"What's in a name?" said Juliet in a moment of sweet unreasonableness; and hundreds of people have since gone about most laboriously to prove her. wrong. As if she did not know it, inded! As if she would have had Romeo called by any other name! As Sim Tappertit he could not have been as sweet.
Not only with persons, but with places also the name counts for a good deal. Some places seem to have been named in the beginning with a view to events for which they had to wait long; other places receive such names that no later history could enable them. What a well-chosen name for a siege was Plevna! Waterloo should not have been selected as the site of a great battle, but it docs very well for the victors, though Mont St. Jean sounds better; but it would seem as though any self-respecting troops would rather lose a fight than have such a name as Bull Run on their colours 'Natural names which seem to have grown on the soil are generally all right; and nothing could-be more satisfactory' than most names of continents and countries. Even some recently given names as America, and worse still, made names like Australia, are yet as good as could be desired. We have much to be than! ful for in that New Holland has dis appeared from the map, and that it is now too late to give the new world any such description and practical name as the Combined Republics of the Western Hemisphere: it will be America to the end of the world.
Made up names are sometimes odontic, as Nova Scotia; cumbersome and puerile as Newfoundland, or ridiculous as Prince Edward's Island. But for a great country no name could be more unfortunate than the United States of America, which is clumsy and artificial to the Inst' degree. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would be as bad except that it is so seldom heard; Britain or England suffices; but the United States will not for generations to come be able to dub itself (themselves?) America, which in fairness belongs to all the un-united states as well. One might almost have expected after such a collective name that the various States would have received numbers, like the blocks and avenues of their cities.. Happily they all have names, some very happy ones; sine made Pennsylvania, some simply given as Washington, some taken over with the soil. We thus have a strange mixture Washington and Massachusetts, Georgia and Arkansas.
Australia began badly with New South Wales, and did not much improve matters by Queensland and Victoria, The Queen is good and her name is a good one, but there are too many Victorias in the Gazetteer. In those other "'spacious times" the poet was abroad or else we might have been afflicted to this day with Elizabeths-land or Botsyland; but they knew better and gave us Virginia instead.
One very objectionable system of name-giving has obtained in South Africa, where the native tribe name is taken and made a hideous hybrid by adding the word land to it, as Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Griqualand and a dozen- more. "Even Rhodesia is better than this. Surely Bechuana and Mashona make decent names as they stand, and are quite long enough.
As to names of towns there is of course, nowhere like the United States for wild incongruity. Vulgar, real vulgar names and classic, the most trivial, modern, and most purely native, are found on the map side by side. Thus a mere glance over a map shows us, besides such whims as Circleville, Coffeeville, Big Dollar, etc., the followin; couples always not far apart; Athens an Kickapoo; Elysian Fields and Bethany New Carthage and Hard Times; Lebanon and Tomahawk; Florence and Oatmeal Paris and Ben Franklin, It is hopeless to expect that this kind of thing will ever be rectified in this world; we may still hope it will be judged in the next.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.