WHAT’S IN A NAME?
When we are told that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ the fact appears to be self-evident. Yet there was a time when there was something in a name. We have abundant evidence from the history of the ancients, and from observations of savage tribes, to show that they believed in some inseparable and mysterious connection between a name and the object bearing it, which has given rise to a remarkable series of superstitions, some of which have left traces even amongst ourselves.
The Jews believed that the name of a child would have a great influence in shaping its career; and we have a remarkable instance of this sort of superstition in quite a different quarter of the world. Catlin, the historian of the Canadian Indians, tells us that when he was among the Mohawks, an old chief, by way of paying him a great compliment, insisted on conferring upon him his own name, Cayendorongue. ‘He had been,’ Catlin explains, ‘a noted warrior; and told me that now I had a right to assume to myself all the acts of valour he had performed, and that now my name would echo from hill to hill over all the Five Nations.’
The generosity of the Mohawk chief will doubtless be more appreciated when we observe that it is seldom the superstition takes the form of giving one’s name away as in his case; on the contrary, most savages are very much opposed to mentioning their names. A well-known writer points out that the Indians of British Columbia have a strange prejudice against telling their own names, and his observation is confirmed by travellers all over the world. In many tribes, if the indiscreet question is asked them, they will nudge their neighbour and get him to answer for them. The mention of a name by the unwary has sometimes been followed by unpleasant results. We are told, for instance, by Mr Blackhouse, of a native lady of Van Diemen’s Land who stoned an English gentleman for having, in his ignorance of Tasmanian etiquette, casually mentioned the name of one of her sons. Nothing will induce a Hindu woman to mention the name of her husband; in alluding to him she uses a variety of descriptive epithets, such as ‘the master,’ &c., but avoids his proper name with as scrupulous care as members of the House of Commons when speaking of each other in the course of debate. Traces of this may be seen even in Scotland; one may often come across women in rural districts who are in the habit of speaking of their husbands by no other name than ‘he.’ To such an extent is this superstition carried among some savage tribes, that the real names of children are concealed from their birth upwards, and they are known by fictitious names until their death.
The fear of witchcraft probably is the explanation of all those superstitions. If a name gets known to a sorcerer, he can use it as a handle wherewith to work his spells upon the bearer. When the Romans laid siege to a town, they set about at once to discover the name of its tutelary deity, so that they might coax the god into surrendering his charge. In order to prevent their receiving the same treatment at the hands of their enemies, they carefully concealed the name of the tutelary deity of Rome, and are said to have killed Valerius Soranus for divulging it. We have several examples in our nursery tales of the concealment of a name being connected with a spell. It is made use of by Wagner in the plot of his opera of Lohengrin, where the hero, yielding to the curiosity of his lady-love, divulges the secret of his name, and has in consequence to leave her and return to a state of enchantment. In Grimm’s tale of The Gold Spinner, again, we have an instance of a spell being broken by the discovery of the sorcerer’s name.
Reluctance to mention names reaches its height in the case of dangerous or mysterious agencies. In Borneo, the natives avoid naming the smallpox. In Germany, the hare must not be named, or the rye-crop will be destroyed; and to mention the name of this innocent animal at sea, is, or was, reckoned by the Aberdeenshire fishermen an act of impiety, the punishment of which to be averted only by some mysterious charm. The Laplanders never mention the name of the bear, but prefer to speak of him as ‘the old man with the fur-coat.’ The motive here appears to be a fear that by naming the dreaded object his actual presence will be evoked; and this idea is preserved in one of our commonest sayings. Even if the object of terror does not actually appear, he will at least listen when he hears his name; and if anything unpleasant is said of him he is likely to resent it. Hence, in order to avoid even the semblance of reproach, his very name is made flattering. This phenomenon, generally termed euphemism, is of very common occurrence. The Greeks, for example, called the Furies the ‘Well-disposed ones;’ and the wicked fairy Puck was christened ‘Robin Goodfellow’ by the English peasantry. The modern Greeks euphemise the name of vinegar into ‘the sweet one.’ Were its real name to be mentioned, all the wine in the house would turn sour. We have an example of the converse of the principle of euphemism at work in the case of mothers among the savage tribes of Tonquin giving their children hideous names in order to frighten away evil spirits from molesting them.
It is, however, in the case of the most dreaded and most mysterious of all our enemies—Death—that the superstition becomes most apparent. ‘The very name of Death,’ says Montaigne, ‘strikes terror into people, and makes them cross themselves.’ Even the unsuperstitious have a vague reluctance to mentioning this dreaded name. Rather than say, ‘If Mr So-and-so should die,’ we say, ‘If anything should happen to Mr So-and-so.’ The Romans preferred the expression ‘He has lived’ to ‘He is dead.’ ‘M. Thiers a vécu’ was the form in which that statesman’s death was announced; not ‘M. Thiers est mort.’
The same reluctance is noticeable in mentioning the names of persons who are dead. A writer on the Shetland Isles tells us that no persuasion will induce a widow to mention her dead husband’s name. When we do happen to allude to a deceased friend by name, we often add some such expression as ‘Rest his soul!’ by way of antidote to our rashness; and this expression seems to have been used by the Romans in the same way. As might be expected, we find this carried to a great extreme among savages. In some tribes, when a man dies who bore the name of some common object—‘fire,’ for instance—the name for fire must be altered in consequence; and as proper names among savages are almost invariably the names of common objects, the rapid change that takes place in the language and the inconvenience resulting therefrom may be imagined. Civilisation has indeed made enormous progress from this cumbersome superstition to our own philosophy, which can ask with haughty indifference, ‘What’s in a name?’