Many of the great streets and squares of the West End of London have taken their names from the houses of noblemen who have lived there, or from the names of the rich owners of property in these parts. Northumberland Avenue, opening off Trafalgar Square, takes its name from Northumberland House, built there in the time of James I. Arundel Street, running down to the Embankment from the Strand, is so called in memory of Arundel House, the home of the Earl of Arundel, which used to stand here. It was there that the famous collection of statues known as the "Arundel Marbles" was first collected. They were presented to Oxford University in 1667.
Just near Charing Cross there is a part of old London called the Adelphi. This district takes its name from a fine group of buildings put up there in the middle of the eighteenth century by the two famous brother architects Robert and William Adam. Adelphi is the Greek word for "brothers," but the name seems very peculiar applied in this way.
The name of Mayfair, the very centre of fashion in the West End, reminds us that in this magnificent quarter of London a fair used to be held in May in the time of Charles II. This gives us an idea of how the district must have changed since then. Farm Street, in Mayfair, has its name from a farm which was still there in the middle of the eighteenth century. The ground is now taken up by stables and coach-houses. Half-Moon Street, another fashionable street running out of Piccadilly, takes its name from a public house which was built on this corner in 1730.
These old names give us some idea of what London was like at different times in the past; but another very interesting group of names are those which are being made in the greater London of to-day. One of the commonest words used by Londoners to-day is the Underground. If an eighteenth-century Londoner could come back and talk to us to-day he would not know what we meant by this word. For the great system of underground railways to which it refers was only made in the later years of the nineteenth century. The Twopenny Tube was the name of one of the first lines of these underground railways. It was so called because the trains ran through great circular tunnels, like the underground railways which connect all parts of London to-day. It has now become quite a habit of Londoners to talk of going "by Tube" when they mean by any of the underground railways.
One of these lines has a very peculiar and rather ugly name. It is called the Bakerloo Railway, because it runs from Baker Street to Waterloo. It certainly makes us think that the Londoners of long ago showed much better taste in the names they invented.
CHAPTER VI.
WORDS MADE BY GREAT WRITERS.
As we have seen, languages while they are living are always growing and changing. We have seen how new names have been made as time went on. But many new words besides names are constantly being added to a language; for just as grown-up people use more words than children, and educated people use more words than uneducated or less educated people, so, too, nations use more words as time goes on. Every word must have been used a first time by some one; but of course it is impossible to know who were the makers of most words. Even new words cannot often be traced to their makers. Some one uses a new word, and others pick it up, and it passes into general use, while everybody has forgotten who made it.