260 NOTES ON NAMES. 



Art. XXII.— Notes on Names.— By E. N. D. 



Juliet. — What's in a name? 



Every language consists of two classes of words ; those 

 which have been so long naturalized, as to be considered 

 native ; and those which have been so lately introduced, or are 

 of such outlandish sound, that we at once detect their extrac- 

 tion, and which mix as well with our every-day discourse as a 

 black sheep with white. Surely no one will hesitate to acknow- 

 ledge, that in every language the native words are spoken with 

 the greater ease, and heard with the greater pleasure. The 

 English language consists of words of one, two, and three 

 syllables. From the Greek and Latin we obtain others of 

 four, five, and even six syllables ; but it is a very small 

 portion of these that ever thoroughly lose the traces of their 

 extraction, or trip from an English tongue with perfect ease 

 and smoothness. You must have found how much easier it is 

 to praise than eulogise, much less panegyrise, an author. 

 The opposites of these terms I will not quote as examples ; 

 because your pen, ever flowing with the cream of human kind- 

 ness, refuses to acknowledge them. In their native languages, 

 on the contrary, high-sounding polysyllables are not only 

 appropriate, but beautiful. I recollect, with pleasure, the 

 many occasions in which you have delighted me with examples 

 of this ; — when the stored-up treasures of by-gone ages have 

 overflowed in a tumult of quotation ; — yet were your venera- 

 tion for the ancients to induce you to transplant their sounding 

 compounds into your native tongue, your discourse or 

 writings would become encumbered and displeasing. On 

 account of this paucity of polysyllables our language has been 

 charged with poverty; — a charge from which our poets, in 

 my opinion, fully exempt it: it is indeed simple, but has a 

 sweetness and purity which often approach to an exceeding 

 beauty. 



Now I admit, that our technical names should be derived 

 entirely from the dead languages ; but if we expect them to be 

 introduced in common parlance in a modern tongue, should 

 we not pay some little respect to the character of that tongue? 

 Names which we wish to see becoming familiar household 

 words, should they not be adapted in some degree to our usual 



