Page:The American Language.djvu/289

Rh Bonaparte the Italian buon(o) became the French bon. Many English surnames are decayed forms of Norman-French names, for example, Sidney from St. Denis, Divver from De Vere, Bridgewater from Burgh de Walter, Montgomery from de Mungumeri, Garnett from Guarinot, and Seymour from Saint-Maure. A large number of so-called Irish names are the products of rough-and-ready transliterations of Gaelic patronymics, for example, Findlay from Fionnlagh, Dermott from Diarmuid, and McLane from Mac Illeathiain. In the same way the name of Phoenix Park, in Dublin, came from Fion Uisg (= fine water). Of late some of the more ardent Irish authors and politicians have sought to return to the originals. Thus, O'Sullivan has become O Suilleabháin, Pearse has become Piarais, Mac Sweeney has become Mac Suibhne, and Patrick has suffered a widespread transformation to Padraic. But in America, with a language of peculiar vowel-sounds and even consonant-sounds struggling against a foreign invasion unmatched for strength and variety, such changes have been far more numerous than across the ocean, and the legal rule of idem sonans is of much wider utility than anywhere else in the world. If it were not for that rule there would be endless difficulties for the Wises whose grand- fathers were Weisses, and the Leonards born Leonhards, Leon- hardts or Lehnerts, and the Manneys who descend and inherit from Le Maines.

"A crude popular etymology," says a leading authority on surnames, "often begins to play upon a name that is no longer significant to the many. So the Thurgods have become Thor- oughgoods, and the Todenackers have become the Pennsylvania Dutch Toothakers, much as asparagus has become sparrow-grass." So, too, the Wittnachts of Boyle county, Kentucky, descendants of a Hollander, have become Whitenecks, and the Lehns of lower Pennsylvania, descendants of some far-off German, have become Lanes. Edgar Allan Poe was a member of a family long settled in Western Maryland, the founder being one Poh or Pfau, a native of the Palatinate. Major George