American Language
Page 75
Another field that awaits scientific exploration is that of the joke-towns — Podunk, Squedunk, Hohokus, Goose Hill, Hard-Scrabble, and so on. Almost every large American city is provided with such a neighbor, and mention of it on the local stage arouses instant mirth. For many years Hoboken was the joke-town of New York, Watt was that of Los Angeles, and Highlandtown was that of Baltimore, but Hoboken won its way to metropolitan envy and respect during Prohibition, Watt has been absorbed in Los Angeles, and Highland-town is now a glorious part of Baltimore. “The humorous connotation of certain Indian names,” said the late George Philip Krapp, “has always been felt, and names like Hohokus, Hoboken, Kalamazoo,201 Keokuk, Oshkosh, Skaneateles, names of real places, have acquired more than local significance, as though they were grotesque creations of fancy. There is, however, no postoffice named Podunk in the United States Official Postal Guide. Just how this word came to be used as a designation for any small, out-of-the-way place is not known. It is an Indian word by origin, the name of a brook in Connecticut and a pond in Massachusetts, occurring as early as 1687. There is also a Potunk on Long Island.”202 Here Dr. Krapp seems to have been in error, for an onomastic explorer, E. A. Plimpton, reported in the Boston Herald for February 8, 1933, that he had discovered a veritable Podunk in Massachusetts, not far from Worcester.203 Dr. Louise Pound says that Skunk Center, Cottonwood Crossing and Hayseed Center are favorite imaginary towns in Nebraska, and that Sagebrush Center reigns in Wyoming, Rabbit Ridge in Kansas, and Pumpkin Hollow in the State of Washington. For Missouri Charles E. Hess reports Gobbler’s Knob, Possum Hollow, Hog Heaven, Slabtown, Hog-Eye, Skintown, Bugtown and Puckey-Huddle.204 Frogtown is a common nickname for a Negro settlement in many parts of the United States.
1 London Nation, March 12, 1912. In Ch. XII the census returns of the foreign-born and of persons of foreign or mixed parentage are given.
2 The great Irish famine, which launched the chief emigration to America, extended from 1845 to 1847. The Know Nothing movement, which was chiefly aimed at the Irish, extended from 1852 to 1860.
3 Surnames in the United States, American Mercury, June, 1932, p. 228. Mr. Barker’s ingenious studies of American surnames have uncovered a great deal of new material, and are marked by wide knowledge and shrewd judgment. His principal work, National Stocks in the Population of the United States as Indicated by Surnames in the Census of 1790, is part of the Report of the Committee [of the American Council of Learned Societies] On Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the United States, printed by the Government Printing Office; Washington, 1932.
4 Our Leading Surnames, by Howard F. Barker, American Speech, June, 1926.
5 In the Borough of Brooklyn Cohen is actually in first place. See the New York Times, Feb. 28, 1933. The count was made on a grant from the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee. Miller was in third place, followed by Brown and Jones. In the 200-card set of guide-cards sold for office use only Smith, Brown and Cohen have cards of their own. Herbert Asbury says in All Around the Town; New York, 1934, p. 272, that the first New York City directory, published in 1786, showed the names of seven Smiths, one Kelly, and one Brown, but no Cohen.
6 For the 1913 ranking see the World Almanac for 1914, p. 668.
7 How We Got Our Surnames, by Howard F. Barker, American Speech, Oct., 1928, and How the American Changes His Name, by the same, American Mercury, Sept., 1935.
8 See The Name Pershing, by J. H. A. Lacher, American Speech, Aug., 1926, and Pershing Again, by the same, American Speech, May, 1927. Mr. Lacher tells me that there is no reason to believe that this Stammvater Pfoersching was an Alsatian, as the general appears to think. He arrived on Oct. 2, 1749 on the ship Jacob, Captain Adolph de Grove, from Amsterdam via Shields, England. It brought 290 passengers, and they were described as “from Swabia, Wirtemberg and Darmstadt.”
