The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860

We can hardly hope for such celerity and sure handling upon this side of the water. Nor is this the subject we have just now in view. The approaching advent of the census-taker has led us to look back at the labor of his predecessor, and the careless turning over of its pages has set us to musing upon NAMES.

William Shakspeare asks, "What's in a name?" England's other great poetical William has devoted a series of his versifyings to the naming of places. Which has the right of it, let us not undertake to pronounce without consideration. England herself has long ago determined the question. As Mr. Emerson says of English names,—"They are an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land; older than all epics and histories which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close to the body." Dean Trench, who handles words as a numismatist his coins, has said substantially the same thing. And it is true not of England only; for the various lands of Europe are written over like palimpsests with the story of successive conquests and dominations chronicled in their local names. You stop and ask why a place is so called,—sure to be rewarded by a legend lurking beneath the title. Like the old crests of heraldry, with their "canting" mottoes beneath, they are history in little, a war or a revolution distilled into the powerful attar of a single phrase. The Rhineland towers of Falkenstein and Stolzenfels are the local counterparts of the Scotch borderers' "Thou shalt want ere I want," for ominous meaning.

The volume we have just laid down painfully reminds us that the poet and the historian have no such heritage in this land. We have done our best to crowd out all the beautiful significant names we found here, and to replace them by meaningless appellations. For the name of a thing is that which really has in it something of that to which it belongs, which describes and classifies it, and is its spoken representative; while the appellation is only a title conferred by act of Parliament or her Majesty's good pleasure: it cannot make a parvenu into a peer.

But we are not writing for the mere interest of the poet and the novelist. Fit names are not given, but grow; and we believe there is not a spot in the land, possessing any attractiveness, but has its name ready fitted to it, waiting unsyllabled in the air above it for the right sponsor to speak it into life. We plead for public convenience simply. We are thinking not of the ears of taste, but of the brain of business. We do not wonder at the monstrous accumulations of the Dead-Letter Office, when we see the actual poverty which our system of naming places has brought about. Pardon us a few statistics, and, as you read them, remember, dear reader, that this is the story of ten years ago, and that the enormous growths of the last decade have probably increased the evil prodigiously.

The volume in question gives a list of a trifle under ten thousand places,—to be accurate, of nine thousand eight hundred and twenty odd. For these nine thousand cities, towns, and villages have been provided but three thousand eight hundred and twenty names. All the rest have been baptized according to the results of a promiscuous scramble. Some, indeed, make a faint show of variety, by additions of such adjectives as New, North, South, East, West, or Middle. If we reduce the list of original names by striking out these and all the compounds of "ville," "town," and the like, we get about three thousand really distinctive names for American towns. Three hundred and thirty odd we found here when we came,—being Indian or Native American. Three hundred and thirty more we imported from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. A dozen were added to them from the pure well of Welsh undefiled, and mark the districts settled by Cambro-Britons. Out of our Bibles we got thirty-three Hebrew appellations, nearly all ludicrously inappropriate; and these we have been very fond of repeating. In California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and the Louisiana purchase, we bought our names along with the land. Fine old French and Spanish ones they are; some thirty of them names of Saints, all well-sounding and pleasant to the ear. And there is a value in these names not at first perceptible. Most of them serve to mark the day of the year upon which the town was founded. They are commemorative dates, which one need only look at the calendar to verify. As an instance of this, there is the forgotten title of Lake George, Lake St. Sacrament, which, in spite of Dr. Cleveland Coxe's very graceful ballad, we must hold to have been conferred because the lake was discovered on Corpus-Christi Day. In the Mississippi Valley, the great chain of French military occupation can still be faintly traced, like the half-obliterated lines of a redoubt which the plough and the country road have passed over.

