[101] Take, for instance, the word “fal-lals,” borrowed from the burden of a song, and often used to describe female vanities. Does not this word afford a curious analogy to the word “falbala,” the origin of which (to express similar articles) has occupied the attention of distinguished philosophers? It has been explained as follows. It is said that a witty prince of the eighteenth century once entered an elegant shop, and determined to try to the utmost the assurance of the (probably pretty) milliner. He therefore asked for a falbala, inventing the oddest vocable he could think of. With admirable but unconscious insight into the principle of language, the undisturbed female at once brought him the garniture de robe called volant, which ended in light floating points. She instinctively caught the notion involved in flabella, flammula, &c.—Nodier, p. 211. The story is told differently by De Brosses, Form Méch. ch. xvi. § 14. The word has excited much discussion. Leibnitz connects it with fald-plat, and Hoffman with furbelow. Charma, p. 306. The murderer, Pierre Rivière, invented the word ennepharer for the torture to which he used, when a boy, to subject frogs; and the word calibène for the instrument which he constructed to kill birds. Charma, p. 66. Du Mérit notices the purely musical names which children instinctively give to those who inspire them with strongly marked feelings of love. “Rumpelstiltskin,” the name of the imp in the fairy tale, is a good instance of the reverse.
[102] It is mainly among the people, rather than with philosophers, that the power of inventing names has lingered. Some write the name Plonplon, and make it a familiar abbreviation of Napoleon; but accomplished Frenchmen give differing accounts of the word.
[103] “Ὄνομα ποίεω. Ὀνοματοποιΐα est dictio ad imitandum sonum vocis conficta, ut cum dicimus hinnire equos, balare oves, stridere valvas.” Charis. iv. p. 245. Lersch, i. 129-232. The Latins call it “fictio nominis.”
[104] Renan, p. 136. We have already endeavoured to guard against the misconception that language is in any sense a result of imitation: a mere power of imitating the sounds of nature belongs to animals as well as to man.—Heyse, s. 91, and supra ch. i.
[105] Wedgwood’s Etym. Dict. p. v. It is necessary to be cautious, of course, in deducing the processes of language from the observation of children. See Heyse, s. 47. The word moo-cow is a mixture of pure onomatopœia, and onomatopœia after it has become conventional.
[106] See the lists of such vocabularies in the Transactions of the Philol. Soc.
[107] Wedgwood, p. v.
[108] L. 45. “Proprium tigridis, a sono. Alii leg. raucant.”—Forcellini, Lex.
[109] Wedgwood, p. vi. The name is not native probably, for the native tribe-names mostly end in qua; as Griqua, Namaqua, &c.
[110] Nodier, p. 79 seq. Dr. Pickering quotes an account of the original people of Malay, in which it is said that “their language is not understood by any one: they lisp their words, the sound of which is like the noise of birds.” (Races of Man. Bohn ed. p. 305.)