Page:The American Language.djvu/287

Rh de Veyra, Davila and Yangko, and enough Irishmen to organize a parliament at Dublin.

In the New York city directory the fourth most common name is now Murphy, an Irish name, and the fifth most common is Meyer, which is German and chiefly Jewish. The Meyers are the Smiths of Austria, and of most of Germany. They outnum- ber all other clans. After them come the Schultzes and Krauses, just as the Joneses and Williamses follow the Smiths in Great Britain. Schultze and Kraus do not seem to be very common names in New York, but Schmidt, Mutter, Schneider and Klein appear among the fifty commonest. Cohen and Levy rank eighth and ninth, and are both ahead of Jones, which is second in England, and Williams, which is third. Taylor, a highly typical British name, ranking fourth in England and Wales, is twenty-third in New York. Ahead of it, beside Murphy, Meyer, Cohen and Levy, are Schmidt, Ryan, O'Brien, Kelly and Sulli- van. Robinson, which is twelfth in England, is thirty-ninth in New York ; even Schneider and Mutter are ahead of it. In Chi- cago Olson, Schmidt, Meyer, Hansen and Larsen are ahead of Taylor, and Hoffman and Becker are ahead of Ward; in Boston Sullivan and Murphy are ahead of any English name save Smith; in Philadelphia Myers is just below Robinson. Nor, as I have said, is this large proliferation of foreign surnames confined to the large cities. There are whole regions in the Southwest in which Lopez and Gonzales are far commoner names than Smith, Brown or Jones, and whole regions in the Middle West wherein Olson is commoner than either Taylor or Williams, and places both North and South where Duval is at least as common as Brown.

Moreover, the true proportions of this admixture of foreign blood are partly concealed by a wholesale anglicization of sur- names, sometimes deliberate and sometimes the fruit of mere confusion. That Smith, Brown and Miller remain in first, sec- ond and third places among the surnames of New York is surely no sound evidence of Anglo-Saxon survival. The German and