9 See The German Element in the United States, by A. B. Faust; New York, 1909, Vol. II, pp. 183–4. Now and then the story goes round that Roosevelt is a Jewish name, originally Rossacampo. The Rooseveltii, it is said, were expelled from Spain in 1620, and sought refuge in Holland, Germany and other Northern countries, where their surname was changed to Rosenfeldt, Rosenbau, Rosenblum, Rosenvelt and Rosenthal. In Holland it finally became Roosevelt, and all branches of the family save one were baptized. When this story was published in 1935, on the authority of Chase S. Osborn, former Governor of Michigan, the editor of the Detroit Jewish Chronicle applied to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for light. The President’s reply, dated March 7, 1935, was as follows: “All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family in this country is that all branches bearing the name are apparently descended from Claes Martenssen Van Roosevelt, who came from Holland sometime before 1648 — even the year is uncertain. Where he came from in Holland I do not know, nor do I know who his parents were. There was a family of the same name on one of the Dutch islands and some of the same name living in Holland as lately as 30 or 40 years ago, but, frankly, I have never had either the time or the inclination to try to establish the line on the other side of the ocean before they came over here, nearly 300 years ago. In the dim distant past they may have been Jews or Catholics or Protestants — what I am more interested in is whether they were good citizens and believers in God — I hope they were both.” See the Congressional Record, March 15, 1933, p. 3915.
10 Among the early New Amsterdam Dutch, surnames were in a state of flux. “They wavered,” says Barker in Surnames in the United States, American Mercury, June, 1932, p. 226, “from patronym to descriptive, as from Jansen, Cornielsen and Hendricksen to Blauvelt, Ten Eyck or Van Buren, and back again, as well as from patronym to patronym. When twenty years of English rule had influenced them to adopt the English manner, they generally settled on the descriptive, but without any unanimity regarding spelling or the retention of the van if this was involved.”
11 Here Marryatt and Scheie de Vere seem to have slipped. Dr. S. E. Morison, whose authority in Massachusetts history is undisputed, tells me that the hill was really named after George Bunker, who came to Charlestown from England before 1635.
12 Americanisms; New York, 1872, p. 112. A few years ago Professor Atcheson L. Hench of the University of Virginia discovered Scheie de Vere’s own copy of this work in the university library, with annotations in his hand. He listed, apparently for a revised edition that never appeared, some other curious changes, e.g., Ainse to Hanks, St. Cyr to Sears, Monat to Miner, L’ Auvergne to Lovern, Dudelant to Douglas, Henri Liver-nois d’Oligney to Hy Alden, and Jean Baptiste Sans Souci l’Evêque to John Lavake. I am indebted to Professor Hench for this.
13 Pennsylvania German Pioneers: a Publication of the Original Lists of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphia From 1727 to 1808, edited by W. J. Hinke; 3 vols.; Norris-town, Pa., 1934.
14 The name of August Lüchow, founder of the famous German restaurant in Fourteenth street, New York, is almost invariably pronounced Loo-chow in the town. Ask a taxi-driver to take you to Lüchow’s, and he will stare at you blankly. This change was promoted by the prudent dropping of the umlaut from the sign of the establishment in 1917.
15 The researches of the late Stephen Kekulé von Stradonitz showed that the original American Rockefeller was a German Roggenfelder (rye-fielder) from the lower Rhine.
16 Many more such transliterations and modifications are listed by A. B. Faust, in The German Element in the United States, above cited, particularly in his first volume. Others are in Pennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldemann; London, 1872, p. 60, and in The Origin of Pennsylvania Surnames, by L. Oscar Kuhns, Lippincott’s Magazine, March, 1897, p. 395. See also Studies in Pennsylvania German Family Names, by the last named (his list is reprinted in Report of the Committee [of the American Council of Learned Societies] on Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the United States; Washington, 1932, p. 312 ff); Deutsche Familiennamen unter fremden Völkern, by Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz, Mitteilungen der Aka- demie zur wissenschaftlichen Erforschung und zur P
flege des Deutschtums (Munich), April–May, 1928; and Deutsche Namen in Amerika, by the same, B.-Z. am Mittag (Berlin), Sept. 22, 1927.
17 For example, Schultz often appeared in the early Pennsylvania records as Scholtz, Shiltz and Shoultz.
18 In the records of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Arcadia, Md., founded c. 1770 (Twenty-third Report of the Society For the History of the Germans in Maryland; Baltimore, 1929, pp. 27–28) there are some curious variants from the period 1790–1825. Thus a name which now appears as Algire was then Allgeiger, Algeier, Allgeier, Allgeyer and Allgire, an Elsroad of today was Eltzroth, Else-road, Elserote, Elserode and Elsrode, and a Loudenslager of today was Lautenschläger, Laudensläger, Laudenschläger, Lautenschleger and Laudenslager. I once knew a Lauten-berger whose name had shrunk to Lauten, pro. Lawton. What is now Upperco in Maryland was, once Oberkugen, Opferkuchen, Ober-kuchen.
