3 Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, just cited, p. 118.
4 Mr. James Whittaker tells me (1944) that such names are still common in the North of England – the present Bible Belt of the country.
5 Such names, of course, were opposed by the orthodox clergy of the Church of England. In A Priest to the Temple, 1632, George Herbert thus described the duty of a parson baptizing children: “He admits no vain or idle names, but such as are usual and accustomed.”
6 Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, by Jeremy Collier; London, 1708–14.
7 The Editor’s Drawer, Harper’s Magazine, April, 1855, p. 709: “A good old lady died, within our circle, not many years ago who was familiarly known as Aunt Tribby, but who was baptized with the more extended title of Through-Much-Tribulation-We-Enter-Into-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven Crabb.” See also The Historical Aspect of the American Churches, Eclectic Magazine, Aug., 1879, p. 201.
1 Warfel, p. 329.
2 My quotations are from the reprint of the seventh edition of 1674, in the Library of Old Authors; London, 1870, pp. 56–57.
3 Not to be confused with Wharton. Bardsley, in his Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames; London, 1901 says that Worton comes from the name of “several villages so called in County Oxford” and traces it to 1273.
4 A Norman name. The usual modern spelling is Greville.
5 A variant of Verney – cf. clerk-clark —, traced by Bardsley to 1273.
6 Possibly a variant of Pechel, a name of French origin.
7 A name of French origin, traced by Bardsley to 1315. It is nearly extinct in England.
8 Patriotism Names the Baby, New England Quarterly, Dec., 1941, pp. 611–18.
1 Dr. Schlesinger notes that certain Loyalist families retorted by naming their sons after English governors and generals. In March, 1776, a Stanford, Conn., couple named Edwards thus had a boy baby christened Thomas Gage, then still Governor of Massachusetts. Three days after the christening an army of 170 neighboring women marched on the Edwards house and undertook to tar and feather the mother. She was saved only by the valor and military skill of her husband.
2 For the permutations of Lafayette see American Speech, Dec., 1941, p. 312; Dec., 1942, p. 225, and April, 1946, p. 155. Says Mr. Edgar W. Smith of Maplewood, N. Y. (private communication, July 27, 1936): “It is quite natural that the flat a should have got into Lafayette, for it is in strict correspondence with Parisian usage —at least as the a in la is pronounced there today. I know some over-precise Americans who call the LaSalle automobile the Lah Sahl under the impression that they are using the correct French pronunciation. But the Parisian French, and practically all other Frenchmen save those from the deepest Midi, call it a LaSalle with both a’s short, the closest American sound being the a in ant.”
3 See What’s In a Name?, by Joyce G. Agnew, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 5, 1944, p. 38. After the Civil War many admirers of Stonewall Jackson named their sons, not Jackson, but Stonewall. Such names usually date their bearers. The distinguished Southern editor, Grover Cleveland Hall, was born in 1888. On March 15, 1941 the Oklahoma City papers reported the inducting of twins named Woodrow and Wilson Calloway, born in 1918. On Oct. 31, 1944 the Associated Press reported the death of a Seattle pioneer whose given-names were the surnames of seventeen officers of his father’s Civil War regiment. But for everyday purposes he passed as William Cary.
1 In Defense of Elmer (editorial), Jan. 18, 1935. If Elmer was actually derived from the surname of these brothers it was probably made popular by the fact that it was borne by Col. Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth, the first hero of the Civil War, killed at Alexandria, Va., May 24, 1861. As a contraction of the Saxon Ethelmer, meaning noble and renowned, it was listed by Camden in 1674. Weekley, in Jack and Jill; London, 1939, p. 34, relates it to Aylmer, a not uncommon German given-name, though not a saint’s name. Both Aylmer and Elmer are extremely rare in England, but the latter is in sixty-first place on the Newton frequency list of American given-names, and thus stands above Franklin, Chester, Harvey and Lloyd. Some day there may be an American saint named Elmer.
2 In the early editions of his American Spelling-Book Noah Webster listed “the most usual names of men.” His list did not include Elmer nor was there any mention of Washington, Jefferson or Franklin, but Bennet, Bradford, Clark and Luther were included.
3 It is of German origin, and Reclams Namenbuch; Leipzig, 1938, says that it is a shortened form of Walderich, the root of which is walten, meaning sway or rule. See also Jack and Jill, by Ernest Weekley; London, 1939, p. 45.
