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Page 32
* * * * *
NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.
Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with
that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that
some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed
irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink
under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely "Nicodemused
into nothing." I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a
man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or
ignoble _Christian_ name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted
on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give
him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had
arrived at years of discretion.
I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once
prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky
associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the
very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity,
by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck
or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.
This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country.
Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but
some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of
remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations
totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is
deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to
places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes.
This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit,
content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of
Europe.
Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue
of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical
Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the
names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the
most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers;
topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to
survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that
give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the
day scattered over the land, as if they were the real "salt of the
earth," with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these
official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto
us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little
while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every
direction.
Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore,
Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately
perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be
awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken
up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a
country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release
many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names
calculated to vulgarize the land.
I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out
the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and
euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly
objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of
originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as
reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had
disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to
old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own
case, by examining the records of the county clerk's office, I have
discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the
neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite,
poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful
pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one
of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the
common-place name of the "Saw-mill River." In the old Indian grants, it
is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which
winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the hum-drum
name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious
title of the Pocantico.
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