National Nomenclature - Prose Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A B B C B D E F G H G I E G J B K L BC| To the Editor of the Knickerbocker | A |
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| SIR I am somewhat of the same way of thinking in regard to names with that profound philosopher Mr Shandy the elder who maintained that some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims while others entailed irretrievable meanness and vulgarity insomuch that a man might sink under the insignificance of his name and be absolutely Nicodemused into nothing I have ever therefore thought it a great hardship for a man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or ignoble Christian name as it is too often falsely called inflicted on him in infancy when he could not choose for himself and would give him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste when he had arrived at years of discretion | B |
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| I have the same notion with respect to local names Some at once prepossess us in favor of a place others repel us by unlucky associations of the mind and I have known scenes worthy of being the very haunt of poetry and romance yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity by some ill chosen name which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation | B |
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| This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty but some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of remaining for ever unhonored and unsung from bearing appellations totally abhorrent to the Muse In the first place our country is deluged with names taken from places in the old world and applied to places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention and a second hand spirit content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast off clothes of Europe | C |
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| Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship the whole catalogue of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere's Classical Dictionary and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the names of the heroes poets and sages of antiquity jumbled into the most whimsical juxtaposition Then we have our political god fathers topographical engineers perhaps or persons employed by government to survey and lay out townships These forsooth glorify the patrons that give them bread so we have the names of the great official men of the day scattered over the land as if they were the real salt of the earth with which it was to be seasoned Well for us is it when these official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation but wo unto us should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power we are sure in a little while to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every direction | B |
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| Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty therefore Mr Editor it is with a feeling of dawning hope that I have lately perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be awakened on this subject I trust if the matter should once be taken up it will not be readily abandoned We are yet young enough as a country to remedy and reform much of what has been done and to release many of our rising towns and cities and our noble streams from names calculated to vulgarize the land | D |
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| I have on a former occasion suggested the expediency of searching out the original Indian names of places and wherever they are striking and euphonious and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly objectionable to restore them They would have the merit of originality and of belonging to the country and they would remain as reliques of the native lords of the soil when every other vestige had disappeared Many of these names may easily be regained by reference to old title deeds and to the archives of states and counties In my own case by examining the records of the county clerk's office I have discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the neighborhood and have found them infinitely superior to the trite poverty stricken names which had been given by the settlers A beautiful pastoral stream for instance which winds for many a mile through one of the loveliest little valleys in the state has long been known by the common place name of the Saw mill River In the old Indian grants it is designated as the Neperan Another a perfectly wizard stream which winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow bears the hum drum name of Mill Creek in the Indian grants it sustains the euphonious title of the Pocantico | E |
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| Similar researches have released Long Island from many of those paltry and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores their Cow Bays and Cow Necks and Oyster Ponds and Mosquito Coves which spread a spell of vulgarity over the whole island and kept persons of taste and fancy at a distance | F |
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| It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies which are springing up in various parts of the Union to have maps executed of their respective states or neighborhoods in which all the Indian local names should as far as possible be restored In fact it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society or rather a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment of all parts of the Union Such an association if properly constituted and composed comprising especially all the literary talent of the country though it might not have legislative power in its enactments yet would have the all pervading power of the press and the changes in nomenclature which it might dictate being at once adopted by elegant writers in prose and poetry and interwoven with the literature of the country would ultimately pass into popular currency | G |
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| Should such a reforming association arise I beg to recommend to its attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective New prefixed to them and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country I am for none of these second hand appellations that stamp us a second hand people and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the end of time Odds my life Mr Editor I hope and trust we are to live to be an old nation as well as our neighbors and have no idea that our cities when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity shall still be dubbed New York and New London and new this and new that like the Pont Neuf the New Bridge at Paris which is the oldest bridge in that capital or like the Vicar of Wakefield's horse which continued to be called the colt until he died of old age | H |
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| Speaking of New York reminds me of some observations which I met with some time since in one of the public papers about the name of our state and city The writer proposes to substitute for the present names those of the State of Ontario and the CITY OF MANHATTAN I concur in his suggestion most heartily Though born and brought up in the city of New York and though I love every stick and stone about it yet I do not nor ever did relish its name I like neither its sound nor its significance As to its significance the very adjective new gives to our great commercial metropolis a second hand character as if referring to some older more dignified and important place of which it was a mere copy though in fact if I am rightly informed the whole name commemorates a grant by Charles II to his brother the duke of York made in the spirit of royal munificence of a tract of country which did not belong to him As to the sound what can you make of it either in poetry or prose New York Why Sir if it were to share the fate of Troy itself to suffer a ten years' siege and be sacked and plundered no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to epic dignity | G |
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| Now Sir ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state It bears with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern shore Or if any objection should be made from its not being completely embraced within our boundaries there is the MOHEGAN one of the Indian names for that glorious river the Hudson which would furnish an excellent state appellation So also New York might be called Manhatta as it is named in some of the early records and Manhattan used as the adjective Manhattan however stands well as a substantive and Manhattanese which I observe Mr COOPER has adopted in some of his writings would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the commercial metropolis | I |
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| A word or two more Mr Editor and I have done We want a NATIONAL NAME We want it poetically and we want it politically With the poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself I leave it to our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words The United States of North America down the swelling tide of song and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy I am now speaking of the mere purposes of common life How is a citizen of this republic to designate himself As an American There are two Americas each subdivided into various empires rapidly rising in importance As a citizen of the United States It is a clumsy lumbering title yet still it is not distinctive for we have now the United States of Central America and heaven knows how many United States may spring up under the Proteus changes of Spanish America | E |
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| This may appear matter of small concernment but any one that has travelled in foreign countries must be conscious of the embarrassment and circumlocution sometimes occasioned by the want of a perfectly distinct and explicit national appellation In France when I have announced myself as an American I have been supposed to belong to one of the French colonies in Spain to be from Mexico or Peru or some other Spanish American country Repeatedly have I found myself involved in a long geographical and political definition of my national identity | G |
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| Now Sir meaning no disrespect to any of our co heirs of this great quarter of the world I am for none of this coparceny in a name that is to mingle us up with the riff raff colonies and off sets of every nation of Europe The title of American may serve to tell the quarter of the world to which I belong the same as a Frenchman or an Englishman may call himself a European but I want my own peculiar national name to rally under I want an appellation that shall tell at once and in a way not to be mistaken that I belong to this very portion of America geographical and political to which it is my pride and happiness to belong that I am of the Anglo Saxon race which founded this Anglo Saxon empire in the wilderness and that I have no part or parcel with any other race or empire Spanish French or Portuguese in either of the Americas Such an appellation Sir would have magic in it It would bind every part of the confederacy together as with a keystone it would be a passport to the citizen of our republic throughout the world | J |
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| We have it in our power to furnish ourselves with such a national appellation from one of the grand and eternal features of our country from that noble chain of mountains which formed its back bone and ran through the old confederacy when it first declared our national independence I allude to the Appalachian or Alleghany mountains We might do this without any very inconvenient change in our present titles We might still use the phrase The United States substituting Appalachia or Alleghania I should prefer the latter in place of America The title of Appalachian or Alleghanian would still announce us as Americans but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic Even our old national cypher of U S A might remain unaltered designating the United States of Alleghania | B |
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| These are crude ideas Mr Editor hastily thrown out to elicit the ideas of others and to call attention to a subject of more national importance than may at first be supposed | K |
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| Very respectfully yours | L |
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| Geoffrey Crayon | B |
| nbsp | C |
Washington Irving
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