it when he thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six names that belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by the accident of birth, is one of them. ”

“ And the quite ordinary people, who do not write novels, incline to his conjectures. How else can they explain the fact that every name seems to fit its bearer so exactly, to sum him or her up in a flash? The true explanation, missed by them, is that a name derives its whole quality from its bearer, even as does a word from its meaning. ”

“ Give a child a silly or ridiculous name and the chances are that the child's character will correspond with that name. Give a child a name already illustrious and the chances are also fair that the burden will prove its ruin. ”

“ I have already dipped a revealing brush into the subject of names. Were the practice of applying names in a wrong and illogical sequence maintained throughout it might indeed raise a dignified smile, but it would not appear contemptible; but what can be urged when upon an occasion one name appears first, upon another occasion last? A dignity is conferred in old age, and it is placed before the family designation borne by an honoured father and a direct line of seventeen revered ancestors. ”

“ Of course it couldn’t change her name, but this little play tells how very effectively it did change her nature, and then the contrast between name and nature was a charm in the hitherto repulsive life. ”

“ Now, the first general principle about the name for anything at all is to follow common use. We speak in order to be understood. A name is only a label; as long as there is no doubt as to the thing labelled, it does not much matter which it is. ”

“ Its high estimation is universally acknowledged; it has the suffrage of the whole world, so much so, that at all times and in all seasons its supremacy is admitted and its influence recognized. The name, the very name alone, is sufficient to excite all that is pleasant to our senses (five or seven, how many soever there may be.) ”

“ CHAPTER VI.
1ENGLISH SURNAMES.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. To review the sources of a people’s nomenclature is to review that people’s history. When we remember that there is nothing without a name, and that every name that is named, whether it be of a man, or man’s work, or man’s heritage of earth, came not by chance, or accident so called, but was given out of some nation’s spoken language to denote some characteristic that language expressed, we can readily imagine how important is the drift of each—what a record must each contain. ”

“ Well, the Bible is a great book of “names.” If you will turn up your concordances, you will find in them a long list of “names” for God. And the point to notice is that every name applied to God means something; 48every name tells us something about Him; every name is a light upon His nature. When you hear a man’s name, it tells you nothing about his character. You are not a whit nearer knowing what a man is really like for hearing that his name is John, or David, or Thomas, or Joseph. ”

“ Footnotes 1.The Bohemian name Ántonia is strongly accented on the first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the i is, of course, given the sound of long e. The name is pronounced Anʹ-ton-ee-ah. ”

“ ‘What does it mean?’
‘Must a name mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.
‘Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: ‘my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.’
‘Why do you sit out here all alone?’ said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument. ”

“ If your name had been disgraced, I could understand it, as I could understand a man then going about in a mask. But the odd thing is, the persons who always want to change their names are those whose names are the most honoured. ”

“ The receiving of a name is really the starting-point of life; and the bestowal of a name by the parents is probably the most serious of parental duties, and to be performed with ceremonies proportioned to their rank. ”

“ There is so much in a name. To find out what a thing is called is a great help. It is the beginning of knowledge; it is the first step. When we see a new person who interests us, we wish to know his or her name. ”

“ “give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you’re welcome to whatever you put a name to.”
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. ”

“ There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; ‘tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: ”

“ The Magic of Names.—For primitive peoples the name is as much a part of the person as a limb; consequently the magical use of names is in some of its aspects assimilable to the processes dependent on the law of sympathy. In some cases the name must be withheld from any one who is likely to make a wrong use of it, and in some parts of the world people have secret names which are never used. ”

“ You must all have remarked the amusement and interest which children find in any notable agreement between a name and the person who owns that name, as, for instance, if Mr. Long is tall—or, which naturally takes a still stronger hold upon them, in any manifest contradiction between the name and the name-bearer ”

“ I sang his name instead of a song;
⁠Over and over I sang his name—
Upward and downward I drew it along
⁠My various notes; the same, the same!
I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
Might never guess from aught they could hear,
⁠It was only a name. ”

“ We have also Tray as a man's name, and from the same origin as that which I have supposed for the dog's name, though the one is from the German and the other from the Celtic. The stem in men's names is referred to Goth, tragjan, to run, and may probably include also Trail (=Tragel) and Train (=Tragen) , with the respective endings in el and en. ”

