of Tims."—Therefore we beseech all persons
to use their diligence to make the names
they actually hold respectable, and not to
descend to the meaner American system
commemorated in a previous number of this
work (Number three hundred and forty-
eight), and exchange their honest but
undignified patronymics for others of a more
imposing sound; this is one way of filching
a good name not a bit more honourable than
the method reprobated by lago. Let Smiths
be Smiths, and Whites be Whites, and
Browns be Browns, and neither Smythes, nor
whyttes, nor Brownes. We see symptoms
of a snobbish desertion of their past identities
by many of the aspiring Benedicts of the
present day in the assumption, utterly
uncalled for by any accession of fortune or
estate, of the wife's name in addition to, if
not in place of his own. A month or two
after Wilkins's marriage to Miss Haddowfield,
we receive a note from our old friend
signed Wilkins Haddowfield,—or Haddowfield
Wilkins. This is paltry. Better go the
whole American at once, and change Wilkins
into Plantaganet. It might be worth the
while for such an improvement as that, to
forego all your previous existence,—your
youthful Wilkinship, your Wilkins manhood;
but for Haddowfield!—where is the gain ?
That rose smelt as sweetly before the change
as after it.

If an office for the legal acquisition of new
designation existed in this country, as it does
across the Atlantic, we ought to improve
upon our model by regulating the price of
the commodity by its worth and quality.
Are we to pay the same for permission to
dub ourselves Smithson as De Mowbray? It
should be a question in the Rule of Three:—
if Buttons is worth two shillings, what will
be the value of De Vere? It would then be
some index to a man's pecuniary
circumstances as well as to his taste in nomenclature.
And that would be some advantage,
especially if the name were found on the back
of a bill. There is another paltry and
contemptible way of shaking off our baptismal
and family obligations. A man vainly
flatters himself that he increases his personal
respectability by merely changing a letter.
It does not seem much, but the animus is
the same. The man who transforms Binks
into Banks would be wiser, but not a whit
more respectable, if he changed it into
Montgomery. We might be inclined to pardon a
William Pott for altering the o so as to be
William Pitt; but the want of self-respect is
as much shown in this as in greater
alterations. Let those people rather go to some
region where their names are established as
first-rate commodities already; for there are
districts in England, if we only found them
out, where appellations apparently ludicrous
and suggestive of low ideas to the uninitiated
are redolent of dignity and wealth to the old
accustomed neighbours. There may be Potts
in Staffordshire more honoured than all the
Chathams, and even Banks more trustworthy
than all the British Banks. We ourselves
have heard a squire of high degree summon
his butler by the chivalric name of Somerset,
and the squire's own name was Griggs! In
that neighbourhood all the Beauforts had no
chance against the monosyllable. A list of
the sherrifs of any year, a catalogue of a
grand jury, a glance into any local history
will show the strangest names combined in
their own distict with rank and influence.
A late author makes one of the characters in
a drama, of which the great republican orator
was one of the heroes say:—"There is a
sound of thunder in the name of Pym."
And so there is, where the Pyms hold vast
estates and have inherited halls and manors
for two or three hundred years. Therefore
let us do justice to the persistent dignity of
to the bearers of all curious or cacophonous or
even laughable appellations, who have had
the manliness to retain them in spite of
jeers and insults of an unthinking world.
And the number of these nominal martyrs—
more real than half the sufferers on the
hagiology—is still immensely large. Even
in America, where the change of name is
recognised by law, and not much objected to
by public opinion, there are many thousands
who have stood fast to their original colours
—and fortunately an American enquirer,
curious in this matter, comes to the rescue of
his countrymen, and proves from the
enormous number of instances he gives, of proper
names, falsely so called, which are suggestions
of ridicule or amazement, that the great body
of the people is still uncontaminated by this
first infirmity of feeble minds; but with the
peerage of all nations before them they
adhere to their natal appellations, unmindful
of Courtrays, and Montmorencies, and
Esterhazies, and Medina Celis. Mr N. I.
Bowditch (query why doesn't he give his names
in full instead of initials?) has compiled a
small volume of what may be called the
curiousities of nomenclature, and has rendered
it as interesting to the Britisher as to the
Yankee, by extending his research into the
name-registers of the Anglo-Saxons. His
chief sources indeed for the English and
Scotch portions are the long lists of the
original subscribers to the Pope's Iliad and
Odyssey, to Thomson's Seasons and the
Macklin Bible; but the principal value of
his excellent and quaintly humorous little
book is the examples he gives us from his
own fellow citizens in Boston, and other
portions of his state. The first indication
we come to of the standing of the author
shows that his professional opportunities
must have greatly facilitated his work. He
seems a lawyer in some official situation, for
in a paragraph about the astounding length
of some of his countrymen's names, we come
to the following anecdote:—A married lady
of this city (Mrs J.) was in eighteen hundred