Proper name

“ All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of properties. ”

“ The precise credit is claimed for this method which it is entitled to receive. In a list of proper names we sometimes have several surnames alike, with usually a difference of Christian names, as in the presidential series we have—William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison, and John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and we also sometimes have the same Christian names prefixed to different surnames, as James Madison and James Monroe. ”

“ E. H. Y. will find the question, surname or sirname, slightly touched upon in my English Surnames (3rd edit., vol. i. p. 13.) , and argued at length in the Literary Gazette for Nov. 1842, in a correspondence originating out of a notice of the first edition of my book. I think the balance of evidence is in favour of surname; that is, a name superadded to the personal or baptismal appellation, which applies with equal propriety to the sobriquets given to monarchs and distinguished men, and to the hereditary designations of people of humble rank. ”

“ A proper noun is a name applied to a particular object, whether person, place, or thing.
It specializes or limits the thing to which it is applied, reducing it to a narrow application. Thus, city is a word applied to any one of its kind; but Chicago names one city, and fixes the attention upon that particular city. King may be applied to any ruler of a kingdom, but Alfred the Great is the name of one king only. ”

“ 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. ”

“ “My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and he brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The majority derive their origin from places or districts of limited dimensions, and to enumerate them would be an interminable and very thankless task. MR. L. has therefore judiciously determined to exercise his discretion on this class of cases. Nor are the names derived from Christian names generally worth insertion, for every Christian name has, in some form, been converted into a surname, either with or without alteration. ”

“ It is not perhaps an unlikely conjecture that at the period when surnames were first ordered to be made hereditary, some families went back several generations to select an illustrious ancestor on whom to build themselves a name. ”

“ In order to avoid the use of people's own names, parents are sometimes named after their children, uncles and aunts after their nephews and nieces, and so forth. The common custom of naming parents after their children seems to arise from a reluctance to mention the real names of persons addressed or directly referred to. When it is deemed necessary that a man's real name should be kept secret, it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a surname or nickname. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is another point connected with family portraits that has given me occasion of thought and speculation; and that is, the way in which those [230] children who are named after an ancestor or ancestress sometimes, I do not say often or always, but certainly sometimes, do in a very remarkable manner receive the stamp of the features of that ancestor after whom named. This has nothing to do with the naming of the child at baptism because of a supposed resemblance, for in very young infants none such can be traced, but the likeness grows in the child to the person whose name it bears. ”

“ Some, once so popular that they scarce gave identity to the bearer, are now all but obsolete, while numerous appellations at present generally current were then utterly unknown. There are surnames familiar to our ears whose root as a Christian name is now passed out of knowledge; while, on the other hand, many a Christian name now daily upon our lips has no surname formed from it to tell of any lengthened existence. The fact is, that while our surnames, putting immigration aside, have been long at a standstill, we have ever been and are still adding to our stock of baptismal names. ”

“ The only names of objects which connote nothing are proper names; and these have, strictly speaking, no signification.12
If, like the robber in the Arabian Nights, we make a mark with chalk on a house to enable us to know it again, the mark has a purpose, but it has not properly any meaning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of availing themselves of the recent opinions of some great lawyers, that a surname may be changed at will, this family rather pride themselves on a name that can boast an antiquity probably not surpassed by that of any family in England. ”

“ In the study of family names we come across very much the same phenomena as in dealing with other words. They are subject to the same phonetic accidents and to the distortions of folk-etymology, being "altered strangely to significative words by the common sort, who desire to make all to be significative" (Camden, Remains concerning Britain) . Doublets and homonyms are of frequent occurrence, and the origin of some names is obscured by the well-meaning efforts of early philologists. It might be expected that a family name would by its very nature tend to preserve its original form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 only names I'm [79] used to are the good old family names that come out o' the Bible, and some people said Penelope and Amaryllis couldn't be called Christian names, because they sounded so heathenish, and the judge's wife she objected to 'em because, she said, they was too long for folks to say. But the old judge wouldn't hear to anybody's shortenin' the children's names. Says he, 'If you give a child a plain name it'll be likely to turn out a plain man or a plain woman. ”