There remain about two thousand names, which may fairly be called of American manufacture. We exclude, of course, those which were transferred from England, since they were probably brought directly. They have a certain fitness, as affectionate memorials of the Old Country lingering in the hearts of the exiles. Thus, though St. Botolph was of the fenny shire of Lincoln, and the new comers to the Massachusetts Bay named their little peninsula Suffolk, the county of the "South-folk," we do not quarrel with them for calling their future city "Bo's or Botolph's town," out of hearts which did not wholly forget their birthplace with its grand old church, whose noble tower still looks for miles away over the broad levels toward the German Ocean. Nor do we think Plymouth to be utterly meaningless, though it is not at the mouth of the Ply, or any other river such as wanders through the Devon Moorlands to the British Channel.

"Et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnisPergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivumAgnosco: Seaeaeque amplector limina portae."

Throughout New England, and in all the original colonies, we find this to be the case. But, as Americans, we must reject both what our fathers brought and what they found. Two thousand specimens of the American talent for nomenclature, then, we can exhibit. Walk up, gentlemen! Here you have the top-crest of the great wave of civilization. Hero is a people, emancipated from Old-World trammels, setting the world a lesson. What is the result? With the grand divisions of our land we have not had much to do. Of the States, seventeen were baptized by their Indian appellations; four were named by French and Spanish discoverers; six were called after European sovereigns; three, which bear the prefix of New, have the names of English counties;—there remains Delaware, the title of an English nobleman, leaving us Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Rhode Island, three precious bits of modern classicality. Let us now come to the counties. Ten years ago there were some fifteen hundred and fifty-five of these. One hundred and seventy-three bear Indian names, and there are one or two uncertain. For these fifteen hundred and fifty-five counties there are eight hundred and eighty-eight names, about one to every two. Seven hundred are, then, of Anglo-Saxon bestowing? No. Another hundred are of Spanish and French origin. Six hundred county-names remain; fifty of which, neat as imported, are the names of English places, and fifty more are names bestowed in compliment to English peers. Five hundred are the American residuum.

We beg pardon for these dry statistical details, over which we have spent some little time and care; but they furnish a base of operations. Yet something more remains to be added. We have, it is true, about two thousand names of places and five hundred of counties purely American, or at least due to American taste. In most instances the county-names are repeated in some of the towns within their borders. Therefore we fall back upon our original statement, that two thousand names are the net product of Yankee ingenuity. It is hardly necessary to assure the most careless reader that the vast majority of these are names of persons. And it needs no wizard to conjecture that these are bestowed in very unequal proportions. Here the true trouble of the Postmaster-General and his staff begins.

The most frequent names are, of course, those of the Presidents. The "Father of his Country" has the honor of being god-father to no small portion of it. For there are called after him one territory, twenty-six counties, and one hundred and thirty-eight towns and villages. Adams, the next, has but six counties and twenty-six towns; but his son is specially honored by a village named J.Q. Adams. Jefferson has seventeen counties and seventy-four towns. Madison has fifteen counties and forty-seven towns. Monroe has sixteen counties and fifty-seven towns, showing that the "era of good feeling" was extending in his day. The second Adams has one town to himself; but the son of his father could expect no more. Jackson has fifteen counties and one hundred and twenty-three towns, beside six "boroughs" and "villes,"—showing what it was to have won the Battle of New Orleans. Van Euren gets four counties and twenty-eight towns. Harrison seven counties and fifty-seven towns, as becomes a log-cabin and hard-cider President. Tyler has but three counties, and not a single town, village, or hamlet even. Polk has five counties and thirteen towns. Taylor, three counties and twelve towns. The remaining Presidents being yet in life and eligible to a second term, it would be invidious to make further disclosures till after the conventions. Among unsuccessful candidates there is a vast difference in popularity. Clay has thirty-two towns, and Webster only four. Cass has fourteen, and Calhoun only one. Of Revolutionary heroes, Wayne and Warren are the favorites, having respectively thirteen and fourteen counties and fifty-three and twenty-eight towns. But "Principles, not Men," has been at times the American watchword; therefore there are ten counties and one hundred and three towns named "Union."

