143 Notes on the Vernacular, American Mercury, Oct., 1924, p. 235.
144 See Nifty, Hefty, Natty, Snappy, by Klara H. Collitz, American Speech, Dec., 1927, and Observations on Nifty, Hefty, Natty, Snappy, by Henry J. Heck, the same, Oct., 1928. Mrs. Collitz tries to determine the etymology of the words she discusses, and Mr. Heck shows how they are defined in various dictionaries, including two German ones and one Italian one.
145 See Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Pt. I, 1918.
146 The Speech of a Child Two Years of Age, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. II, 1914.
147 The case for it is stated with great eloquence by Wallace Rice in Go Slow — Proceed Slowly, American Speech, Sept., 1927. He cites a number of impeccable authorities in support of it. They agree, he shows, that the shortened form is usually good idiom whenever the adverb is stressed. “He is dying slowly” is sound, but so too is “How slow he dies.” Thus go slow is justified, and so is get-rich-quick. Get-rich-quickly would sound feeble and banal.
148 I have, however, noted “here late” for “here lately.” But it is obviously derived from “here of late” The use of real, as in real nice, real smart, real good, etc., is an exception. But the American Legionary distinguishes between real nice and really true. He never says, “I real seen him.”
149 That there is logical and historical justification for this is demonstrated by Robert C. Pooley in Real and Sure as Adverbs, American Speech, Feb., 1933. “No one,” says Mr. Pooley, “ever says ‘I will write really soon.’ We may say ’I will write soon, really,” or ‘I will really write soon,’ but never ’ I will write really soon.’ It simply isn’t English, grammar and grammarians notwithstanding.”
150 Dr. Josiah Combs reports that in the Southern mountains -ly is sometimes added to adverbs which lack it in Standard English, e.g., ever, as in “It has everly been the custom.” But he adds: “This usage is rare, and is confined usually to Primitive Baptist syntax, when the preacher strikes an attitude, and attempts to place his language on stilts.” See Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. IV, 1916, p. 288. In another paper (Language of the Southern Highlands, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Dec., 1931), Combs reports the use of adverbs as adjectives, as in “I’m as gaily as a girl” and “He feels weakly.” This, of course, is nothing new in English: poorly has been used as an adjective, according to the Oxford Dictionary, since the Sixteenth Century.
151 See Grammar and Usage in Textbooks on English, by Robert C. Pooley; Madison, Wis., 1933, p. 136.
152 A New English Grammar, Pt. I, pp. 437–8.
153 Mr. Withrow of Wisconsin, March 28, 1935, p. 4881.
154 For some examples see The King’s English, by H. W. and F. G. Fowler, 2nd ed.; Oxford, 1908, p. 321 jf.
155 Oct. 1, 1864.
156 I take this, not from the Congressional Record, but from Noah Webster’s Dissertations on the English Language; Boston, 1789, Pt. II, p. 150.
157 Old, Early and Elizabethan English, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. IV, 1916, p. 284.
158 New York Times, Aug. 20, 1934.
159 At all is often displaced by any or none, as “He don’t love her any,” and “It didn’t hurt me none.”
160 Parts of Speech and Accidence; Boston, 1935, p. v.
161 The Psycho-Biology of Language; Boston, 1935.
162 My files show only one published article on the subject, and that one is by a layman. He is Hugh Mearns, and his article, Our Own, Our Native Speech, was published in Mc-Clure’s Magazine, Oct., 1916. Some rather elaborate investigations of liaison have been made by Mr. Harry Gwynn Morehouse, but they remain, I believe, unpublished. It is, of course, discussed incidentally in many treatises on American.
