86 ON METONYMS. 



in a Grecised form. They may remember, too, the anecdote of the 

 popularity of his Loci Communes or Theological Sumnaary, at Rome, 

 while circulating as the production of one Ippofilo da Terra-negra, but 

 its instant condemnation when discovered to be the work of the German 

 reformer Philip Melanchthon. They may know likewise that the family 

 name of Erasmus was the Low-German one of Gerrit, in High-German 

 Gerhard, fancifully and no doubt wrongly held to be a corruption of 

 Gernhaber, an antique synonym of Liebhaber, of which Erasmus, 

 Beloved, was supposed to be a sufficient translation. Moreover it will 

 be remembered by some that the prenomen of Erasinus, namely 

 Desiderius (which is intended to be identical in sense with Erasmus 

 the Beloved,) originated in the baptismal name of the little Gerrit 

 which was itself Gerrit, the same virtually as his surname : that, iu 

 fact, like Sir Cressweli Cresswell, the great scholar of Rotterdam was 

 christened by his own family name, and that the reiteration that 

 resulted was attempted to be rendered by the respectively Greek and 

 Latin terms Desiderius Erasmus. (Both names were familiar enough 

 at the time, as belonging to popular 'saints,' one being identical with 

 the Frencli St. Didier, the other with the Italian St. Elmo or Ermo.) 



Now there are many other less familiar examples of somewhat simi- 

 larly translated or quasi-translated names to be met with in literary 

 history; and as we have not been so fortunate as to light on any 

 detailed collection of such instances, we have thought it might be of 

 some interest and even occasional utility, to make a record here of our 

 own memoranda in this regard, incidentally jotted down from time to 

 time. We have seen such works as Barbier's Dictionaire des Ouvrages 

 Anonymes et Pseudonynies, published in Paris in 1822; Wheeler's 

 Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction, published at Boston iu 

 18(i5 ; and the Handbook of Fictitious Names by " Olphar Hamst," 

 published in London iu 1868. But in these we find no detailed list 

 of the class of names now referred to; and wHcli we have ventured to 

 style Metonyms, translated or quasi-translated names. 



Salverte has a chapter on translated names; but the scope of his 

 work (History of the Names of Men, Nations and Places, in their con- 

 nection with the Progress of Civilisation) did not require him to enu- 

 merate more than a few examples. In Lower's Patronymica Britannica, 

 the Latinised names are of a class to be met with only in the old Char- 

 ters and legal records of England. Baillet's Auteurs Deguises, had 

 the work been within our reach, might possibly have helped us. We 