We have given the reader a dose, we fear, of statistics; but imagine yourself, dear, patient friend, what you may yet be, Postmaster-General of these United States, with the responsibility of providing for all these bewildering post-offices. And we pray you to heed the absolute poverty of invention which compelled forty-nine towns to call themselves "Centre." Forty-nine Centres! There are towns named after the points of compass simply,—not only the cardinal points, but the others,—so that the census-taker may, if he likes, "box the compass," in addition to his other duties.

But worse than the too common names (anything but proper ones) are the eccentric. The colors are well represented; for, beside Oil and Paint for materials, there are Brown, Black, Blue, Green, White, Cherry, Gray, Hazel, Plum, Rose, and Vermilion. The animals come in for their share; for we find Alligator, Bald-Eagle, Beaver, Buck, Buffalo, Eagle, Eel, Elk, Fawn, East-Deer and West-Deer, Bird, Fox, (in Elk County,) Pigeon, Plover, Raccoon, Seal, Swan, Turbot, Wild-Cat, and Wolf. Then again, the christening seems to have been preceded by the shaking in a hat of a handful of vowels and consonants, the horrible results of which sortes appear as Alna, Cessna, Chazy, Clamo, Novi, (we suspect the last two to be Latin verbs, out of place, and doing duty as substantives,) Cumru, Freco, Fristo, Josco, Hamtramck, Medybemps, Haw, Kan, Paw-Paw, Pee-Pee, Kinzua, Bono, Busti, Lagro, Letart, Lodomillo, Moluncus, Mullica, Lomira, Neave, Oley, Orland, and the felicitous ringing of changes which occurs in Luray, Leroy, and Leray, to say nothing of Ballum, Bango, Helts, and Hellam. And in other unhappy places, the spirit of whim seems to have seized upon the inhabitants. Who would wish to write themselves citizens of Murder-Kill-Hundred, or Cain, or of the town of Lack, which places must be on the high road to Fugit and Constable? There are several anti-Maine-law places, such as Tom and Jerry, Whiskeyrun, Brandywine, Jolly, Lemon, Pipe, and Pitcher, in which Father Matthew himself could hardly reside unimpeached in repute. They read like the names in the old-fashioned "Temperance Tales," all allegory and alcohol, which flourished in our boyhood.

Then, by way of counterpart to these, there are sixty-four places known as Liberty, and thirteen as Freedom, but only one as Moral,—passing by which, we suppose we shall come to Climax, and, thence descending, arrive, as the whirligig of time appointeth, at Smackover, unless we pause in Economy, or Equality, or Candor, or Fairplay.

If we were land-hunters, we might ponder long over the town of Gratis, unless we thought Bonus promised more. There is Extra, and, if tautologically fond of grandeur, Metropolis City,—a mighty Babel of (in 1850) four hundred and twenty-seven inhabitants,—and Bigger, which has seven hundred. A brisk man would hardly choose Nodaway for his home, nor a haymaker the town of Rain. And of all practical impertinences, what could in this land of novelty equal the calling of one's abiding-place "New"? We fully expect that 1860 will reveal a comparative and superlative, and perhaps even a super-superlative, ("Newest-of-all,") upon its columns.

But what is the sense of such titles as Buckskin, Bullskin, (is it Byrsa, by way of proving Solomon's adage,—"There is nothing new under the sun"?) Chest, and Posey? There is one unfortunate place (do they take the New York "Herald" and "Ledger" there?) which has "gone and got itself christened" Mary Ann, and another (where "Childe Harold" is doubtless in favor) is called Ada. There is a Crockery, a Carryall, and a Turkey-Foot,—which last, like the broomstick in Goethe's ballad, is chopped in two, only to reappear as a double nuisance, as Upper and Lower Turkey-Foot.

Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, Village, District, Falls, which might profitably be joined in holy matrimony with the following,—Grand, Noble, Plain, Pleasant, Rich, Muddy, Barren, Fine, and Flat.

As for one or two other unfortunates, like Bloom and Lumber, they can only be sent to State's Prison for life, with Bean-Blossom and Scrub-Grass. We need hardly mention that to the religious public, including special attention to "clergymen and their families," Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, Tate, Brady, and Watts offer peculiar attractions.

But there is a class of names which does gladden us, partly from their oddity, and partly from a feeling at first sight that they are names really suggestive of something which has happened,—and this is apt to turn out the fact. Thus, Painted-Post, in New York, and Baton-Rouge, in Louisiana, are honest, though quaint appellatives; Standing-Stone is another; High-Spire, a fourth. Others of the same class provoke our curiosity. Thus, Grand-View-and-Embarras seems to have a history. So do Warrior's-Mark and Broken-Straw. There is one queer name, Pen-Yan, which is said to denote the component parts of its population, _Pen_nsylvanians and _Yan_kees; and we have hopes that Proviso is not meaningless. Also we would give our best pen to know the true origin of Loyal-Sock, and of Marine-Town in the inland State of Illinois. This last is like a "shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia." There is, too, a memorial of the Greek Revolution which tells its own story, —Scio-and-Webster! We could hardly wish the awkward partnership dissolved. But who will unravel the mysteries of New-Design and New-Faul? and can any one tell us whether the fine Norman name of Sanilac is really the euphonious substitute for Bloody-Pond? If there be in America that excellent institution, "Notes and Queries," here is matter for their meddling.

But it is time to shut the book. For we are weary of picking holes in our own poncho, and inclined to muse a little upon the science of naming places. After what we have said about names growing,—Nomen nascitur, non fil,—we cannot expect that the evil can be remedied by Congress or Convention. Yet the Postal Department has fair cause of complaint. Thus much might be required, that all the supernumerary spots answering to the same hail should be compelled to change their titles. Government exercises a tender supervision of the nomenclature of our navy. Our ships of war are not permitted to disgrace the flag by uncouth titles. Enterprising merchants have offered prizes for good mouth-filling designations for their crack clippers, knowing that freight and fortune often wait upon taking titles. Was the Flying Cloud ever beaten? And in a land where all things change so lightly, why not shake off the loosely sticking names and put on better? For at present, the main end, that of conferring a nomen or a name, something by which the spot shall be known, has almost passed out of sight. If John Smith, of the town of Smith, in Smith County, die, or commit forgery, or be run for Congress, or write a book, his address might as well be "Outis, Esq., Town of Anywhere, County of Everywhere." It concerns the "Atlantic Monthly" not a little. For we desire, among its rapidly multiplying subscribers, that our particular friend and kind critic, commorant in Washington, should duly receive and enjoy this present paper, undefrauded by any resident of the other one hundred and thirty of the name. If we wish to mail a copy of "The Impending Crisis" to Franklin, Vermont, we surely do not expect that it will perish by auto da fé in Franklin, Louisiana.

But the thought comes upon us, that herein is revealed a curious defect of the American mind. It lacks, we contend, the fine perceptive power which belongs to the poet. It can imitate, but cannot make. It does not seize hold upon the distinctive fact of what it looks at, and appropriate that. Our countrymen once could do it. The stern Puritan of New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement "Springfield." But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up "Bradshaw" and amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid the horrors of the railway station, with deciphering the hidden meanings of its lists of names, and form for yourself the gliding panorama of its changing scenery and historic renown. But blank, indeed, is the American transit through Rome, Marcellus, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Geneva; and blessed the relief when the Indian tongue comes musically in to "heal the blows of sound"! And whatever the expectations of the "Great American Poem," the Transatlantic "Divina Commedia" or "Iliad," which the public may entertain, we feel certain they will not be fulfilled in our day. Take Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," and see what beautiful beadrolls of names he can string together from the rough Cornish and Devon coasts. Only out of a poetic-hearted people are poets born. The peasant writes ballads, though scholars and antiquaries collect them. The Hebrew lyric fire blazed in myriad beacons from every landmark. The soil of Palestine is trodden, as it were, with the footsteps of God, so eloquent are its mountains and hamlets with these records of a nation's faith.

