American Language Supplement 2 (124 page)

“Names, Reader,” said Robert Southey in “The Doctor,”
²
“are serious things.” He then proceeded to devote a long chapter to them, beginning with the names of lodges of Odd Fellows in England,
e.g., Rose of Sharon, Poor Man’s Protection
and
Apollo and St. Peter
, and going on to those of gooseberries, apples, pears, roses, bulls, horses, pigeons, and the devils of Hell. With the decay of theology most of the last-named have passed out, but there are some that certainly deserve revival, if only for use as objurgations,
e.g., Cocabelto, Kellicocam, Motubizanto, Ju, Arraba, Lacahabarratu, Oguerracatam, Buzache, Baa, Kelvoryvybegg, Keileranny, Cnocknatratin, Drung
and
Knockadawe
. Southey listed no name for a bull save
Comet
, but C. A. Bond, extension editor of the State College of Washington, at Pullman, Wash., has published an instructive report on the names given to cows in that great State.
³
Some were apparently suggested by “outstanding anatomical or physiological peculiarities,”
e.g., Hatrack, Washtub, Leaky
and
Shimmy;
others by sentiment,
e.g., Grandma, Purity, Fairyland
and
Desire;
yet others by “humor and perhaps downright disgust,”
e.g., Twerp, TNT, Little Rat
and
Bot Fly
, and still others by “literature, history and the drama,”
e.g., Sheba, Portia
and
Imogene
. Mr. Bond found a cow named
Napoleon
and another named
George
.
⁴

“There remains one stronghold,” said Willis Thornton, writing in 1926,
⁵
“where the romance of names is undimmed: it is the turf.” In support thereof he offered some mellifluous specimens from the roll of American thoroughbreds,
e.g., Summer Sigh, Carmencita, Altar Fire, Dream of Allah, Midnight Bell, Simoon, Satana,
Ponjola, Monday Morning
and
Ethereal Blue
, and also a few on the sportive side,
Doughnut, Brainstorm, Whiff, Spot Cash, In Memoriam, Nose Dive
and
Jealous Woman
. But he forgot to add that the naming of colts headed for the big tracks is rigidly regulated by the Jockey Club, and that the fancy of breeders and owners is thus seriously hobbled. The rules in force in 1947 were as follows:

Race-horses commonly have stable-names to go with their registered names, so that one appearing on the register as a
Whirlwind
or
Cleopatra
may be
Jack
or
Molly
to his or her intimates. The same is true of blooded dogs. In the stud-books of their breeds they often bear names that approximate genealogies, but at home even the proudest champion is usually only
Butch
or
Lassie
. Captain William Lewis (Will) Judy, a leading American authority, reports that of 116,000 dogs entered in a radio contest in 1939, 1400 were named
Prince
, 1200
Queenie
, 1000
Spot
, 500
Rover
, and 30 each
Rags, Towser, Muggsie
and
Fido
.
²
It will be noted that
Fido
, once a favorite, is now slinking into the shadows. So are
Ponto
and
Bruno
, and in 1946 the New York
Daily News
reported that
Rover
was yielding to
Butch
,
³
which was apparently introduced by a popular comic-strip, along with
Sandy
. Other color names are also in vogue,
e.g., Whitie, Red, Buff
and
Blackie
, and the two World Wars gave a lift to
Colonel, Major, Captain
and
General
.
⁴
Dogs of German origin are often called
Fritz
or
Heinie
, and many Irish terriers are
Tim, Terry
or
Mickey
. Other names now favored are
Mitzie, Rex, Dixie
and
Danny
.
¹
Dorothy Parker once had a dachshund named
Robinson
, and I have heard of several hounds, all of them vicious, named
Mencken
.

