CHAPTER VIII.

SUMMARY: THE NAME-MAKING PROCESS.

Review of the processes of change; their contribution to name-making. Degrees of reflectiveness in name-making. Antecedence of the conception to its sign; illustrations; examination of arguments used against this view. Sources of the material of names; artificiality of the tie between name and idea. Etymological inquiries; character of the reasons for names; a science of morphology. Force concerned in name-making; the linguistic faculty; false views and their grounds examined. Part taken by the community in the process; its relation to the action of individuals.

WE have now finished our compendious review of the individual processes at least, the leading ones—of which is made up the growth of languages like ours. In order to understand the historical movement of any language at a given period, we need to analyze it into such parts as these, and to see how, separately and together, they are working; to note the kind and degree of activity of each, and trace, if possible, the causes that determine their difference. In our exposition and illustration, we have had in view especially their agency in the recent and present growth of English; and we cannot spend the time, nor is it necessary, to take any more notice of their different operation in other languages than we have already incidentally done, and shall have occasion in the same way to do hereafter.

We go on, rather, to consider certain general principles, mainly derivable in the way of inference from the details we have had before us, and bearing upon the general process of name-giving, or the provision of signs for conceptions. The other departments of linguistic change, as we have already seen, are of comparatively subordinate importance and not difficult of explanation; but to understand fully the means whereby language compasses the expression of whatever calls for expression is to comprehend the essential nature of linguistic growth, and even that of language itself.

We will begin by noticing that a part of the namegiving process, at any rate, is easy enough to understand; it goes on in the broadest daylight. When a human being is born into the world, custom, founded in convenience, requires that he have a name; and those who are responsible for his existence furnish the required adjunct, according to their individual tastes, which are virtually a reflection of those of the community in which they live. English-speaking parents do not give a Chinese or a Sioux name, nor vice versâ ; the saint to whom his natal or christening day is sacred, a conspicuous public character, a relation from whom expectations are entertained, or something else equally unessential, directs their choice; no matter what, so long as the individual is named, and with such a name that neither the community who call him by it, nor he himself later, shall revolt and insist on another appellation. Such an act as this may seem to have little to do with general language; but that depends upon circumstances: the proper name Julius has ended in our calling a month July; the nickname Caesar has given the title to the heads of two great nations, Germany and Russia (kaiser, czar); the christening of the baby Ves

pucci as Amerigo has led to America and American. So also with a planet: Herschel had the naming of Uranus, and Leverrier of Neptune; only they too were guided by the already established usages of language and the consequent preferences of the community; the name of Georgium sidus, with which, in the former case, it was unworthily sought to flatter a monarch, was frowned upon, and dropped out of sight. The discoverers of the asteroids enjoy the same privilege; and under the same conditions. So with all scientific discoverers; they exercise a prerogative, yet under limitations; they must respect the prejudices of their fellows, and they must prove their right as nomenclators: in the scientific community, as every one knows, the claims of rival name-makers are very sharply discussed, under government of nicely-established rules. So with inventors likewise: to each is conceded a limited right to give a name, or to determine the acceptance of a name given by some one else, to what he has produced. Nor is the case different anywhere in the technical vocabularies of art, of science, of philosophy. The metaphysician who draws a new distinction denominates it; he is even allowed-always with restrictions-to recast the whole vocabulary of his department, for his own special convenience; and if the other philosophers are convinced of the usefulness of the change, they ratify it.

All this is done under the full review of consciousness. There is first the apprehension of something as calling for expression, or for better expression, and then the reaching out after, and the obtaining in some way, the means of expression.

But just this, only with variety in the degree of consciousness involved, is the nature of the process of

name-making in all its varieties. If it were not so, language would consist of two discordant parts, one made in this way, and one in some other. Let us consider it a little more particularly, with reference to some of the principles involved.

First, there is always and everywhere an antecedency of the conception to the expression. In common phrase, we first have our idea, and then get a name for it. This is so palpably true of all the more reflective processes that no one would think of denying it; to do so would be to maintain that the planet, or plant, or animal, could not be found and recognized as something yet unnamed until a title had been selected and made ready for clapping upon it; that the child could not be born until the christening-bowl was ready. But it is equally true, only not so palpable, in all the less conscious acts, all the way down the scale to the most instinctive. The principle of life, for example, was called animus, 'blowing,' or spiritus, 'breathing,' because the nomenclators had a dim, to us a wholly insufficient, apprehension of something within the bodily frame, distinct from it, though governing and directing it, something which could come to an end while the body continued in existence; and because the breath seemed a peculiar manifestation of this something, its stoppage being the most conspicuous sign of the latter's death: they seized the expression for an already formed conception as undeniably as did the anatomist who, by an equally bold figure, first applied inosculation to the observed connection of the arteries and veins. Every figurative transfer which ever made a successful designation for some non-sensible act or relation, before undesignated, rested upon a previous perception of analogy between the one thing and the other: no one said apprehend of an idea

until he had felt the resemblance between the reachingout of the bodily organs after a physical object they want to handle and the striving of the mental powers toward a like end; we repeat the act when we say "you don't get hold of my meaning." No one said "a thought strikes me," or "occurs to me" (i. e. 'runs against me'), or "comes into my head" (German, fällt mir ein, 'falls in to me'), except as result of an analogy which his mind had discovered between the intellectual and the physical action. When a certain new shade of red had been produced by the creative ingenuity of modern chemistry, the next thing was to give it a name; and magenta was pitched upon, by a perfectly conscious process, because historical causes had at about that time given a celebrity to the town Magenta: the name was not a whit more indispensable to the conception of the color than, at a period so much more ancient that we cannot get back to it, the name green had been to the conception of its color: men said green when they had observed the distinction of this from other colors, and its especial appurtenance to growing' things. And if we were to trace the etymology of any other similar word, we should find it of the same character. Nor is the genesis of form-words and forms unlike this. Off was changed to a (virtual) sign of the genitive case, and to to an infinitive sign, by a long succession of steps, each of which was a putting of the word to a use slightly different from that which it had served before, in order to answer a felt need of expression; and nothing other than this is implied in the making of loved, of donnerai, of amabam, of dwow, of asmi (am).

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We might go over the whole list of illustrations given in the preceding chapters, and as many more as