Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/74

 NOTES 'AND QUERIES. [^S.VIIL JULY 20, 1901.

of the counties of Rutland, Leicester, and Northampton. In Nichols's ' History of the County of Leicester,' vol. iv. (London, 1807), at p. 408, Richard Cheselden, of Melton Mowbray, is given. He married Elizabeth, daughter of George Nedham, of Gaddesby, Leicestershire. George Cheselden, of Ridling- ton, Rutlandshire, in his will, proved 27 Sep- tember. 1766 (P.C.C. 335 Tyndall), names Cheseldens of Somerby, of Leicester, and of Melton Mowbray.

REGINALD STEWART BODDINGTON.

15, Markham Square, Chelsea.

CIVIL LIST PENSIONS.

(9 th S. viii. 38.)

LADY HAMILTON is widow of Sir Robert George Cruickshank Hamilton, K.C.B., who was selected by Mr. Gladstone for the office of Under-Secretary in Ireland after the Phoenix Park murders in 1882. He died in 1895. W. S.

[W. S. is right. The distinguished services ren- dered in India by Sir R[obert] N[orth] C[ollie] Hamilton are, through a similarity of initials, ascribed, ante, p. 38, to Sir Robert George Cruick- shank Hamilton. The son and successor of the first-named baronet, Sir Frederick Harding Anson Hamilton, is alive, and no one belonging to his family is in receipt of a civil pension, though his father the sixth baronet, among many well-merited honours, received the thanks of Parliament for his services during the Indian Mutiny.]

HERALDIC : AMERICAN HERALDRY (9 fch S. yi. 170; vii. 117, 429). I have been much interested in the various articles on American heraldry, although not one of them has given the facts as they are.

In the first place, arms are indiscriminately used in this country. In fact, it is the ex- ception to find any one, no matter of what pngin, who does not display armorial bear- ingsthat is, if his present standing warrants it. When I say standing I mean in a financial way. Ninety-nine hundred ths of the people who display coats of arms have no claim what- ever to them so far as descent is concerned Nearly all is obtained at the stationers' or the nearest library. All they need is a general armoury of the country from which their ancestor is supposed to have come. In most cases the fact that the surname resembles that of an armigerous family is sufficient excuse to warrant the assumption of the arms Ihe only trouble arises when the surname in question is more or less numerous, when they, the hunters," have to decide which is

the prettiest before adopting arms and rela- tionship. I have frequently been in the Astor Library when such a search was in progress, and watched with amusement the selection in a few moments of the arms of some ancient family by one of the nouveaux riches.

In some cases I know of arms which have simply sprung from the fertile mind of the bearer. In one instance 1 have heard the following boast from the mother of one of my college chums : " that it was so satis- factory to feel that the family arms descended direct from Charlemagne." Another class of Americans are those who calmly assume the arms borne by one of their female an- cestors (not an heiress), no matter how many generations removed, and calmly flaunt them in the faces of self-respecting fellow-country- men.

American genealogy is similarly tainted I mean with the desire to connect the family with a parent stem in Europe. Similarity of surname is all that is necessary, and in some of the so-called genealogies even this proof is found wanting. Of course, there are many families in this country who are en- titled by descent to bear arms, but their proportion is very small possibly less than one per cent, of the people who are proud of their "ancestral arms."

I have been a student of American genea- logy and heraldry for the last fifteen years, and could give many examples of the "ar- morial " habit if it were necessary.

VIRGINIA.

New York.

JAPANESE NAMES (9 th S. viii. 14). The note on these by MR. JAS. PLATT, Jun., though in the main perfectly correct, is somewhat misleading. ** Christian " names with the terminations -taro, -jiro, &C M are not, as he seems to imply, by any means universal. In fact, only one person in three or four has a name of this sort, as MR. PLATT can easily see by looking through any avail- able list of Japanese.

Taro, by the way, means big-male, uotjirst- male ; the latter is the translation of ichiro, another termination for the name of an eldest son.

Mr. B. H. Chamberlain, in his 'Introduc- tion to the Study of Japanese Writing,' p. 234, remarks that the higher numbers are not used with much exactness ; thus a -juro would not necessarily be a tenth son, nor a -hachiro an eighth.

The same author's 'Things Japanese' has a short, but admirably lucid article on Japa-