865 



NAMES. 



NAMES, PROPER. 



686 



present a slightly oblique angle to the direction in which the strip is 

 pushed into the machine ; and this obliquity must be reversed or 

 varied after each stroke, by means similar to those adopted in comb- 

 cutting machinery. If the nails are to be of any of the kinds to which 

 the term nail is specifically applied, as distinguished from brad, the action 

 of the cutter is simply reversed, so as to reduce the strip of iron mto 

 long wedge-shaped pieces ; and the pieces thus separated are subse- 

 quently headed by pressure or stamping, so as to form finished nails ; 

 but if the nails are to be of the brad kind, the action of the cutters 

 must be so modified as to produce cuts alternately at right and oblique 

 angles with the edges of the strip. Nails of this kind need no subse- 

 quent heading, but are completed by the action of the cutter. In 

 some machines the cutters do not vibrate or vary their position, but 

 the strip of iron is turned after each cut, so as to produce the same 

 effect. Brads are frequently cut out of hoop-iron instead of transverse 

 strips of sheet-iron, as above described. 



Many of the machines recently invented effect improvements in the 

 manufacture of cut nails ; while others, intended for wrought nails, 

 are also applicable to the making of bolts, rivets, spikes, nuts, and 

 screw-blanks. The obvious mode of manufacturing these in a rough 

 way is to forge the heated end of an iron rod, and to fashion the metal 

 with the hammer ; but the machines now employed increase both the 

 accuracy and the rapidity of the manufacture. One of these machines, 

 invented by Mr. Marrow, of Sheerness Dockyard, is so contrived that 

 it may be put in action by means of a pulley placed upon any moving 

 shaft whatever, whether driven by steam or other power. There are 

 hammers, tappets, &c., connected with the forging part of the mecha- 

 nism. With one of these machines one man can make sixty half-inch 

 bolts, an inch and a half long, with hexagonal heads, per hour. Mr. 

 Grice's machine, of recent introduction, forms a head on the heated 

 end of an iron rod, converting the rod into a bolt, rivet, spike, or screw- 

 blank. The rod is placed, heated end uppermost, in a die, and by the 

 motion of a bed the rod is brought under a heading-machine, which 

 fashions the head by a pair of dies ; another apparatus liberates the 

 bolt or spike ; and provision is made for keeping the dies cool by 

 allowing a stream of water to fall on them. Mr. Ward's machine, also 

 introduced within a year or two, is so contrived as to make two bolts 

 or other articles by one revolution of a driving shaft. The machine is 

 fed with iron rods by an attendant ; and the metal, whether hot or 

 cold, is cut off and then shaped by dies. There are many other bolt- 

 making machines now in use, some of which fashion the bolt or rivet 

 while in a vertical position, others while horizontal ; but it is not 

 necessary to describe them separately. The expediency of making 

 rivets by machinery has now become manifest, since modern engineer- 

 ing, exhibited in such works as the Britannia Bridge and the Great 

 Eastern steam-ship, requires rivets by millions at a time. Of the new 

 patents for cut-nails, such as Bowman's, Coates's, Goose's, Poole's, 

 Frearson's, and others, it may be said generally that they relate to 

 minor improvements o some of the processes already described in this 

 article. 



Birmingham and its neighbourhood are the great seat of the nail 

 manufacture ; wrought nails being made in the villages round about, 

 while cut nails, as well as machine-made bolts, rivets, and spikes, are 

 produced in large factories wrought by steam-power. There are esta- 

 blishments in Birmingham which produce 40,000,000 cut nails per 

 week each, enough in a year to encompass the earth if placed end to 

 end. A few years ago it was estimated that 25,000 persons were 

 employed in the manufacture ; and that 6000 tons of nails were ex- 

 ported, after supplying the home trade. 



NAMES. [NoCN.] 



NAMES, PROPER, are words by which single objects are denoted, 

 as countries, rivers, towns, men, &c. 



But when we speak of proper names, we mean, more usually, the 

 names of men ; and on this subject, to which little attention has 

 hitherto been paid, and especially such proper names as appear among 

 ourselves, it is our intention to offer a few observations. 



In the primitive state of society, as soon as men were so far advanced 

 as to find the convenience of having a verbal denotation of the indi- 

 viduals who composed a tribe, the rule would undoubtedly be, " one 

 man, one word : " we see this to be the case in the uncivilised tribes ; 

 and as man is presented to us in very early historic periods, we still see 

 the same system prevailing. In the Hebrew genealogies, we find a 

 single word, as Terah, Abraham, Reuben, Aaron, David, Solomon, the 

 only designation of the -persons whom those words call up before us ; 

 and if in any instance there is any deviation from the rule, it is for 

 gome special reason, and we see it to be an exception to what was the 

 usual practice. 



In the other nations, the fathers of European civilisation, it was the 

 same, Egypt, Syria, Persia, and Greece ; one person, one word : and so 

 in the earliest periods to which we can ascend in the history of the 

 Latin nation, we have rarely more th;in one word to denote one indi- 

 vidual, or if there is a second word employed, it bespeaks an origin in 

 something which is apart from the simple, colloquial, and usual desig- 

 nation of him. 