X
PROPER NAMES IN AMERICA
I. SURNAMES
On October 20, 1919, Mr. Mondell of Wyoming, then the majority leader, arose in the House of Representatives and called the attention of the House to the presence in the gallery of a detachment of 27 soldiers, “popularly known by the appropriate title and designation of Americans All.” A few moments later Mr. Wilson of Connecticut had the names of these soldiers spread upon the record for the day. Here they are:
Pedro Arez Frank Kristopoulos
Sylvester Balchunas Johannes Lenferink
Arezio Aurechio Fidel Martin
Jules Boutin Attilio Marzi
Oasge Christiansen Gurt Mistrioty
Kusti Franti Michael Myatowych
Odilian Gosselin Francisco Pungi
Walter Hucko Joseph Rossignol
Argele Intili Ichae Semos
Henry Jurk Joe Shestak
David King George Strong
John Klok Hendrix Svennigsen
Norman Kerman Fritz Wold
Eugene Kristiansen
This was no unusual group of Americans, though it was deliberately assembled to convince Congress of the existence of a “melting pot that really melts.” I turn to the list of promotions in the Army, sent to the Senate on January 10, 1935, and find Taulbee, Bamberger, Lecocq, Brandt, Thuis, Campanole, Mauborgne, Cocheu, Wuest, Boschen, Schudt, Andruss, Ahrends and Mueller among the new colonels, and Plassmeyer, Munnikhuysen, Eichelberger, Schiller-strom, Koenig, Van Deusen, Goetz, Bluemel, Mercader, Milam, Ramee, Shurtleff and Selleck among the new lieutenant-colonels. I proceed to the roll of the Seventy-fourth Congress and find Bach-man, Bilbo, Borah, Bulow, Dieterich, La Follette, Norbeck, Schall, Schwellenbach, Steiwer, Vandenberg, Van Nuys and Wagner in the Senate, and Arends, Bacharach, Beiter, Biermann, Binderup, Boehne, Boileau, Brunner, Bulwinkle, Cavicchia, Carlson, Celler, Christianson, Citron, DeRouen, Dickstein, Dietrich, Dirksen, Ditter, Dock-weiler, Dondero, Doutrich, Eckert, Eichner, Ekwall, Ellenbogen, Engel, Engelbright, Fernandez, Focht, Gasque, Gearhart, Gehrmann, Hildebrandt, Hoeppel, Hoffman, Imhoff, Jacobsen, Kahn, Keller, Kinzer, Kleberg, Kloeb, Knutson, Kocialkowski, Kopplemann, Kramer, Kvale, Lamneck, Lehlbach, Lemke, Lesinski, Lundeen, Maas, Marcantonio, Montet, Moritz, Palmisano, Peyser, Pfeifer, Rabaut, Ramspeck, Romjue, Sabath, Sadowski, Sauthoff, Schaefer, Schneider, Schuetz, Schulte, Seger, Sirovich, Sutphin, Utterback, Wallgren, Werner, Wolfenden, Zimmerman and Zioncheck in the House. I go on to the roster of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1935) and find Becker, Benét, Cortissoz, Ferber, Hagedorn, Keller, Lefevre, Repplier, Sandburg, Schelling and Wister among the literati, Beaux, Dielman, DuMond, Groll, Guerin, Johansen, Jennewein, Kroll, Laessle, La Farge, Lie, Marr, Niehaus, Patigian, Roth, Speicher, Sterner, Volk, Vonnoh and Weinman among the painters and sculptors, and Damrosch, Kroeger, Loeffler, Oldberg, Schelling, Stock and Stoessel among the musicians. I conclude with a glance through “Who’s Who in America” for 1934–35, confining myself to the A’s, and quickly unearth Aasgaard, Abbé, Abrams, Abt, Acher, Ackerman, Adami, Adler, Adolphe, Adoue, Affleck, Agar, Agassiz, Aggeler, Agger, Ahl, Ahrens, Aigler, Albaugh, Aldrin, Almstedt, Alsberg, Alschuler, Altaffer, Alter, Althoff, Althouse, Altschul, Amateis, Amberg, Ameli, Amerman, Amstutz, Amweg, Anceney, Anders, Andress, Andrus, Angeli, Angelliotti, Angier, Angstman, Ansorge, Anspach, Anspacher, Anstadt, App, Appenzellar, Appleget, Arant, Archambault, Arendt, Arensberg, Arentz, Argow, Armbruster, Armentrout, Arn, Arnstein, Artman, Ascher, Asplund, Auer, Auerbach, Auf der Heide, Ault, Auman, Auringer, Authier and Aydelotte — all “notable living men and women of the United States,” and all native-born. If I took in the foreign-born I might add Abbate, Achi, Adamowski, Agersborg, Aguinaldo, Alencastre, Altglass, Altrocchi, Amateis, Angoff, Aronovici, Aronstam, Arrighi, Asakawa, Askenstedt, Avancena and Avinoff.
