388 KRRATA RECEPTA. 



their own first condition of society. It is thus that the Tcnerable' 

 names have descended to us, of 



" Menes aiiH Minos, Nuiiia ai^d Manou." 



The Picts were generally supposed by the early historians to have: 

 had their name from their painted bodies, although it was not ex- 

 plained why they in particular should be so designated when the bar- 

 baric fashion to which allusion was supposed to be made, was by no 

 means confined to them. The Picts are now held to have been "pic- 

 tith," marauders, an epithet conferred on them by their Gaelic 

 neighbours. Their true national name is said to have been Cruitnich^ 

 Corn-eaters. 



The national name of Ireland was vernacularized into Hibernia ia 

 Latin, a sound in lerne being caught at by the Roman soldier, aa 

 comfortably suggestive of winter-quarters (hiberna). 



The Langobards of the north of Europe as well as those who at a^ 

 later period gave name to Lombardy, have, almost as a matter of 

 course, been described as distinguished for the length of their beards* 

 although in all probability it was the length of their spears, in their 

 own dialect their barts (compare halberts), that was remarkable.. 

 That in rude times names were attached to bodies of men from the- 

 fashion of their arms we know ; for it was thus that the Ojibway 

 came to speak of the Englishman as Jaganash, 'the man with the 

 long knife,' meaning his sword, (unless in this case we have combined 

 an accidental vernacular propriety of sense with an effort to pro- 

 nounce the difficult word "English.") In a similar manner, Saxon 

 is reported (e. g., by Koblrausch) to be from sahs, a short swords 



Like Alemann, Frank has been transformed into a well-known 

 national name. But Erank, in its first use, denoted simply a tribe 

 retaining its freedom as distinguished from those of its kin who bad 

 been subjugated by a stronger power. (Frank is held by some, how- 

 ever, to be interpreted as a derivative offrak, the root oiferox.) 



The name Saracen, a stern reality to our ancestors of the crusa- 

 ding times, a term of romance only to us, was no true proper name 

 of a people. It was, by the customary misunderstanding, a collect 

 tive epithet used as such. It actually means " people of the East," 

 from Schark, Arab., "the East." In Latinizing ^charakajiin, natives 

 of the East, into Saraeeni, we had a specimen of the simplifying; 

 process by which, as in numerous other interesting examples which 

 might be named, oriental words were conveniently adapted to the. 



