NAMES AND NICKNAMES OF THE 

 SHANGHAI SETTLEMENTS. 1 



GEORGE LANNING 



It is quite possible to imagine a Chinese Juliet indulging 

 in some such thought as this: — "What's in a name ? That 

 which we call a city most by any other name would smell as 

 sweet! ' But the Italian Juliet was a girl in love, barely 

 fourteen, and it is hardly to> such tender years that we should 

 put what is really a serious as well as an interesting question 

 when we ask "What's in a name? ' Without names where 

 should we be? Nouns and verbs make up all the skeleton 

 of our language and most of its flesh and blood. The English 

 language has hundreds of thousands of words, all of them 

 derived from simple nouns or verbs. We are adding to< them 

 every year of our lives, and yet we know how badly at a loss 

 we are at times for a name for some new and complex idea. 



What's in a name? There is history in it. There is 

 ethnology in it. There may be an ancient language in it. 

 In hundreds of cases there is physical geography in it, and 

 there are in names almost always tales of ancient times, of 

 tremendous happenings, or the simple facts of daily life. To 

 travel through Ireland, Wales, the Highlands of Scotland, 

 large parts of France, and other countries of Europe, is to 

 travel through countries where somebody once upon a time 

 gave names to hill and dale, to land and water, to home- 

 steads and farms, to boats and buildings, and to> many more 

 things, especially to men and women with their children and 

 belongings, names similar to some of those in the land in 

 which we dwell, China. It is not my purpose here to> make 

 good all these assertions. That must be done at a more 

 convenient season. But the subject in hand, limited and 

 circumscribed as it is, will yet provide some little evidence 

 of the kind of thing I have in mind. 



One of the greatest difficulties in the study of words is 

 that provided by the varied dicta of our philological author- 



1 Read before the Society, December 12th, 1919. 

 6 