Almost any other list of Americans, covering the whole country, would show as large a proportion of non-British surnames. Indeed, every American telephone directory offers evidence that, despite the continued cultural and political preponderance of the original English strain, the American people, as a London weekly was saying nearly a generation ago, have ceased to be “predominantly of British stock.”1 The blood in their arteries is inordinately various and inextricably m
ixed, but yet not mixed enough to run a clear stream. A touch of foreignness still lingers about millions of them, even in the country of their birth. They show their alien origin in their domestic customs, in their habits of mind, and in their very names. Just as the Scotch and the Welsh have invaded England, elbowing out the actual English to make room for themselves, so the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Scandinavians and the Jews of Eastern Europe, and in some areas, the French, the Slavs and the hybrid-Spaniards have elbowed out the descendants of the first colonists. It is no exaggeration, indeed, to say that wherever the old stock comes into direct and unrestrained conflict with one of these new stocks, it tends to succumb. The Irish, in the big cities of the East, attained to a political hegemony before the first native-born generation of them had grown up.2 The Germans, following the limestone belt of the Allegheny foothills, preëmpted the best lands East of the mountains before the new Republic was born. And in our own time we have seen the Swedes and Norwegians shouldering the natives from the wheat lands of the Northwest, and the Italians driving the decadent New Englanders from their farms, and the Jews gobbling New York, and the Slavs getting a firm foothold in the mining regions and disputing with the Irish for Chicago, and the French Canadians penetrating New Hampshire and Vermont, and the Japanese and Portuguese menacing Hawaii. The birth-rate among all these foreign stocks, though it is falling, is still appreciably greater than among the older stock, and though the death-rate is also somewhat above the white average, the net increase remains considerable. Even with immigration cut off it is probable that they will continue to rise in numbers faster than the original English and so-called Scotch-Irish.
Smith remains the predominant surname in the United States, followed by Johnson, Brown, Williams, Jones, Miller, Davis, Anderson, Wilson and Moore in order, but five of these have been heavily reinforced by non-English names. “One in every eighty-eight Americans,” says Howard F. Barker, research associate of the American Council of Learned Societies,3 “is now a Smith, but only a little better than half could trace their ancestry to the British Isles.” The rest are German Schmidts, Scandinavian Smeds, Czech Kovárs, Hungarian Kovácses, Syrian Haddads and Polish Kowalczyks, and Jews who have sought escape from German or Slavic names. “Many a Johnson,” continues Mr. Barker, “who traces his ancestry will find himself an Irish McShane, a Swedish Johansson, or a Dutch or Danish Jansen. By reason of these conversions Johnson has become our second most popular surname and the only name beside Smith to be borne by over a million Americans.” He goes on:
A large proportion of our Millers would be more exactly known as Miiller, Mühler or Möller, and another substantial group as Millar.… Moore, starting with fair backing in England and Ireland, has proceeded to acquire most of the usage belonging to the English Moor and More, the Scotch Muir, and the German Moor, Mohr and Möhr.
In the same way Anderson has assimilated many non-British names of similar etymology and sound, e.g., Andresen, Andriessen, Andersohn, Andersson, and so on. In St. Paul and Minneapolis it now ranks second among surnames, being preceded only by Johnson, with Nelson and Peterson following. Johnson also leads in Chicago, with Smith, Anderson, Miller and Brown following. In New York as a whole the leaders run: Smith, Cohen, Miller, Brown, Schwartz. Many of the Browns, of course, were originally Brauns, Braunsteins, and the like. In Boston Smith is followed by Sullivan, Brown, Johnson and Murphy. In New Orleans it is followed, rather inexplicably, by Levy, with Miller and Williams following. In Cincinnati Meyer is in third place. In Philadelphia Miller is in second place, and in San Francisco it is in fourth.4 There have been notable changes during the past quarter century. In 1913 Cohen was in eighth place in New York City; it has now moved to second.5 In Boston Murphy was in third place in 1913; it has now been displaced by Brown and Johnson, which then followed it.6