1 Iowa Personal Names, by Jerome C. Hixson, Words, Jan., 1937, p. 22. James Harlan (1820–99) was an Iowan who became Secretary of the Interior in Lincoln’s Cabinet. His daughter married Lincoln’s son Robert. There is an account of him in my Prejudices: First Series; New York, 1919, pp. 249–50.
2 Dr. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., tells me that Pinckney is oftenest encountered in the Charleston area, along with Heyward, Rutledge, Ashmead, Huger and Pringle. Hampton and Moultrie are common throughout the State. The Carolina Baptists commemorate two of their heroes in Broadus and Boyce. The Irish, in the South as elsewhere, often use Emmet in honor of the patriot, Robert Emmet, hanged Sept. 20, 1803. Emmet is not a saint’s name, but the Catholic priests apparently pass it as a variant of Emeric, which is.
3 See AL4, p. 511 and 513.
4 Luther stands in one hundred-and-fourth place on the Newton list. It is thus above Mark, Vincent, and Christian, and far above Washington, which has been dropping out of late.
5 The use of surnames as middle names is relatively common, e.g., J. Ramsay MacDonald, Andrew Bonar Law and William Ewart Gladstone.
1 The anonymous author of Our Given Names, Putnam’s Monthly, Jan., 1855, p. 59, said that it originated among the Quakers.
2 Happy Hours, reprinted in Every Saturday (Boston), June 8, 1867, p. 716.
3 An American who married a Bermudian lady tells me that when she adopted her maiden surname as a middle-name and returned to Bermuda her bank there refused to cash her checks and that when she applied for a renewal of her passport she had to resume her maiden given-names.
4 Aug. 3, 1938.
5 Cabell later restored the James White died in 1944.
1 Usually Myron C. and William C. in the United States. Cf. John D. Rockefeller.
2 He was named after Josiah Quincy, who had been associated with his father. John Adams, in the defense of the British soldiers implicated in the Boston massacre of March 5, 1770.
3 John Paul Jones was originally John Paul; he added the Jones for reasons still undetermined.
1 Editor’s Table, Dec., 1859, p. 122.
2 Republican politicians are usually much more decorous than Democrats, not only in their names but also in their dress, rhetoric, and eating and boozing habits. See my Making a President; New York, 1932, pp. 8–9.
3 For this gentleman see American Speech, April, 1946, p. 84, n. 7.
1 p. 149.
2 Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Sept. 16, 1945. The name of a Baptist pastor, so appearing in a wedding notice. Apparently an abbreviation of Columbus.
3 A captain in the Regular Army, promoted from first lieutenant June 12, 1940.
4 On the faculty of the Georgia Teachers College, May, 1946.
5 Appointed a second lieutenant in the Marines, June 5, 1946.
6 The last seven were made ensigns in the Navy, June 5, 1946.
7 The last three are contributed by Mr. E. P. Rochester, of San Antonio, Tex. Link is apparently a shortened form of Lincoln. An eminent Arkansas statesman was the Hon. Jeff Davis (1862–1913). He was Governor of the State from 1900 until 1907 and one of its United States Senators from the latter year until his death.
8 The Hon. Josh Lee was a Senator from Oklahoma, 1937–43. While he was in the Senate he so described himself in the Congressional Directory, but in Who’s Who in America he appeared as Joshua Bryan. It is thus probably unfair to count him.
9 Public Records and Vital Statis
tics, Oklahoma City Oklahoman, March 7, 1946.
10 The last two are from a list of residents of Elwood, Ind., printed in Life, Aug. 26, 1940, p. 2.
11 From Nelson, possibly influenced by Nils.
12 The Hon. Jed Johnson, of Oklahoma, was a member of the Seventy-eighth Congress.
13 The Hon. Nat Patton is a statesman of Texas.
14 The last three belong to members of the Linguistic Society of America.
15 For Washington. I am indebted here to Mr. James F. Rennicks, of Camden, Ark.
16 Edd Kiespert was charged with reckless driving in Oklahoma City, June 19, 1941.
17 The Hon. Ned R. Healy, of California, was a member of Congress in 1946.
18 The Hon. Ollie M. James (1871–1919) was a member of Congress from Kentucky, 1903–13, and a Senator from 1913 until his death.
19 An ensign in the Navy. Congressional Record, May 13, 1946, p. 5017.
1 Other examples: Joe Ben Jackson, a regent of the University of Georgia in Talmadge days; Will Rogers and his politician son of the same name; Tom Peete Cross, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago, to whom the Aug., 1945 issue of Modern Philology was dedicated. One from England: the Right Rev. Tom Longworth, bishop suffragan of Pontefract. The Hon. Tom Clark, of Texas, Attorney-General of the United States as I write, seems to have been baptized Thomas Campbell, but he switched to Tom as he rose in public responsibilities.
