Butler — Personal Names. 483 



this favorite's name. King George the First, who came from 

 Hanover, getting his ov\'n name from the saint, passed it on 

 to three of his successors. All the royal Georges unawares 

 spread the name among unroyal scions, as when Calhoun took 

 snuff all Carolina sneezed. Among such plebeian namesakes 

 was George Washington, to whom more Americans proximately 

 owe their first name than to any king or saint. 



Several others of our names go back ultimately to notables 

 whom they strive to keep in mind. Alexander is a memorial 

 of a monarch who in 128 G was the Washington, or at least the 

 Lincoln, of Scotland. Lucien was suggested to many a mother 

 by the career of the most irreproachable brother of the first Na- 

 poleon. So was Eugene, by Napoleon's step-son Beauharnais, 

 and Bolivar, meaning as already stated, son of Oliver, who, more 

 than any other man, was the liberator of South America. His 

 name has been linked with our greatest name by Byron, who 



sang: 



"The prophets of young freedom summoned far, 

 From climes of Washington and Bolivar." 



It is no wonder that political sympathies multiplied his name, 

 Bolivar, among us. VeneTation for a most heroic missionary 

 whose sun went down at noon, has given us many a Henry 

 Martin, by adopting his whole name. In remembrance of the 

 first American chief magistrate who died in ofiice, and that 

 on its tlireshold, more than one cradling was then named Will- 

 iam Henry. If Abraham as well as Lincoln appears in the 

 name of a citizen, it is clear that his mother's heart was a shrine 

 of our first presidential martyr. Homer says tlie infant As- 

 tyanax was like a star, and so, no doubt, many an English boy 

 was in the eyes of his mother. Then she had no hesitation 

 about a name for her earth-treading star. Many a Grecian 

 mother must have lulled her babe to sleep with an epigram 

 of Plato's : 



"Thy looks are heavenward to the starry rays, 

 Were I that heaven all stars on thee should gaze!" 