In 1928 Mr. Barker estimated that there were then 66,250,000 persons in the country using English and Welsh names, and that of the number 41,550,000 had got them by ancient inheritance, 7,500,000 were Negroes whose forebears had assumed them, and 17,200,000 were whites who had adopted them themselves, or got them from fathers or grandfathers who had adopted them. At the same time he estimated that, of the 18,000,000 persons bearing Irish names, 15,750,000 had got them by inheritance, 1,300,000 were Negroes, and 950,000 were whites who had them by adoption, and that, of the 8,800,000 bearing Scottish names, 6,600,000 had them by inheritance, 1,200,000 were Negroes, and 1,000,000 had them by adoption.7 Changes in surnames go on in all countries, and at all times. They are effected very largely by transliteration or translation. Thus the name of Taaffe, familiar in Austrian history, had an Irish prototype, probably Taft. General Demikof, one of the Russian commanders at the battle of Zorndorf, in 1758, was a Swede born Themicoud, and no doubt the founder of the house in Sweden was a Frenchman. Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian composer, had a Scotch forefather named Craig. Franz Maria von Thugut, the Austrian diplomatist, was a member of an Italian Tyrolese family named Tunicotto. This became Thunichgut (do no good) in Austria, and was changed to Thugut (do good) to bring it into greater accord with its possessor’s deserts. In Bonaparte the Italian buon(o) became the French bon. The family is said to have come from Southern Greece to Corsica, and to have been named Kalomeris originally. Of this, Buonaparte was simply an Italian translation. Many familiar English surnames are Anglicized forms of Norman-French names, for example, Sidney from St. Denis, Divver from De Vere, Bridgewater from Burgh de Walter, Garnett from Guarinot, and Seymour from Saint-Maure. A large number of so-called Irish names are similarly the products of rough-and-ready transliterations of Gaelic patronymics, for example, Findlay from Fionnlagh, Dermott from Diarmuid, and McLane from Mac Illeathiain. In the United States, with a language of peculiar vowel-sounds and even consonant-sounds struggling against a foreign invasion unmatched for strength and variety, such changes have been far more numerous than across the ocean, and the legal rule of idem sonans is of much wider utility than anywhere else in the world. If it were not for that rule there would be endless difficulties for the Wises whose grandfathers were Weisses, and the Leonards born Leonhards, Leonhardts or Lehnerts, and the Manneys who descend and inherit from Le Maines.
“What changes names most,” says Mr. Barker, “is the abrasion of common speech.” They tend almost inevitably to be assimilated with more familiar names of like, or nearly like sound, and folk etymology often helps along the process. Thus the Thurgods, in the course of years, have become Thoroughgoods, and the German Todenackers have become the Pennsylvania Toothachers, and the Jewish Jonases have joined the tribe of Jones, and the Dutch Wittenachts have become the Kentucky Whitenecks. In Pennsylvania, says Mr. Barker, “Bachmann was first ‘improved’ as Baughman, promptly misunderstood as Boughman (pronounced to rhyme with ploughman), and then more easily spelled Bowman, which made possible one more shift in pronunciation.” The original Herkimer in New York was a Herchheimer; the original Waldo in New England was a German named Waldow. Edgar Allan Poe, it has been alleged, was a member of a family settled in Western Maryland, the founder being one Poh or Pfau, a native of the Palatinate. Major George Armistead, who defended Fort McHenry in 1814, when Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was the descendant of an Armstädt who came to Virginia from Hesse-Darmstadt. John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, had a Finnish grandfather named Marttinen. Harriet Lane Johnson was the descendant of Pennsylvania Germans named Lehn. General George A. Custer, the Indian fighter, was the great-grandson of one Küster, a Hessian soldier paroled after Burgoyne’s surrender. William Wirt, anti-Masonic candidate for the Presidency in 1832, was the son of a German named Wörth. General J. J. Pershing is the descendant of a German named Friedrich Pfoersching, who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1749; the name was at first debased to Pershin, but in 1838 the final g was restored.8 General W. S. Rosecrans was really Rosenkrantz. General James Longstreet was the descendant of one Dirck Stoffels Langestraet who came to New Amsterdam in 1657. He