19 Westminster (Md.) Democratic Advance, Aug. 10, 1934.
20 Baltimore Sun, Dec. 2, 1906.
21 Koch, a common German name, has very hard sledding in America. Its correct pronunciation is almost impossible to Americans; at best it becomes Coke or Koash. Hence it is often changed, not only to Cook, but to Cox, Coke or even Cockey.
22 The father of the once notorious evangelist, William A. Sunday, was a German named Sonntag, killed in the Civil War, 1863.
23 For these Dutch examples I am indebted to President John J. Hiemenga and Prof. Henry J. G. Van Andel, of Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., to Prof. B. K. Kuiper of the same city, and to Dr. Paul de Kruif.
24 American Greek, American Speech, March, 1926, p. 308.
25 I am indebted here to Mr. T. D. Curculakis of Athens. Pappas means priest, and Mr. Curculakis explains that its popularity is at least partly due to the fact that the Greek priests, during the long years of bondage to the Turks, were the chief guardians of the national spirit. It was a pappas who raised the flag of liberty at the Monastery of St. Laura on March 25, 1821. Mr. Curculakis, who lived in the United States for a number of years, was constrained to change his surname while he was here to Kriton, picked from Plato’s Phaedon. At the same time he shortened his given names, Timoleon Dimitriu, to Timon Damon, and commonly used only their initials. Now that he has returned to Athens he is once more Timoleon Dimitriu Curculakis.
26 I am indebted here to Mr. H. A. Fitzgerald, editor and manager of the Daily Press.
27 A similar translation of Slavic names has probably gone on in the German areas of Pennsylvania, though I can find no record of it. In Louisiana, in the Eighteenth Century, a small Germany colony was assimilated by the French, and there were many changes in the German names. Thus, Schaf became Chauffe, Buchwalter became Bouchevaldre, Buerckel became Birquelle, Wagensbach became Waguespack, and Katzenberger became Casbergue. During the Spanish occupation some of the German names became Spanish. Thus Hans Peter Keller became Juan Pedro Cueller, and Jacob Wilhelm Nolte became Santiago Villenol. See Settlement of the German Coast of Louisiana, by J. Hanno Deiler, German American Annals (Philadelphia), New Series, Vol. VIII, No. 4, July–Aug., 1909, p. 192 ff. In the Catskill region of New York there is a family named Masten, always thought of as of Dutch origin, whose actual progenitor was an Englishman named Marston. Miss Lillian D. Wald tells me that in the early days of the great Jewish invasion of New York, many Eastern Jews with difficult Slavic or Hungarian names changed them to Cohen or Goldberg.
28 Czech Surnames in America, American Mercury, Nov., 1925.
29 The Americanization of Czech Surnames, by J. B. Dudek, American Speech, Dec., 1925. See also Czech-American Names, by the same, Czecho-Slovak Student Life, April, 1928. One Czech-American who refuses resolutely to change his name is the most distinguished of them all. He is Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, curator of the Smithsonian Institution. His given-name and surname lose their accents in “Who’s Who in America,” but not in the more accurate English “Who’s Who.” He explains humorously that an American transliteration of his surname would have to be something akin to hard-liquor. Here I am indebted to Mr. William Absolon, of Providence, R. I.
30 For aid here I am indebted to Mr. Sergei Senykoff of Detroit.
31 See Slavonic-English Transliterations, by H. B. Wells, American Speech, Sept., 1927. Also, Sixth Report of the United States Geographic Board; Washington, 1933, p. 41.
32 The Yugoslav Speech in America, American Mercury, Nov., 1927.
33 The family name was originally Modrzejewski — a palpable impossibility in America.
34 I am indebted here to Mr. Emil Revyuk, editor of the Ukrainian daily, Svoboda, of Jersey City. Mr. Revyuk says that Ukrainian surnames undergo all the usual changes. For example, Petryshyn and Petry-shak become Peterson, Perey becomes Parry, Danylchuk, Danyl-chenko and Danylshyn become Danielson, Makohon becomes MacMahon, Zhinchak becomes Smith, Shevchynsky becomes Wagner, Macheyovsky is contracted to Mack, and Nyzovych to Nash. Mr. Vladimir Geeza, editor of the New Life, of Olyphant, Pa., adds the following: Daniliwsky becomes Daniels, Petrusiw becomes Peters, Silwerovitch becomes Silvers, and Wowk (wolf) becomes Wolf. Here I follow the transliteration of my correspondents.