From

Personal Names

by George R. Stewart

Do you know the principal source of tradition for naming habits among Americans? How did the Indians and Negroes come by their family names? Why did immigrants take Americanized names? The following discusses these issues.

In an anthropological account of any tribe, the manner of its giving of personal names is often thought of sufficient importance or inclusion, and so we may fittingly attempt an appraisal of such habits among the Americans.

Names are a part of language, but they represent a highly specialized part, and so cannot be included under a general discussion. In particular, the influence of later immigration and of native developments has been of much more importance for our names than for our language in general.

In our naming habits, as in so much else, we inherit the English tradition, although this differs little from that of Europe in general. In this English tradition, as it was established during the Middle Ages and well before any settlement of America, a personal name was dual, consisting of a given and a family name, in that order. A king or nobleman, or rarely someone of lower rank, might bear more than one given name. But among the kids of people who migrated to America what has later come to be called a "middle" name was so rare as to be almost non-existent. One of the very few examples to be cited is the curiously named Edward Maria Wingfield, first president of the council at Jamestown.

Since from the beginning the immigrants bore family names and since those names were already hereditary, the early colonists merely kept the names that they already had, and there is little to be told. The question has been raised, however, whether all of the early English immigrants actually had family names. Such an idea might be suggested by the entry "old Edward" in one of the first Jamestown lists. More likely, however, he actually had a family name, and it was omitted carelessly from the list, or forgotten, after he was dead. More commonly we find people entered only by the family name, as in a Jamestown list of 1608, where even two boys are recorded as Milman and Hellyard, not by their given names. Quite possibly, a few English waifs and strays, especially those of illegitimate birth, came to America, lacking or not knowing their family names. If so, they must soon have taken ordinary names, and did not produce any particularly American flavor.

The only two large groups that have actually had to take family names while on our soil are the Indians and the Negroes. The Indians usually bore but a single name, although this was often long and detailed in description. They tended, however, to adopt the naming habits along with other European customs. If an Indian was converted, he might take a baptismal or Christian name, and then bear his old one as a family name. Thus we could probably account for Caleb Cheeshahteaumuch, who graduated from Harvard in 1665 and died in the next year. But many Indians simply adopted ordinary American family names. When we read of Jim Thorpe or of Colonel Ely Samuel Parker, we cannot tell from their names that they were Indians. In later times, and doubtless in earlier times too, many of their native names were translated, sometimes in simplified forms. Once translated and simplified, such a formerly colorful name tended to become commonplace. Thus an Indian whose name meant "Talking-Crow" might have his name translated and be baptized John, and thus become John Talking Crow. Then his son might be merely William Crow, and would become indistinguishable in a list from anyone of English birth bearing the same family name. An Indian named James Night-Walker could become a mere James Knight Walker. Unfortunately these colourful Indian names seem, on the whole, to be dying out.

The Negroes, when they came from Africa, had nothing corresponding to a family name. While they remained slaves, they generally had no need for one. Being legally chattels, they did not vote, enter into contracts, testify in court, or do any of the other things for which a full name was demanded. Since they lived in small communities, they did not need two names for distinction, and could be called either by the given name, by a nickname, or by the given name with some distinction, such as "Old Joe", or "Big Jack".

But if not before freedom, certainly afterward, the Negroes took family names like other people. In fact, we may say that they took them too much "like other people", and instead of using their own exuberant fancy, they seem to have chosen rather the more commonplace ones. Thus Johnson is the commonest Negro name, and after it come Brown, Smith, and Jones. It looks rather as if the Negro tried to efface himself by taking the name which would not bring any attention to him. The old theory that he took the name of his master seems to have little foundation, as is evidenced by the failure of the names of the great slave-holding families to be very common among Negroes.

Although there is little that can be called a distinctive American creative activity as regards family names, a certain creative process has been at work producing new names from old names by means of radical changes of practically all conceivable kinds. We thus have many names that seem to exist in the United States but not in Europe, such as Yokum, Legree, Goochey, and Lovewear. Only by careful study can a scholar determine that these particular names originated from the German and French names of Joachim, Legare, Gauthier, and Lavoie. Similarly, the frequent shortening of long foreign names has produced new names which presumably never existed in the old countries. From Calogropoulos we have Caloyer; from Kalliokowski, Kallio; from Nieninen, Nieni. Translation has also done its work. Frequently it resulted in nothing new, as when a Zimerman became a Carpenter, or a Jaeger was translated into another Hunter. But when a name was partly translated and partly taken over by sound, the result might be an entirely new name, as when Breitmann became a Brightman.

The taking of Americanized or partially Americanized names by immigrants is one of our characteristic phenomena. sometimes this has resulted from a desire to escape from a real or fancied stigma of association with a foreign background. Sometimes it has resulted merely from nuisance of trying to maintain an unusual name. Sometimes, especially in the earlier years, it merely happened because no one knew or cared much how the name was spelled. The taking of names by immigrants, like the taking of names by Negroes, has generally worked toward a leveling. Whether a man is trying to escape into the crowd or to become one of the group, he is likely to choose a common name. For this reason the number of people called by the traditional British names has risen higher in proportion.

