Names: and Their Meaning. Leopold Wagner
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point to the nationality of the navigators who discovered them or of the adventurers who explored and colonized them. The maritime enterprise of the Spanish and Portuguese is in nothing so evident as in the territories named in accordance with their respective languages in South and Central America, to say nothing of the islands discovered by them in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. And, as a set-off against the shameful treatment by the Spaniards of Christopher Columbus, it must not be forgotten that the whole of the North American territory now embraced in the United States was originally designated Columbia in his honour, which name has been preserved in the Western portion of the continent known as British Columbia. A few Spanish names still linger in North America, notably California, Labrador, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, and Colorado. But the Spaniards were rovers rather than settlers; wherefore they contented themselves with maintaining their national reputation as successful navigators by giving names to the countries they discovered, and establishing a lucrative trading monopoly in that portion of the Caribbean Sea which formerly bore the name of the Spanish Main.
On the contrary, the English and French have distinguished themselves always, and all the world over, as colonists; so that, saving those States of North America which have received the native names of the great lakes and rivers, we can discover exactly which were colonized by the one nation and which by the other. Moreover, the English and French have generally exercised the common trait of honouring the mother country by naming a new colony or a newly-discovered island after the reigning monarch or a distinguished countryman. A similar trait in the Dutch character presents itself in the repetition of the names of the native places of their navigators and colonists; while the Spaniards and Portuguese have displayed a tendency for naming an island discovered or a river explored by them in a manner commemorative of the day that witnessed the event. At the same time, it would not be wise to conjecture, merely from the name, that Columbus discovered the island of Trinidad on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, because he did nothing of the kind. Therefore, it behoves the curious inquirer to make himself acquainted with the circumstances under which our geographical names have arisen, so as to avoid falling into error. As well might he maintain, without the requisite knowledge, that the Canary Islands owed their designation to the birds that have so long been exported thence; for although such a conclusion were extremely plausible, he would still be at a loss to know how the canaries came by their name in the first place.
A like difficulty is liable to be encountered relative to the Sandwich Islands. A particularly smart boy might, indeed, be expected to inform us, as the outcome of a hastily-formed opinion, that the Sandwich Islands were so called because a shipwrecked crew who once found a refuge thereon continued to support themselves until such time as they were rescued by a passing vessel upon sandwiches. The bare idea may be laughed at; but it is no more preposterous than that the Canary Islands received their name from the birds that are found there in such plenty. The question at issue furnishes an example as to how a name may be perpetuated in different ways. Thus, Captain Cook named the Sandwich Islands in compliment to John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty, who took his title from Sandwich, or, as the etymology of this place implies, the “sand town,” one of the ancient Cinque Ports in Kent. An inveterate gamester was this Lord Sandwich; so much so that he would sit at the gaming-table for thirty hours and more at a stretch, never desisting from the game to partake of a meal, but from time to time ordering the waiter to bring him some slices of meat placed between two slices of thin bread, from which circumstance this convenient form of refreshment received the name of Sandwiches.
Mention of sandwiches reminds us that very few tradesmen possess the remotest idea of the significance of the names of the various commodities in which they deal. Ask a purveyor of ham and beef to explain the origin of the word Sandwich, and he will be quite unable to furnish an answer. Put a similar question to a Tobacconist, and it will be found that he has never interested himself to the extent of inquiring what the word Tobacco means, not to speak of the names of the different kinds of tobacco. A Haberdasher, again, would be sorely perplexed to account for his individual trade-name; so would a Milliner, so would a Grocer, so would a Tailor; and so would almost every one who passes for an intelligent citizen, yet whose reflections have never been directed toward those trifling concerns which, as one might be led to suppose, are most immediately interesting to him. And so we might go on multiplying examples until this Introduction reached an altogether inordinate length, with no other object than to arouse the reader’s interest in the pages that follow. But the necessity for a more extended Introduction does not arise. The scope of this work will be sufficiently indicated by the Analytical Table of Contents; but even there a very large number of names incidentally referred to in the text have not been included. The Index may be somewhat more to the purpose, inasmuch as every item set forth therein will be found not merely alluded to but discussed in the book; and to the book itself the reader is now referred.
London.
THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD
The oldest of the four great divisions of the world received its modern designation Asia from the Sanskrit Ushas, signifying “land of the dawn.” Africa traces its origin to the Phœnician afer, a black man, and the Sanskrit ac, the earth, a country. Europe owes its name to the Greek eurus, broad, and op, to see, or ops, the face, in allusion to “the broad face of the earth.” America honours the memory of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator, who landed on the New Continent south of the Equator, the year after Columbus discovered the northern mainland in 1498. The name of America first appeared in a work published by Waldsemüller at St. Die, in Lorraine, in the year 1507. It is worthy of note that when Columbus landed in America he imagined he had set foot on part of that vast territory east of the Ganges vaguely known as India; therefore he gave the name of Indians to the aborigines. This also accounts for the islands in the Caribbean Sea being styled the West Indies.
The cradle of the human race bears the name of Palestine, or in Hebrew Palestina, meaning “the land of strangers,” agreeably to the native word palash, to wander. Palestine is usually denominated the Holy Land, because it was the scene of the birth, life, and death of the Redeemer. Asia Minor is, of course, Lesser Asia.
For the title of Persia we are indebted to the Greeks, who gave the name of Persis to the region (of which the capital was Persipolis) originally overrun by a wild branch of the Ayrian race called the Parsa, meaning, in the native tongue, “the Tigers” [see Parsees]. The suffix ia, wherever it occurs in a geographical sense, expresses the Celtic for land or territory. Hence, Persia signifies the territory of the Parsa or Parsees; Arabia, the country of the Arabs, “men of the desert”; Abyssinia, that of the Abassins, or “mixed races”; Kaffraria, that of the Kaffirs, or “unbelievers”; and Ethiopia, the “land of the blacks,” according to the two Greek words aithein, to burn, and ops, the face. India denotes the country traversed by the Indus, or rather the Hindu, which name is a Persicized form of the Sanskrit Sindhu, “a great river,” rendered Hindus in the Greek. Synonymous with the Celtic suffix just discussed is the Persian stan: consequently Hindustan signifies the territory traversed by the river Hindu, and peopled by the Hindoos; Turkestan, the country of the Turks; Afghanistan, that of the Afghans; Beloochistan, that of the Belooches; and Kurdestan, properly Koordistan, that of the Koords. The term China is a western corruption of Tsina, so called in honour of Tsin, the founder of the great dynasty which commenced in the third century b.c., when a knowledge of this country was first conveyed to the Western nations. It was this Tsin who built the Great Wall of China (or Tsin) to keep out the Barbarians. The Chinese Empire bears the description of the Celestial Empire because its early rulers were all celestial deities. Siberia is a term indicative of Siber, the residence of Kutsheen Khan, the celebrated Tartar prince, recognized as the ancient capital of the Tartars, the ruins of which may still be seen. Here again the Celtic suffix ia has reference to the surrounding territory.