2 Given-name is an Americanism, traced by the DAE to 1827 and apparently in use in New England some time before. The NED Supplement’s first example of its use in Great Britain is from a Scottish novel by S. R. Crockett (1860–1914), published in 1895. In England Christian-name is still in general use, though it has been omitted from many official forms since World War I as a result of protests by Jews. See Strange Names, London Observer, Sept. 6, 1936.
3 Dispatch from Washington, April 12, 1945. I am informed by Mr. Truman’s secretary, Charles G. Ross, that the full name of his paternal grandfather was Anderson Shippe Truman and that of his maternal grandfather Solomon Young.
4 There is some conflict in testimony regarding Grant’s given-names. His father, Jesse Grant, said in The Early Life of General Grant, New York Ledger, March 14, 1868, that he “was christened Hiram Ulysses, but was always called by the latter name.” When he was appointed to West Point, the congressman who named him, one Hamer, mistakenly entered him as Ulysses Simpson, misled by the fact that Simpson was his mother’s maiden name and that there was another son named Simpson in the family. “My son,” said the father, “tried in vain afterward to get it set right by the authorities.” Hamlin Garland says in his Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character; New York, 1898, pp. 30–31, that when Grant set off for West Point and noted that his trunk bore the initials H.U.G., he feared that the other cadets would nickname him Hug, and so registered as Ulysses Hiram. This seemed to pass official scrutiny, but when he proposed to change further to Ulysses Simpson permission was refused. But he told the other cadets that Ulysses Simpson was his true name, and they nicknamed him Uncle Sam and Sam. I am indebted here to Mr. Lloyd Lewis, who refuses on the advice of counsel to choose between these discordant stories.
1 Mr. Stephens, like Mr. Truman, got his middle initial by compromise. His mother desired that he have no given-name save her own surname, but family pressure induced her to consent to J, derived from James and Jefferson, the given-names of his two grandfathers.
2 Dr. Cowan tells me that his father, whose given-name was James and who was the son of another James, favored bestowing the name on his son, but that the son’s mother objected. They compromised on the initial, with the understanding that its bearer could fill it out later if he so desired. He says: “I never considered the matter of sufficient importance to do anything about it.”
3 He writes: “My father’s name was David Roland Scott. I was given his two initials as a given-name. The problem of translating it into written language was left to me. The form I use was not a matter of positive choice but rather the result of unwillingness to use any other form.”
4 Editor & Publisher, Feb. 1, 1947, p. 17: “Christened Elizabeth Jane, she grew up as Betty Jane. In the business world she signed interoffice correspondence BJK, and from that achieved the pen-name of Bj.”
5 He was christened Edward Legget, but always used Ed L. To the list might be added Will-A Clader, of Philadelphia (AL4, p. 517), and Will-B Hadley, of the same city. Men without any given-names at all are by no means unknown. One was Dr. Gatewood, a Chicago surgeon. See Dr. Gatewood Dies; Never Had a First Name, New York Herald Tribune, May 24, 1939. Another was Tifft, who carried on business in New York under the style of Tifft Bros. for many years. He wrote to me in 1939: “I have never had a first name, nor considered one.” A third who uses no given-name is Arki-Yavensonne, manager of the Hotel Fensgate in Boston.
1 I take these examples from the Congressional Record, June 10, 1946, pp. 6707–11. I am indebted here to Mr. H. Bartlett Wells.
2 I am indebted for a copy of this regulation to Major-General Edward F. Witzell, the Adjutant General.
3 I am indebted for this to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière, of the University of Virginia.
4 For these I am indebted to Mr. Lockwood Barr, of New York author of a history of clock-making in Bristol, Conn.
1 These were unearthed from New Hampshire records by Mr. Paul St. Gaudens.
2 The last four were found at the Ontario Female Seminary, Canandaigua, N. Y., in 1841 by an English traveler, J. S. Buckingham. I am indebted here to Mr. Charles J. Lovell.