rbert C. Hoover was the great-great-great-grandson of Andreas Huber, a German who settled in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in 1740. “In colonial times,” says Mr. Barker, “some of the Hubers remained as such, but most changed to Hoover, some to Hover, others to Hoober, Hoeber and even Hoofer.” Joshua Levering, Prohibition candidate for the Presidency in 1896, was descended from Pennsylvania German Lieberings. Samuel W. Penny packer, Governor of Pennsylvania (1903–07), was descended from a Dutch Pannebacker who reached Pennsylvania before 1700. Edmund Burke Fairfield, once chancellor of the University of Nebraska, had a French forefather named Beauchamp. Even the surname of Abraham Lincoln, according to some authorities, was an anglicized form of the German Linkhorn.9
Such changes have been almost innumerable in the United States; every work upon American genealogy is full of examples. The first foreign names to undergo the process were Dutch and French. When, in 1664, the English drove the Dutch out of New Amsterdam, their property and their surnames were both at the mercy of the invaders. Some of the wealthier and more resolute of them, dug in up the Hudson, resisted both forms of spoliation with great pertinacity, and in consequence a number of their names survive to this day, along with some of their money — for example, Van Rensselaer, Stuyvesant, Ten Eyck and Schuyler. But the lesser folk were helpless, and in a little while most of the Kuipers were Coopers, nearly all the Haerlens were Harlands, and many of the Van Ars-dales, Van de Veers and Reigers were Vannersdales, Vandivers and Rikers.10 Among the French in New England there were similar transmogrifications, and Petit changed to Poteet, Caillé to Kyle, De La Haye to Dillehay, Dejean to Deshong, Guizot to Gossett, Soulé to Sewell, Gervaise to Jarvis, Bayle to Bailey, Fontaine to Fountain, and Denis to Denny. “Frenchmen and French Canadians who came to New England,” says Scheie de Vere,“had to pay for such hospitality as they there received by the sacrifice of their names. The brave Bon Cœur, Captain Marryatt tells us in his Diary, became Mr. Bunker, and gave his name to Bunker’s Hill.11 Pibaudiére was changed into Peabody, Bon Pas into Bumpus, and the haughty de l’Hôtel became a genuine Yankee under the guise of Doolittle.”12 But it was the German immigration, beginning in 1683, and rising largely after 1717, that provoked the first really wholesale slaughter. The captains of ships landing at Philadelphia were required to furnish the authorities with lists of their passengers, and after 1727 this order was usually complied with. In addition, every immigrant was required to subscribe to an oath of allegiance, and to another abjuring the Church of Rome. Thus three lists of names were produced, and in recent years they have been published.13 But when the newcomers got to the Pennsylvania uplands their names were barbarously manhandled by the officials, usually Scotch-Irish, of the local courts and other offices of record. Almost every Johannes Kuntz of the ship lists thus became a John Coons in the interior, and every Pfeffer a Pepper, and every Schmidt a Smith, The names including the more characteristic German sounds, impossible to the British larynx — for example, the guttural in ch and g — were under especially heavy pressure. Thus, Bloch was changed to Block or Black, Hoch to Hoke, Albrecht to Albert or Albright, and Steinweg to Steinway, and the Grundwort, bach, was almost always turned into baugh or paugh, as in Baughman and Fishpaugh (or Fishpaw). The ü met the same fate: Grün was changed to Green, Sänger to Sanger or Singer, Glück to Gluck, Wärner to Warner, Löwe to Lowe, Brühl to Brill, Stäheli to Staley, Düring to Deering, and Schnäbele to Snabely, Snavely or Snively.14 In many other cases there were changes in spelling to preserve vowel sounds differently represented in German and English. Thus, Blum was changed to Bloom, Alt to Ault, Reuss to Royce, Koester to Kester, Kuehle to Keeley, Schroeder to Schrader, Stehli to Staley, Weymann to Wayman, Klein to Kline or Cline, Friedmann to Freed-man, Bauman to Bowman, Braun to Brown, and Lang (as the best compromise possible) to Long. The change of Oehm to Ames belongs to the same category; the addition of the final s represents a typical effort to substitute the nearest related Anglo-Saxon name, or name so sounding. Other examples of that effort are to be found in Michaels for Michaelis, Bowers for Bauer, Johnson for Johannsen, Ford for Furth, Hines for Heintz, Kemp for Kempf, Foreman for Führmann, Kuhns or Coons for Kuntz, Grosscup for Grosskopf, Westfall for Westphal, Rockefeller for Roggenfelder,15 Kerngood for Kerngut, Collenberg for Kaltenberg, Cronkhite for Krankheit, Betts for Betz, Crile for Kreil, Swope for Schwab, Hite or Hyde for Heid, and Young for Jung.16 The early German immigrants had no very definite ideas about the spelling of their own names. Many variant forms are to be found in the Pennsylvania records. “They were easily swayed,” says Barker, “in the use of vowels, converting from one to another.17 They also shifted from one consonant to another within limits, as from p or b to f, or from d to t, or vice versa.”18
American Language Page 67