Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (85 page)
I come from good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to
Cabots
, And the
Cabots
speak Yiddish, by God.
A variorum version, ascribed (no doubt apocryphally) to Woodrow Wilson, made the last two lines read:
Where the Lodges can’t speak to the
Cabots
, ’Cause the
Cabots
speak Yiddish, by God.
A new name, when honestly assumed and worn, may well be of as much or nearly as much consequence to its bearer as though it were familial. Our names are useful or dangerous to us according to the associations they carry among those who hear them. If we have by our past conduct established a good name, that is an interest, pecuniary or honorific, of which we may well object to being deprived, and which may exceed in value that which we inherited. A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.
Under circumstances like that at bar it appears to me that
Goldwyn
, who has familiarized the public – with the acquiescence of the plaintiff – with that name, has as much right to complain of its loss as though he had not inherited the less euphonious
Gelbfisch
, or its equivalent,
Goldfish
.…
The plaintiff’s business was built up, in part at any rate, by
Goldwyn’s
activity, and I may take it, I think, by his capacity and imagination.… The defendant accepts the necessity of some limitation upon his rights; he only objects to complete obscurity.
1
The marriage, death and other personal notices in the newspapers frequently record changes in Jewish surnames. I reach into my collectanea and bring forth
Burstein
changed to
Burr
,
2
Abrahams
to
Allen
,
3
Loewenthal
to
Lowell
,
4
Butensky
to
Burton
,
5
Fleischer
to
Fleming
,
6
Bogitzky
to
Bogart
,
7
Abrams
to
Adams
,
8
Ginsborg
to
Gilbert
,
9
Bernstein
to
Brett
,
10
Markowitz
to
Marlowe, Cohen
to
Coliver
,
11
Lewisohn
to
MacLevy
,
12
Feinstein
to
Fenton
,
13
Katzenstein
to
Kaye
,
14
Leventhal
to
Lawrence
,
1
Finkelstein
to
Flint
and to
Fenton
,
2
Schlesinger
to
Walter
,
3
Schneittacher
to
Snedeker
,
4
Isaac
to
Ives
,
5
Wohlgemuth
to
Wall
,
6
Weinstein
to
Winston, Leberstein
to
Livingston, Rosenberg
to
Robinson
and to
Ruskin
,
7
Edelstein
to
Addleston, Wasserzweig
to
Vassar-Smith
,
8
Reizenstein
to
Rice
,
9
Schmetterling
to
Smith
,
10
Leibowitz
to
Leidy
,
11
Finkelstein
to
Finn
,
12
Pulitzer
to
Stevens
,
13
Rothstein
to
Ross
, and
Goldberg
to
Gould
and
Coburn
.
14
Changes are frequently made in Jewish names that are not abandoned altogether.
Cohen
, which is the commonest of such surnames in the United States,
15
is to be encountered as
Cohn, Cone, Cowan, Conn, Cahan, Cohon, Coyne, Cohan, Coen
,
16
Kohn, Kohan, Kohon, Kahn, Kann
and
Kohen
.
17
Some of these forms are not arbitrary,
but have history and foreign custom behind them.
Cohen
is a Hebrew word,
kohen
, signifying, originally, a prince or priest, but later a priest only. By Jewish tradition the name and the office are restricted to descendants of Aaron, but that tradition, like many others, has long since lost force. The Sephardic Jews pronounce the word
ko-hén;
the German Jews make it
koh’n
, in one syllable; the Polish Jews make the first syllable rhyme with
now
, and the Russian Jews prefer
káy-hun
.
1
Levy
is another Jewish patronymic that has many permutations. It is derived from the name of the Levites, who were priests of an inferior order. The original Hebrew designation of them was
Lewi
, and from it have sprung
Levi, Levy, Lewy, Levie, Leavy, Leevy, Levey, Levvy, Levay, Leve, Levee, Levin, Levine, Levene, Levien, Leveen, Leven, Levins, Levita, Levitan, Levitas, Levitz, Levitski, Levninsky, Levinson, Levinsohn, Levenson, Levison, Lewison, Lewisohn, Lewis, Lewin, Levanne, Lever
and a host of other forms, including
Halevy
(Hebrew
ha
, the).
2
Lév-vy
, with the accent on the first syllable, is sometimes heard; it probably comes closer to the original Hebrew pronunciation than either
lée-vee
or
lée-vy
, the latter with the
vy
rhyming with high. The Sephardic Jews use
lay-vee
, with the accent on the first syllable, and convert the
v
into our
f
. A number of American
Levys
have changed their name to
Lee
,
3
and one family has chosen
Leeds
. I have also encountered
Levis
,
1
LeVie, LaVey, Delavie, Dellevie, Leylan
and
Lewynne
,
2
some of them borne by French or French-Canadian Jews. Another name with many variations, especially in spelling, is
Ginsberg, e.g., Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Ginsburgh, Ginsbury, Guinesberg, Gainsburg, Guynzburg
3
and
Ginsborough
. Many other familiar Jewish names are similarly transmogrified.
Goldstein
becomes
Goldstone, Golston
, and finally
Golson
or
Golsan; Goldberg
becomes
Goldhill, Goldboro, Golboro
, or
Goldsborough; Schapiro
or
Shapiro
becomes
Schapira, Schapierer, Shapero, Shapera, Shapereau
,
4
Chapereau
,
5
Chapiro
or the terminal
Rowe
.