3 New England: Indian Summer – 1865–1915; New York, 1940, p. 149.
4 Oddities of Personal Nomenclature, reprinted in the Eclectic Magazine, April, 1882, p. 533.
5 Many examples are to be found in Belles and Beaux of 40 Years Ago, by J. Marvin Hunter, Frontier Times (Bandera, Texas), March, 1944, pp. 269–73. In the Century Magazine, March, 1888, pp. 809–10, E. W. Denison complained bitterly against “the strange fatuity which makes grown-up women, and business women at that, announce themselves to the world as Jennie, Mattie, Maggie, etc., ad nauseam.” “How can they help seeing,” he demanded, “the increased dignity of Jane and Martha and Margaret?” This fashion did not last long.
1 I am heavily indebted here to Miss D. Lorraine Yerkes, of Chicago, a diligent collector of American onomastica. She has got together a collection on cards, mainly gathered from newspapers and telephone directories, that runs to many thousands of examples, and has generously put it at my disposal. I have also had access to an unpublished Prolegomena in Arte Onomastica, by the Right Rev. J. B. Dudek, whose previous studies in American English contributed so much to the various editions of AL4 and to Supplement I. Various other readers who have helped me are mentioned in the footnotes to the following list. Others who should be added are Mrs. Ethel Austin, of Granby, Conn.; J. C. Bibb, Jr., of New Orleans; Miss Alice S. Emery, of Taunton, Mass.; Frank Field, of Johnson City, Tenn.; Mrs. J. P. Gardner, of Lexington, Ky.; Miss Marjorie Gardner, of Baltimore; Lester Hargrett, of Washington; William S. Hoffman, of State College, Pa.; Miss Charlotte Matson, of Minneapolis; James Cowden Meyers, of Ridgewood, N. J.; Mrs. Charles I. Mosier, of Gainsville, Fla.; Mrs. Douglas Rigby, of New York City; Miss Elizabeth Rigby, of Putney, Vt.; Mrs. John W. Robertson, of Livermore, Calif.; E. P. Rochester, of San Antonio, Texas; Hyder R. Rollins, of Cambridge, Mass.; Mrs. Fred. Schmitt, of Oak Park, Ill.; Mrs. F. W. Schnirring, of New York City; Miss Esther Smith, of Lonaconing, Md.; Mrs. Wellman Topham, of Belmont, Calif.; Mrs. Mary M. Webb, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and Howard M. Wilson, of New York City.
2 Reported from Cortez, Colo., by Mr. Don Bloch, 1945.
3 Oklahoma City Times, July 24, 1945.
4 From Alice or Elise. Other forms: Aleese, Allece, Aliece, Alyce, Alys, Aylisse.
5 Probably from Alfred. Also – Alfredia, Alfretta.
6 One of the many forms of Aileen. Others are Aleyne, Alieen, Alleen, Allene, Alleyne, Aleene, Aeileen, Erleen,
Erlene and Ilene.
7 Found in Jacksonville, Fla.
1 Reported from California by Mrs. G. A. Meek.
2 Probably from Andy. An analogue is Andrice.
3 Anah, Aner and Anner are also reported.
4 This is one of many analogues, e.g., Anajean, Analon, Anajoe, Anamarie, Aniceta, Anliza, Anneene, etc.
5 Divorced in Oklahoma City, Oct. 11, 1945. Other forms are Anneice, Annice and Annyce.
6 Found in Jacksonville, Fla., 1945.
7 A new spelling of Irene?
8 Found in Jacksonville, Fla., 1944.
9 Found on Cape Cod by Mr. Gustavus Franklin Paine.
10 Armistice is also encountered.
11 Divorced at Oklahoma City, March 6, 1946.
12 From Inez?
13 From Ursula?
14 Enrolled at the State Teachers College, Florence, Ala., 1938–39. On the same roll were an Adrene, a Waltherene, an Olene, an Olgalene and a Willene. At the same time an Ethelene was enrolled at the similar college at Troy, Ala. Simultaneously the Sam Houston State Teachers College at Huntsville, Texas, had an Earlene and a Haleene. Arthuree and Arthuritus are also recorded.
15 From Ottilie?
16 Apparently an attempt at Audrey. Other forms encountered are Audie, Audra, Autra and Audrae.
17 Described by the San Francisco News, April 20, 1938, as “an old-time client” of the local social workers.
18 From the Ozarks.
19 From Alabama.
20 Oklahoma City Times, Dec. 7, 1945.
21 Reported by Mr. Kenneth Rockwell, of Arlington, Texas.
22 Reported from the Sacramento Valley, Calif.
23 Reported from California by Mrs. G. A. Meek.
24 Found in Florida by Dr. Mary Parmenter.
25 From Iowa. Mr. Charles B. Anderson of New York tells me that this is short for Bathsheba.
American Language Supplement 2 Page 74