“ It is a peculiarity among them to address one another by the Christian name, or to speak of a man by the Christian name along with the surname, should there be need to distinguish him from another. The term "Mr." is rarely employed. ”

“ We ridicule, and it may be wisely, the old-fashioned custom of giving a child a name merely because it happened to be found in the Scriptures, where with its special meaning it was singularly appropriate, yet, when used as a name without that special signification, it would be equally inappropriate. But are we wholly free from the same fault in another direction? ”

“ Kemble was the first to call attention to the fact that very many of the names of places in England, as disclosed by the forms in which these names appear in ancient charters, consist of a personal name in a patronymic form. Some of these names consist simply of a nominative plural in ingas, as Æscingas, the sons or descendants of Æsc, others of a genitive plural in inga, with ton, ham, &c., appended, as in Billingatun, the town of the Billings, i.e. sons or descendants of Billa. ”

“ Most people nowadays have one or more Christian names and a surname, but this was not always the case. Every Christian from the earliest days of Christianity must have had a Christian name given to him at baptism. And before the days of Christianity every man, woman, or child must have had some name. But the practice of giving surnames grew up only very gradually in the countries of Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Patronymics or hereditary names—except in rare instances, which appeared to be imitations of Spanish usage—are unknown, but nicknames are universal, and parents are frequently known by the name of a child, which usurps the place of their own. ”

“ A child shall succeed his or her father’s surname and origin of sur- name: Provided, That when the parents agree to have the child assume his or her mother’s surname and origin of surname at the time of filing a report on their marriage, he or she shall succeed the mother’s sur- name and origin of surname. (2) Where the father is a foreigner, the child may succeed the mother’s surname and origin of surname. (3) A child whose father is not known shall assume the mother’s sur- name and origin of surname. ”

“ The family name of an individual is to be considered that which he has, or adopts, for himself and his descendants, rather than that which he received from his ancestors,—his family name, not his father's. Now if a man's name have been changed, by his own act, the name assumed is supposed to be that by which he wishes to be known to his contemporaries, and which he wishes to transmit to posterity. A married woman generally drops her maiden name, and assumes that of her husband. ”

“ Hence the nominative or naming case may apply as correctly to the object as the agent. "John strikes Thomas, and Thomas strikes John." John and Thomas name the boys who strike, but in the first case John is the actor or agent and Thomas the object. In the latter it is changed. To use a nominative name is a redundancy which should be avoided. You will understand my meaning and see the propriety of the change proposed, as the mind of the learner should not be burthened with needless or irrelevant phrases. ”

“ Thus [Pg 25] we have Abbe, Abba, and Abbey, we have Bell, Belly, and Bellow, we have Earl and Early, we have Dand, Dandy, and Dando, we have Brand and Brandy, we have Todd and Toddy, we have Dane and Dana, we have Marr, Marry, and Marrow. These are all ancient names, variously with and without the vowel-ending, and it will be readily seen how apt the addition is to disguise the name, and to give it the appearance of something else. ”

“ Descriptive compounds affixed as nicknames. [438]
(3) Nicknames from oaths, street-cries, and mottoes.
I.—Physical and External Peculiarities. (1) Nicknames from Peculiarities of Relationship, Age, Size, and Capacity. (a) Relationship.—There is scarcely any position in which one man can stand to another which is not found recorded pure and simple in the surnames of to-day. The manner in which these arose was natural enough. We still talk of ‘John Smith, Senior,’ and ‘John 429Smith, Junior,’ when we require a distinction to be made between two of the same name. ”

“ It sometimes happens, although but rarely, that a man on such an occasion may decide to take the name of a noted ancestor rather than acquire an entirely new name, but the character of the act of taking a new name is not thereby changed. ”

“ With many families it is a convenient custom to christen the sons by the mother’s maiden name in addition to their first individual name; but the whole conversion of surnames into Christian names is exclusively English, and is impossible on the Continent, as state and church both refuse to register what is not recognized as in use. Of English surnames we need say nothing; they have been fully treated of in other works, and as any one may be used in baptism, at any time, the mention of them would be endless. ”