6
I have encountered
Guggenheim
spelled
Goughenheim
7
and
Labovitz
turned into
LaBovith
. Many of the German-Jewish names in
-berg, -thal, -feld, -mann
, and so on have both elements translated, so that
Rosenberg
, for example, becomes
Rosehill
,
8
Blumenthal
becomes
Bloomingdale, Wassermann
becomes
Waterman
, and
Schwarzmann
becomes
Blackman
.
9
Not a few Jewish names of German origin present phonological difficulties to the average American, and thus suffer changes in pronunciation like those undergone by the names of German and other non-Jewish immigrants. All the
Strauses
and
Strausses
who mention the pronunciation of their names in “Who’s Who in America” give the
au
the sound of
ou
in
out
, but there seems to be a growing tendency to make the name
Straws
, especially in the South. Moreover,
over, even when it is not
Straws
it has the American
s
-sound at the start, not the German
sh
-sound. Several
Goldsteins
in “Who’s Who” ordain that the -
stein
of their name be pronounced
steen
, but Dr. Albert
Einstein
, the physicist, sticks to
stine
.
1
This appearance of
ei
as
ee
is a curious phenomenon, not yet explained. If it represents an effort at elegance it is quite silly, for
-steen
is surely no more lovely than
-stine
. Happily, it seems to prevail only when
-stein
is terminal. In such names as
Einstein, Feinstein
and
Weinstein
one often hears
-een
in the last syllable, but never in the first. Nor does it appear in
Weinburg, Klein, Fein, Steinbeck, Brandeis, Eichelberger, Eisenhower, Eisner, Dreiser
and the like, some of them Jewish and some not, nor in simple
Stein
, nor in numerous Jewish names in
-heim
and
-heimer
. In names in
Braun-
and
Blau-
the German
au
is often pronounced
aw
, so that
Braunstein
becomes
Brawnsteen
and
Blaustein
becomes
Blawsteen
. In the same way
Morgenthau
becomes
Morgenthaw
, with the
au
pronounced
aw
and the German
th
changed to the English
th
in
think
. Something of the sort also happens in the case of the terminal
-baum
, which becomes
bawm
, as in
Barenbawm
for
Barenbaum. Kühn
at first dropped its umlaut and became
Kuhn
, pronounced to rhyme with moon; now it shows signs of going on to
Kyun
, but without any further change in spelling. Many of the early Jewish immigrants from the German lands, like the Germin
Goyim
, changed the spelling of their names in order to preserve the pronunciation. Thus
Gorfein
became
Gorfine, Schön
became
Shane
or
Shain
, and
Klein
became
Kline
.
2
In innumerable cases, however, this was inconvenient or impossible, so the Jews, like other immigrants, had to submit to the mispronunciation of their names. Thus
Sachs
became
Sax
and has remained so, and
Katz
3
came to be identical in sound with
cats
, and
Adler
acquired a flat American
a
. In the common
speech of New York the element
-berger
or
-burger
changes to
-boiger
, and I have heard it with a soft
g
.
Louis Adamic says in “What’s Your Name?”
1
that “Poles and Polish Americans seem impelled to more name-changing than any other group” – that is, with the exception of the Jews —, but his own evidence shows that many of them resist stoutly the changes forced upon them by the fact that Polish accents are unintelligible to most Americans and many Polish sounds are unpronounceable. Thus the names of
Krzyzanowski
,
2
Kosciuszko, Andrzejski, Szymkiewicz, Szybczyński, Korzybski
and
Mikolajezyk
still survive in American reference books and even in newspaper dispatches, though it is highly unlikely that more than one non-Polish-American in ten thousand can pronounce them.
3
But many more Polish names have been simplified,
e.g., Winiarecki
to
Winar, Czyzcwicz
to
Chasey, Zmudzinski
to
Zmuday, Gwzcarczyszyn
to
Guscas
, and
Modrzejewski
to
Modjeski
,
4
or translated into English,
e.g., Smith
for
Kowalczyk, Wheeler
for
Kolodziejcak, Gardner
for
Ogrodowski
, and
Cook
for
Kucharz
, or abandoned altogether for common British names,
e.g., Izydorczyk
for
Sherwood, Wawrzynski
for
Stone, Szczepanski
for
Sheperd, Chrzanowski
for
Dunlap, Matykiewicz
for
Rodgers
,
5
Valuzki
for
Wallace
,
6
and
Kedjerski
for
Kent
.
7
Sometimes the old name is retained as a middle name, as when Anthony
Mierzejewski
became
Anthony Mierzejewski Mackey
. And not infrequently, the new name chosen is not English but Irish or German,
e.g., Micsza
to
McShea, Koscielniak
to
Moran, Golebiewski
to
Kress, Pruchniewski
to
Prosser
and
Smialkowski
to
Schultz
.
1
The Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Russians, Ukrainians and other Slavs all go the same route. Louis Adamic, in the book I was lately citing, describes the changes of name among his countrymen, the Slovenes. His own name, originally
Adamič, i.e., Adamson
or
Little Adam
, presented an accented consonant that Americans could not fathom, and a stress,
Ah-dáh-mitch
, that they could not be expected to follow, so in his youth in America he cast about for something less burdensome. He considered
Adamich, Adamitch
and
Adamage
, but finally decided on
Adamic
without the accent. “Each time,” he says, “a book of mine appears inquiries come from librarians, booksellers and lecturing book reviewers as to its ‘correct’ pronunciation. Going about the country, I hear myself called
Adámic
almost as often as
Ádamic
. To inquiries I reply that I prefer
Adamic
but am willing to let the pronunciation establish itself.”
2
The troubles of the Slovaks, who have surnames not unlike those of the Slovenes, have been described by Ivan J. Kramoris.
3
He says: