2 Harry K. Wolfe, 



conclusion is a non scqnitur. It is now generally believed 

 that other conditions than lack of discriminative power have 

 caused the paucity of color-words in the languages of early 

 peoples. 



No exhaustive investigation into the science of names has 

 ever come to my notice. When the science of onomatology 

 shall have been more completely developed, it will show, not 

 merely the philological origin of our name-words, but also 

 why these were coined and why others were not coined. 

 Philology may show whence a word comes ; why it comes at 

 all must be determined by another science. 



An imperfect generalization may be formulated from a few 

 simple examples. Among our immediate friends a name is 

 required for each individual ; but in the social world the 

 family name is often sufficiently definite. In dealing with 

 large bodies of men, as in military affairs, the group of one 

 hundred or even of a thousand may be highly enough special- 

 ized. Generally the company or regiment is known only by 

 its official title, or by the name of its chief officer. In these 

 cases no one suspects the cause of class-names to be weak 

 discriminative power in man. We are able to discriminate 

 the individuals of these aggregates, but we do not need to 

 designate them. Among the lower animals it is only those 

 individuals with which we come in frequent contact that re- 

 ceive special names. Few men know a dozen individual dogs 

 by name, or half as many cats, or even a single bird. It is 

 only some peculiar circumstance that assigns names to plants, 

 such as the ' Charter Oak,' the ' Oak of Dodona.' Garden 

 plants are usually designated by means of their particular 

 location, by reference to the source from which they were 

 obtained, or by some peculiarity of the plant itself. The 

 awkwardness of their names indicates that the necessity for 

 individual designation is not commonly recognized. It seems 

 quite ridiculous to say we do not have a separate name for 

 each house-fly, because we are unable to distinguish one 

 from another. If there were no other reason, this would 

 doubtless be sufficient, yet no one thinks this circumstance 



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