“Editors of early newspapers in America,” said Cedric Larson in 1937,
²
“delighted to give their organs pretentious names. Patriotism was exuberant … and the tyrannies of Europe were real.” The result was a great spate of such titles as
Vox Populi, Herald of Freedom, Flag of Our Union, Freeman, Spirit of Democracy
and
Genius of Liberty
. That fashion abated when the movement into the West began, and was succeeded by one for homelier and more picturesque names, often humorous,
e.g., Hustler, Avalanche, Breeze, Clarion, Tomahawk, Searchlight, Meteor, Headlight, Eagle, Scout, Plain Dealer
and
Bazoo
, most of them indicating a hot concern with the community interest. Walt Whitman, in “Slang in America,” recalled some curious Western examples: the Tombstone
Epitaph
in Arizona, the Fairplay
Flume
in Colorado (it still exists), the Ouray
Solid Muldoon
in the same State, and the
Jimplecute
in Texas; and Farmer, in his “Americanisms Old and New” added a
Rustler
, a
Cyclone
, a
Prairie Dog
, a
Cowboy
, a
Knuckle
and a
Lucifer
. Nearly all of these yielded to the ideas of elegance which came in after the Civil War, and Larson shows that most American newspapers, in the smaller towns as in the big cities, now have extremely decorous names. The favorite is
News
, which was borne by 375 of the 3,000-odd dailies of 1936, and it was followed in order by
Times, Journal, Herald, Tribune, Press
(including
Free Press
),
Star, Record
(or
Recorder
),
Democrat, Gazette, Post, Courier, Sun, Leader
and
Republican
(or
Republic
). The amalgamation of newspapers that has gone on since World War I has produced a large number of hyphenated names, and many a town of only a few thousand population has a
Times-Herald
, a
Star-Gazette
or a
Journal-Standard
. Many village weeklies seek to gain additional dignity by substituting in their names the name of the county they serve for that of the town, and some take in even larger areas, say a valley,
e.g
., the
Aroostook Republican
of Caribou, Maine, the
Everglades News
, of Canal Point, Fla., the
Sierra Valley News
, of Loyalton, Calif., and the
Eastern Shore Republican
, of Princess Anne, Md.

As I have said, not many of the old racy names survive, but here and there one is to be found,
e.g
., the
Rustler-Herald
of King City, Calif., the
Headlight
of Terry, Miss., the
Searchlight and Republic
of Culbertson, Mont., and the
Flashlight
of Eureka Springs, Mo. Among the college papers a more picturesque nomenclature remains more or less in fashion: there are specimens in the
Diamondback
at the University of Maryland, the
Polygraph
at the Billings (Mont.) Polytechnic Institute, the
Stilletto
at the Kirksville (Mo.) College of Osteopathy, and the
Sour Owl
at the University of Kansas. The little magazines which flourished in the 1890s usually had uncommon names, and in 1942 John Valentine listed some of them
¹
–
Angel’s Food, Gray Goose, Kit-Kat, Lucky Dog, White Elephant, Owl, Kiote
and
Black Cat
.
²
The papers published by soldiers during World War II – not the official papers edited by Army press-agents, but those produced by soldiers on their own – often had amusing names, but so far there has been no attempt to make a full list of them. In 1942 Thomas R. Henry
³
recorded a
White Falcon
in Iceland, a
Kodiak Bear
on Kodiak Island, a
Fever Sheet
at the Carlisle (Pa.) Army Hospital, a
Jungle Cat
in Panama, a
Horned Toad
at Las Vegas, Nev., and a
Midnight Sun
in Alaska.
⁴

522. [All the States have nicknames, and some have more than one.] The eldest seems to be
Old Dominion
, applied to Virginia. In its present form the DAE does not trace the term beyond 1778, but in an earlier form,
Ancient Dominion
, it goes back to the end of the Seventeenth Century.
Ancient Dominion
, however, was not, strictly speaking, a nickname, but simply a formal legal designation, born of the fact that Charles II, on ascending the English throne in 1660, quartered the arms of the Virginia colony upon his royal shield, along with those of his four other dominions, England, Scotland, Ireland and (in theory) France. Three years
later Charles granted Virginia a new seal, with the motto
En dat Virginia quintam
, and it continued in use until October, 1779, when it was supplanted by the present seal, with the new motto,
Sic semper tyrannis
, quoted with approbation by John Wilkes Booth on the evening of April 14, 1865. Both quartering and motto were graceful acknowledgments of the fact that Virginia was the first British possession to recognize the restored monarch. Two other once-familiar nicknames for the State, the
Cavalier State
and the
Mother of Presidents
, have lost vogue in recent years, the first because the researches of iconoclastic historians, both damyankee and native, have demonstrated that many of the early settlers were not cavaliers at all, but proletarians and even malefactors, and the second because though Virginia supplied the Republic with seven of its first dozen Presidents, it has hatched but one since the death of Zachary Taylor in 1850, to wit, Woodrow Wilson. The State has also been called the
Mother of States
, an allusion to the fact that a number of the new States west of the Blue Ridge were carved out of its soil and settled by its people. But this name, if the DAE searchers are to be trusted, was not applied to Virginia until 1855, whereas it had been given to Connecticut seventeen years earlier. Another old name for the State was
Mother of Statesmen
, but it fell into disuse when the Civil War broke up its old political hegemony. Since that time Virginia has produced very few statesmen of any size.