On the other hand, this leveling process has failed to eliminate very many names, and the number of names in Great Britain or any other country. Thus many a German Mueller has become a mere Miller, but some of them still remain, and others have the form Muller; the result is thus three names in the United States.

The total number of family names in this country has been the subject of a careful study by Elsdon C. Smith, for his Story of Our Names. In the Chicago telephone book he estimated that there were 154 750. In arriving at this figure he counted all variations in spelling. He estimated further that there must be about 350 000 different family names in the whole United States. Even if we divide this figure by three to make allowance for mere variations of spelling, the number remains tremendous.

With given names, as compared with family names, the Americans have been much more creative. This could be taken for granted. In the vast majority of instances, a man passes his family name to his children without change and without even considering the possibility of change. But someone, commonly a parent, chooses a particular name for each child. Usually this name is a traditional one, but sometimes it may be "made up." Even for traditional names, the storehouse of the past is so jammed with thousands of examples that the problem of choice becomes almost a matter of creation. Therefore, while family names remain stable over generations and through centuries, given names have been subject to fashions and fads, and in the course of a century the "name pattern" of a community may change strikingly.

Our history of given names can begin with Raleigh's colony of 1587, even though it died out and left no descendants. Among the ninety-nine men and boys of that group the commonest names were John (23), Thomas (15), William (10) , Henry (7), Richard (7), George (3), and Robert (3). From the same colony we have only sixteen women's names preserved, too small a number for good statistics. There was, as it happened, no Mary among them. But there were three Janes, two Elizabeths, and the other names were common enough, such as Agnes, Eleanor, Margaret, and Rose.

We must, then, return to the list of men to arrive at the name pattern. All the commoner names of these first colonists are in the English tradition. Both John and Thomas are eventually Hebrew, and are from the Bible. John, from the beloved disciple, had been a favorite name for centuries all over Christendom. Thomas, also the name of a disciple, had become a popular and peculiarly English name since the twelfth century, because of the hero-martyr St. Thomas of Canterbury. William, Henry, Richard, and Robert were old Germanic names that had been popularized in England by the Norman conquerors. All except Robert had been borne by English kings, and this had probably helped their popularity. George, a Greek name, owed its place to the fact that St. George had been regarded as the patron saint of England since the fourteenth century. This English tradition of naming was maintained in the southern colonies for a century or more—and, we may add, for women as well as for men.

A more peculiarly American development arose in the Puritan colonies of New England. Originally, the name pattern did not differ greatly from that of the southern immigrants. The ten commonest names of those coming to Massachusetts were in order: John, William, Thomas, Richard, Robert, Edward, Samuel, George, James, and Francis.

The appearance of the single Old Testament name of Samuel alone distinguishes this list from the southern one by giving it a slight Old Testament flavor. But the sons of these immigrants bore very different names. The proportion of Biblical names soared upward, especially those of favorite characters from the Old Testament. Among boys born in Boston between 1640 and 1699 John was still the favorite name. But after it came in order: Samuel, Joseph, Thomas, Nathaniel, Benjamin, James, Jonathan, William, and Richard. Thus the first eight names have all become Biblical, and the once popular William and Richard have been shoved into ninth and tenth place. The second ten names show the Old Testament influence even more strongly: David, Jacob, Josha, Issac, Peter, Ebenezer, Ephraim, Edward, Abraham, and Daniel.

With women, also, the use of traditional but non-Biblical names such as Joan, Agnes, and Margaret fell off, and some of them even vanished completely. Girls born in Boston in the seventeenth century were most commonly named, in order: Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, Abigail, Rebecca, Ruth, Lydia, Anna, and Martha. These are all Biblical names, and four of them are from the Old Testament. Some of the traditional favorites managed to appear in the second ten, where we find Ann, Margaret, Joanna, and Jane mingled with Mehitabel, Susannah, Deborah, Bethiah, Rachel, and Dorcas.

Also fairly common for women in the Puritan colonies—totaling about 15 percent—were "meaningful" names of abstract qualities. Of these, Mercy was the commonest, but we find also Patience, Thankful, Desire, Experience, Charity, Hope, Grace, and many others. Names of this kind, such as Grace, are to be taken in their spiritual or theological sense, not their physical one. Some of the names are presumably to be construed as verbs rather than as nouns, and may be taken as standing for some Biblical admonition such as, "Desire spiritual gifts". Similar names occurred among the men, though less commonly: Increase, Hope-for, Constant, Tremble, Love, Wrestling.

Of all the Biblical names the most interesting is Ebenezer. It is the name of a place in the Old Testament, and seems to have been used as a personal name first in New England. It became one of the commonest names there, and remained so for more than a century.

Although the increased use of Old Testament and of meaningful names was a feature of Puritanism in England also, it was more strongly developed in New England. From those colonies it spread by migration, and our history has become spotted with men bearing such colourful names as Increase, Israel, Zachary, Abraham, Preserved, and Gamalief. It has affected our legendry, and given us "Brother Jonathan" as a name for a New Englander or even for an American, "Uncle Same" as the embodiment of the initials U.S., and "Caleb" or "Old Ephraim".

(2 200 words)

(From American Ways of Life, Doubleday & Company, 1954 )

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