“ Greek or Roman-Greek, names. The present fashions in nomenclature are, however, best explained in the following letter from an English lady residing in Russia:—
'Children (and grown-up persons in their own family) are, I may say, universally called by their diminutives. In society the Christian name and patronymic are made use of, and you seldom hear a person addressed by his family name, though he may be spoken of in the third person as “Romanoff,” or “Romanova” (surnames take the gender and number of their bearers) , except by his superiors, such as a general to his young officers, &c. ”

“ Nor, indeed, is it at all necessary that every name should be the name of something. For as these, a man, a tree, a stone, are the names of the things themselves, so the images of a man, of a tree, and of a stone, which are represented to men sleeping, have their names also, though they be not things, but only fictions and phantasms of things. ”

“ The virtue of the name, and the power conferred by a knowledge of it, are features common to the folk-lore of most countries. They take us back to that primitive phase of thought which not only identifies the name with the person or thing it represents, but makes it a separate entity with an existence of its own. ”

“ If a person’s forenames occur differently in different books or different authorities, or occur in a different order, or the person has changed one or more of his forenames, arrange by one form (the best known or the latest) and refer from the others if alphabetically separated.
224. Arrange a nobleman’s title, under which entry is made, and the name of a bishop’s see, from which reference is made to the family name, among the personal names, not with the places. ”

“ A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name is a name which stands for an attribute of a thing. Thus John, the sea, this table, are names of things. White, also, is a name of a thing, or rather of things. ”

“ An intermediate case is that of a name used analogically or metaphorically; that is, a name which is predicated of two things, not univocally, or exactly in the same signification, but in significations somewhat similar, and which being derived one from the other, one of them may be considered the primary, and the other a secondary signification. ”

“ The Signature consists of your Christian name and your surname. In addressing a stranger write your Christian name in full. A lady addressing a stranger should prefix her title—Miss or Mrs.—to her own name, enclosing it within marks of parenthesis, if she prefers.
+How Written+.—The Conclusion should begin near the middle of the first line below the Body of the Letter, and should slope to the right like the Heading and the Address. Begin each line of it with a capital letter, and punctuate as in other writing, following the whole with a period. ”

“ So I take it for granted that your future name will be beyond the reach of æsthetic criticism. It ought to be a single syllable name, of course, so as to go rightly with Alexa. Christian names of two or three syllables should always be followed by a surname of one. ”

“ Even a casual examination of the family names of men discloses the fact that many of the most common must have originated in the adoption, by an individual, of the name of his occupation as a surname, to distinguish him from other men of the same given name. ”

“ The invention of original names usually takes place in the early stages of a people’s history, for a preference soon arises for established names, already borne by kindred, and as the spoken tongue drifts away, from the primitive form, the proper name becomes a mere appellative, with the original meaning forgotten, and often with a new one incorrectly applied to it. ”

“ In no way does advancement in age and dignity show itself sooner than in the substitution of the surname for the Christian name. The boy shows his sense of growing importance by dropping the Christian name in addressing his companions. ”

“ "I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine did. ”

“ I wrote my name upon the sand;
I thought I wrote it on thine heart.
I had no touch of fear, that words,
Such words, so graven, could depart. ”

“ The “personal” name of a man may not be uttered except by his father or mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncles, etc. Thus, the mere use of the personal name of the head of a family proves conclusively that the spirit of someone of his ancestors must be present. ”

“ But the sight of your name—your dear, dear271 name—although you share the second portion of it with that least worthy of God’s creatures, your wretched father—the sight of your name, I repeat, in the cast of Cœur de Lion watered with hope the withered plant that in happier days and in the glory of his blossoming prime gave that tender shoot to the world, which is your sweet self. ”

“ The study of the origin of family names is at the same time quite simple and very difficult. Its simplicity consists in the fact that surnames can only come into existence in certain well-understood ways. Its difficulty is due to the extraordinary perversions which names undergo in common speech, to the orthographic uncertainty of our ancestors, to the frequent coalescence of two or more names of quite different Origin, and to the multitudinous forms which one single name can assume, such forms being due to local pronunciation, accidents of spelling, date of adoption, and many minor causes. ”

“ Rosalind is your love's name?
ORLANDO
Yes, just.
JAQUES
I do not like her name.
ORLANDO
There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened. ”

“ Webb continued,
"One thousand dollars a year may easily compensate for an ugly name; and even if we do not choose to give the child a middle name, which is optional with us, she will not have to be called by her Christian name long; for after a girl is in her teens, she gets the title of her surname. ”