Among the crotchets of Sterne’s dialectician, Walter Shandy, was a theory regarding the importance of Christian names in determining the future behavior and destiny of the children to whom they are given. He solemnly maintained the opinion that there is a strange kind of magic bias which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impress upon men’s character or conduct. “How many Cæsars and Pompeys,” he would say, “by mere inspiration of their names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many there are,” he would add, “who might have done exceedingly well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been utterly depressed and Nicodemused into nothing!” Of all the names in the universe the one to which the philosopher had the most unconquerable aversion was “Tristram.” He would break off in the midst of one of his disputes on the subject of names, and demand of his antagonist whether he would say he had ever remembered, or whether he had ever heard tell of a man called “Tristram” performing anything great or worth recording. “No,” he would say; “Tristram! the thing is impossible.”
In these observations of Mr. Shandy there may be some exaggeration, but they contain substantial truth. The power of names in elevating or degrading both the things and persons to whom they are applied, is known to all thoughtful observers. Give to a conscious being a significant and graphic appellation, and it tends to make the character gravitate in the direction of the name. There are names that seem to act like promissory notes, which the bearer does all in his power to redeem at maturity; names that tend to verify themselves by swaying men toward the qualities they denote, while they too often lead to the exclusion of others no less important. It is difficult to say which is the greater misfortune, for a man to have a positively mean name, or one that is grandiose. Lord Lytton, in “Kenelm Chillingly,” speaking of the moral responsibilities of parents for the names they give their children, regards as equally to be deprecated the names which stamp a child with mediocrity, and those which stamp him with an impress of absurd and overweening ambition. Inflict upon a man, he says, the burden of a great name which he must utterly despair of equalling, and you crush him beneath the weight. If a poet were called John Milton, or William Shakespeare, he would not dare publish even a sonnet. On the other hand, call a child Peter Snooks or Lazarus Rust, and though he have the face and form of the god of the silver bow, and the eloquence of a Chatham, he will find it hard, if not impossible, to achieve distinction,—the name will be such a dead weight on his intellectual energies. Can Tabitha be a name to conjure with; can Jerusha be musical on the lips of love, or Higginbotham fill the trump of fame? Think of Washington having the name of Jenkins, and toasts being drunk to the immortal Jenkins, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen!” The true choice of a name lies between extremes,—the two extremes of ludicrous insignificance and oppressive renown. It is questionable whether a good deal of the mediocrity of the reigning families in Europe is not due to the labyrinth of names in which the heir to a throne is hidden at birth, like a moth in a silk cocoon. Some years ago an infant prince of Saxony was enveloped in sixteen names. About forty years ago the Queen of Naples gave birth to a princess whose names numbered thirty-two, or a dozen more than the names of Susan Brown, of whom we are told that
“The patronymical name of the maid
Was so completely overlaid
With a long prenomical cover,
That if each additional proper noun
Was laid by the priest intensively down,
Miss Susan was done uncommonly Brown,
The moment the christening was over!”
Think of an infant’s being smothered for years in such a superfetation of names as that of the Neapolitan princess. It must require more mental energy than many babies can command, to break one’s way out of such a verbal palace prison as that.