American Language Supplement 2 (121 page)

The literature dealing with other American proper names is somewhat extensive, and deals,
inter alia
, with the names given to apartment-houses, bungalows, cemeteries, churches, colleges, theatres, warships, merchant ships, newspapers, magazines, express trains, eating-houses, bars, night clubs, station-wagons, political factions, athletic teams, telephone exchanges, quilts and domestic animals. In most instances it may seem to the casual observer that names are chosen arbitrarily and even irrationally, but investigation shows that in some cases well defined systems are followed, planned carefully to avoid or get rid of difficulties.

That used by the New York Telephone Company in naming the telephone exchanges of Manhattan Island was described at length in 1941 by Pitt F. Carl, Jr., one of the assistant vice-presidents of the company.
¹
The first New York telephone directory, issued in 1878, did not show any exchanges at all, but only the names of subscribers, then 241 in number. A subscriber who wanted to talk to another simply asked for him by name and address. But as the number of subscribers increased this method broke down, and it was necessary to give each subscriber a number, and a little while later the numbers had to be apportioned to exchanges, each of which had to have a name. The first chosen were familiar neighborhood names,
e.g., Gramercy, Chelsea, Murray Hill
and
Madison Square
, but soon these ran out, and the telephone engineers had to discover or invent new ones. This was not the easy business that it may have seemed to the layman, for every new name had to differ clearly from every name already in use, and in addition had to be “easy to read, easy to say, easy to hear, and easy to remember.”

It sooned turned out that the number of such names, whether borrowed or invented, was anything but unlimited. In fact, long experiment showed that there were only about 240 of them. When
200 had been put to use it became necessary to devise a new plan, and this was effected in December, 1930, by adding numbers to the exchange names, so that
Plaza
, for example, was divided into
Plaza-1, Plaza-2
, and so on. Inasmuch as the usual four-digit number had to follow, this had the disadvantage of giving every subscriber a number of five digits, but telephone users soon got used to them, and after a little while they caused no trouble. They showed the merit of greatly facilitating the introduction of dial telephones. The subscriber using such a telephone dials the first two letters of the name of the exchange. This would have presented an almost insuperable difficulty under the old system, for not a few of the 240 eligible exchange names began with the same two letters, but the addition of numbers multiplied every existing exchange by ten, and so disposed of that difficulty. Mr. Carl thus concluded:

Apartment-house names show a rich efflorescence in the United States, and many gaudy and almost incredible examples are to be found. Those of New York City have been studied at length by Arthur Minton.
²
He finds that of the 5500 apartment-houses listed in the Polk directories of the five boroughs about a fourth have names. This proportion was probably much higher at an earlier time, for there has been a movement against names of late, chiefly on the ground of their frequent absurdity, and it is now fashionable to live in a house, however huge, that shows only a street address. In the 1947 Manhattan telephone directory more than 1000 such nameless apartments were listed. Mr. Minton finds that in the remainder (including those of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Richmond) the names in favor follow a few banal patterns. Something
between a quarter and a third include the words
Arms
or
Court
, and a great many of the rest include
Hall, Manor, Towers, Gardens, Terrace, House, Chambers, Plaza
or
Gables
. Sometimes two designations are combined, as in
Chelsea Court Tower
. “For the most part,” says Minton, “these generic elements are obviously derived from English usage –
Arms
, for example, from English inn names, and
Court, Hall
and
Manor
from names of English dwellings and estates. In them, as even more markedly in other elements, Americans are seen turning to British life for connotations of prestige and security.” The non-generic parts of the names, he continues, come mainly from five sources – the names of adjacent streets and localities, personal names, those carrying historical or romantic associations, those of “natural features of the landscape,” and those coming out of a sheer exuberance of fancy. Of the first class,
Kingsbridge Vanity Court
(in the Kingsbridge section of Brooklyn) and
Parkside Arms
(on
Parkside
avenue) offer examples; of the second,
Florence Towers, Mary Arms
and the
Bertha;
of the third,
Caledonia, Ivanhoe, Jeffersonian, Cinderella Hall
and
Mona Lisa;
of the fourth,
Ocean Towers, Hillcrest
and
Superview;
and of the fifth
Shergold, El-Mora, Dalmac
and
Empec Court
. The names based on personal names show some lush incongruities,
e.g., Kaplan Court, Rossoff Terrace, Leibman Manor
and
Hochroth Arms
.
¹
But the strongest visible tendency is toward British-sounding names, and there are many examples in
-leigh
and
-moor
, the former of which was once put to heavy use in the naming of second-rate suburbs. Says Minton:

The names of American hotels show measurably less yielding to Anglomania, though in New York there are still some evidences of it,
e.g., Berkshire, Broadmoor, Clarendon, Cornish Arms, Cumberland, Devon, Gladstone, Oxford, Piccadilly, Prince George, St. Albans, Stratford House
and
Arms, Surrey
and
Sussex
. There was a time when American hotels commonly were named after the owners or managers,
e.g., Astor, Gilsey, Vanderbilt
(all in New York),
Parker
(Boston),
Willard
(Washington),
Rennert, Barnum’s
(both Baltimore),
Hollenden
(Cleveland),
Palmer
(Chicago),
Galt
(Louisville),
Delevan
(Albany) and
Burnett
(Cincinnati), but that fashion has passed, and most of those of more recent construction take their names from history or mere fancy. Of late a number, imitating the apartment-houses, have abandoned names altogether, and are known by their street numbers. When a new hotel in some large city makes a conspicuous success, it is common for its name to be borrowed in smaller places: there are
Plazas, Astors
and
Ritzes
all over the hinterland. Up to 1900 or thereabout many an American hotel used
House
after its name, but that fashion has gone out, and when
House
now appears in the United States it is usually applied to an apartment-house or an office-building, in imitation of English usage.
¹

The English fashion for giving names to individual dwelling-houses has never got lodgment in this country, save in the case of country residences with more or less extensive grounds,
²
but the bungalows in Summer colonies are often given names, sometimes puns or satirical misspellings. Ida M. Mellen, in 1927, listed a number of specimens encountered “on a sand bar off the New York coast,”
³
e.g., Wendoweeat, Jusamere Home, Camp Rest-a-bit, Hatetoleaveit, U Kan Kum Inn, Unous, Kumhavarest, Villa-de-Luxe
,
Fallen Arches, Kamp Takiteze, You Know Me Al
, and
Cat’s Meow
. To these, in 1944, Mrs. Edith Morgan King added many more, dividing them into classes as follows:
¹

Other explorers have added
Hop Inn, Dew Drop Inn, Moneysunk, Dunhuntin
,
³
Uncle Tom’s, Kum-on-Up, Nodaway, G-E-M, Laff-a-Lot, Weona Place, Linger Longer, Lotta Joy, O-So-Kozy, Bide-a-Wee, Look See, Here-I-Is, Ken-Tuck-You-Inn, Gid Inn, We-Blu-Inn, Klimb Inn, Curl Inn
and
Snussle Inn
.
⁴
The revival of
inn
as a punning substitute for
in
in some of these names restores a word that threatened to be lost to the American language. Before the Revolution inns were relatively rare in the colonies save in the larger towns, but with the movement into the wilderness that began after the Treaty of Paris they multiplied enormously. Lewis H. Chrisman says
⁵
that after the completion of the turnpike from Philadelphia to Lancaster, in 1794, “almost every mile had an inn of some kind.” During the same year Congress passed an act for their regulation. They all bore names and their signs commonly showed images of the persons, animals or objects after whom or which they were named. As towns grew up about the more prosperous of them their names were commonly transferred thereto, and that was the origin of some curious town names noted in Section 3 of this chapter,
e.g., Bird-in-Hand, King of Prussia
,
⁶
Red
Lion
and
Blue Ball
in Pennsylvania, and
Bishop’s Head, Rising Sun
and
Cross Keys
in Maryland.
¹