In the Celtic and German nations it appears to have been the same ; 

 A rmlniiu, A rim-istui, and the like : and in Britain, Caractacus, or 

 Caradoc. The Saxons were a nation in whom this, the primitive 

 gyetein, was still prevalent, not only when they first established a 



ARTS AND SCI. DIV. VOL. V, 



colony in Britain, but during the whole period that they held the 

 supreme authority in this island. Persons do, to be sure, present them- 

 selves in the pages of historians with such additions as Harefoot, Iron- 

 side, but it may be reasonably doubted whether these terms can be 

 properly regarded as names; and if it is admitted that they may be 

 such, still these are only exceptions, the great mass of the Saxon 

 population, of whatever rank, having but one single word by which the 

 individual was denoted, such s,s Edwin, Alfred, Gurlh, Vlf, Tost i, Harold, 

 and the like. 



As nations advanced in refinement, the names of the individuals 

 comprising them became more complex. Amongst the Romans, for 

 instance, we have Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, Caiiis Julius 

 Ctesar, Publius Ovidius Naso ; and names of this class formed the rule, 

 at least in families which were free. The slaves probably remained 

 with the single word only. 



We have not room to enter into an examination of the principle on 

 which this new form of personal denomination was constructed. A 

 uniform principle, like that very valuable one on which our own personal 

 nomenclature is at present constructed, perhaps did not exist, so that 

 our present system is rather to be regarded as the invention of modern 

 nations, than as borrowed by them from any of the nations of more 

 ancient civilisation. 



The principle of the modern system of personal nomenclature in our 

 own nation is this : to have one name for the individual, joined to a 

 second name, which is common to some particular stirps in the great 

 English family to which he belongs. We call the two the name and 

 the surname. We think in these days much more of the latter than of 

 the former. But in the more solemn acts of our lives, we find the 

 proper consequence given to that which is indeed the name ; in baptism, 

 in elementary Christian instruction, at marriage, when the name is the 

 thing in question, it is that which is properly the name, and not the 

 surname, which is pronounced ; John, Richard, Anne. We may find in 

 books, even down to the close of the 1 7th century, that catalogues and 

 indexes are sometimes so constructed, that the names, and not the 

 surnames, are ranged in alphabetical order. Philips's ' Theatrum 

 Poetarum ' presents a late instance. 



The value of this principle lies here : that it is a simple and easy 

 mode of showing, to some extent, to what family an individual belongs ; 

 it promotes family union ; but its chief advantage lies in the facilities 

 which it affords for conducting inquiries into the condition of the 

 ancestors of persons who may feel any curiosity on the subject, which, 

 without the indications afforded by identity of surname, could be 

 attended with very little success, when it was attempted to ascend 

 beyond the recollections of persons still living. 



This mode of designation, we believe, prevails in most other countries 

 of modern Europe. In England it is almost the universal plan. The 

 royal house of England forms an exception, an unchangeable surname 

 having never been adopted by them. In this respect the house of 

 Brunswick is like the houses of Saxe, Nassau, Bourbon, Orleans, and a 

 few others, springing from the persons who were of prime note in that 

 state of society when the rule was, " one person, one word," and being 

 afterwards too conspicuous by rank and station to need any such 

 ordinary mode of distinction as that which the adoption of an invariable 

 addition to the name would have given them. This was once not 

 peculiar to the royal house of England in this island (the Stuarts, it 

 may be observed; and perhaps the Tudors, but not the Plantagenets, 

 were a temporary exception, being families of iuferior rank, who were 

 raised by circumstances to the possession of the regal dignity), for the 

 earls, in the first two or three centuries, seem also to have disdained a 

 practice which assimilated them too nearly to the classes next below 

 them. Thus the persons distinguished in Domesday Book as Comites, 

 are Comes Hugo, Comes Rorjerus ; and never, we believe, with names of 

 addition which descended to their posterity. But all these great houses 

 have become long ago extinct. 



There is also an exception to the modern rule, of another kind. 

 There are still some remote and rudely-cultivated districts, in which 

 the inhabitants are better known by some by name, as of the house in 

 which they live, or as the son of some person well-known, than by any 

 unvarying addition to their name properly so called. This is said still (or 

 at least no great while since) to be the case in some parts of Yorkshire 

 and Lancashire, and is certainly the case in parts of Wales, but it is 

 probable that the extension of education will bring all parts of this 

 island into subjugation to a plan which has such obvious convenience. 



If it is inquired when the system on which we now proceed was first 

 adopted, the fact which has just been stated, that even now the system 

 is not universally prevalent, will show, what is indeed the fact, that, 

 like many other things, it has made its way by degrees. There is not, 

 we believe, a single instance before the Conquest of persons in genea- 

 logical succession bearing the same surname ; and it is also quite certain 

 that in the mass of the population of England after the Conquest, the 

 descendants of the Saxon population, there can rarely, if ever, be 

 shown an instance of successive individuals of the same family being 

 distinguished by the same surname in the two centuries immediately 

 succeeding the Conquest. We have indeed but imperfect means of 

 pursuing the inquiry for those two centuries. The names of the people 

 of those centuries lie buried in unprinted records and chartularies. 

 But if there are exceptions, and Saxon families in these centuries to be 

 traced using an invariable as well as a variable name, it is in that 



3R. 