But into how much of the love of home do its familiar names enter! And we appeal to the common sense of everybody, whether those we have quoted above are not enough to make a man ashamed of his birthplace. They are the ear-mark of a roving, careless, selfish population, which thinks only of mill-privileges, and never of pleasant meadows,—which has built the ugliest dwellings and the biggest hotels of any nation, save the Calmucks, over whom reigns the Czar. Upon the American soil seem destined to meet and fuse the two great elements of European civilization,—the Latin and the Saxon,—and of these two is our nation blent. But just at present it exhibits the love of glare and finery of the one, without its true and tender taste,—and the sturdy, practical utilitarianism of the other, without its simple-hearted, home-loving poetry. The boy is a great boy,—awkward, ungainly, and in the way; but he has eyes, tongue, feet, and hands to some (future) purpose. And that in good taste, good sense, refinement, and hopeful culture, our big boy has been growing, we hope will be apparent, even in the matter of "calling names," from the pages of the next census.

We have but a word more, in the way of finale. We have not been romancing. Everything we have set down here we have truly looked up there, in the volume furnished by Mr. De Bow. He, not we, must be held answerable for any and all scarce credible names which are found wanting in a local habitation. We have counted duly and truly the fine-printed pages, from which task we pray that the kind Fates may keep the reader.

Yet, if he doubt, and care to explore the original mine whence our specimen petrifactions have been dug, he will find that we have by no means exhausted the supply; and that there are many most curious and suggestive facts, not contained in the statistics or intended by the compiler, which are embraced in the CENSUS REPORTS.

BARDIC SYMBOLS

IElemental drifts! Oh, I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me!IIAs I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life,As I wended the shores I know,As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok,Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the betterof me and stifle me,Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all theland of the globe.IIIFascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow thoseslender windrows,Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.IVMiles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,Paumanok, there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses,These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island,As I wended the shores I know,As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.VAs I wend the shores I know not,As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked,As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,At once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or that I see ortouch, I know not;I, too, but signify a little washed-up drift,—a few sands and deadleaves to gather,Gather, and merge myself as part of the leaves and drift.VIOh, baffled, lost,Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows,Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,Aware now, that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have notonce had the least idea who or what I am,But that before all my insolent poems the real me still standsuntouched, untold, altogether unreached,Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written orshall write,Striking me with insults, till I fall helpless upon the sand!VIIOh, I think I have not understood anything,—not a single object,—and that no man ever can!VIIII think Nature here, in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me tooppress me,Because I was assuming so much,And because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.IXYou oceans both! You tangible land! Nature!Be not too stern with me,—I submit,—I close with you,—These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all.XYou friable shore, with trails of debris!You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot:What is yours is mine, my father!XII, too, Paumanok, I, too, have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores.XIII, too, am but a trail of drift and debris,—I, too, leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island!XIIII throw myself upon your breast, my father!I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,—I hold you so firm, till you answer me something.XIVKiss me, my father!Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love!Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrousmurmuring I envy!For I fear I shall become crazed, if I cannot emulate it, and uttermyself as well as it.XVSea-raff! Torn leaves!Oh, I sing, some day, what you have certainly said to me!XVIEbb, ocean of life! (the flow will return,)—Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother!Endlessly cry for your castaways! Yet fear not, deny not me,—Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you,or gather from you.XVIII mean tenderly by you,– I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.XVIIIMe and mine!We, loose windrows, little corpses,Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,drifted at random,Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets,—We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out beforeyou,—you, up there, walking or sitting,Whoever you are,—we, too, lie in drifts at your feet.