The DAE presents evidence that so long ago as December 2, 1784 George Washington referred to New York as “the seat of Empire,” but the term
Empire State
did not come into general use until the census of 1820 showed that the State had gone ahead of Virginia in population. After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 New York City acquired a commercial and financial preeminence that it has not lost since. At this time, and for that reason the State was dubbed the
Gateway to the West
, but the sobriquet is now forgotten. Another obsolete name,
Excelsior State
, was suggested by the fact that
Excelsior
is the motto on the seal of the State, adopted by the State Senate on March 18, 1778. It was assumed by the political Latinists at Albany that
excelsior
was an adverb meaning upward, and it was used in this sense by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1841 as the title of one of his most popular poems, but long years afterward the Oxford dons of the NED
announced that the word was really an adjective meaning simply higher. During the Civil War era of highfalutin
excelsior
became a common term indicating excellence, and was applied to regiments, restaurants, new strains of grain, and various manufactured products. It still survives as the name of the thin wood shavings used for stuffing upholstery and packing fragile objects, introduced in 1860. But
Empire State
goes on in full glory, and is in frequent use. The New York City telephone directory bristles with the names of companies embodying it, or its back-form,
Empire
. The
Empire State Express
, a celebrated train of the New York Central System, has been running since October 26, 1891, and for many years was the fastest long-run train in the United States.
¹
The
Empire State Building
at Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street, the highest structure on earth – 1287 feet, including its 102 stories and spire – was opened on May 1, 1931, and made the first pages of the world on July 28, 1945 by being rammed though not sunk by an Army airplane lost in a fog. Its captain, for many years, was the Hon. Al Smith, but he escaped this unprecedented experience by dying on October 14, 1944.

Another of the older State nicknames is that of Pennsylvania, the
Keystone State
. The DAE’s first example is dated January 23, 1818, when
Niles’ Register
said that “the powerful population and ample resources” of the State made it stand “as the
keystone
of the Federal arch.” This seems enough to account for the nickname, but there have been a number of more fanciful etymologies, two of which are given in George Earle Shankle’s “American Nicknames,”
²
and may be sought there by the curious. Pennsylvania, at one time or another, has also been called the
Coal State
, the
Oil State
and the
Steel State
, in each case for obvious reasons, but these names are seldom heard today. The designation
Quaker State
is sometimes used, but not nearly so often as
Quaker City
for Philadelphia. The DAE traces the latter to 1841, but it must be older.
Bay State
, for Massachusetts, is traced to 1801, and
Old Bay State
to 1838. Both refer to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, founded in 1628.
Old Colony
, traced by the DAE to 1798, refers to the settlement within the arms of Cape Cod, founded eight years earlier. Shankle records that Massachusetts, at different times, has also been called the
Puritan State
, the
Rock-ribbed State
and the
Baked-beans State
, but these designations are now seldom heard. Vermont, so far as I know, has never been described as anything save the
Green Mountain State
, which the DAE traces only to 1838, though
Green Mountain Boy
, to designate an inhabitant, goes back to 1772, a year after the militia so called was organized to protect the present territory of the State against forays from New York. The adjoining New Hampshire is usually called the
Granite State
, which the DAE traces to 1830. It has also been called the
White Mountain State
, the
Mother of Rivers
, and the
Switzerland of America
. These nicknames, however, have not had much vogue, for
White Mountain State
collides with the more popular
Green Mountain State
, the five rivers that arise in New Hampshire are all second-rate, and
Switzerland of America
is disputed by West Virginia, Colorado, Maine and New Jersey, not to mention the Ozark region and the Canadian Rockies country.