I remember the pride with which I hailed
Robin Hood, Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows; and
the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my heart when I found a
freebooter or a general who did not share with me a single one of my
numerous _praenomina_. Look at the delight with which two children find
they have the same name. They are friends from that moment forth; they
have a bond of union stronger than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats. This
feeling, I own, wears off in later life. Our names lose their freshness
and interest, become trite and indifferent. But this, dear reader, is
merely one of the sad effects of those "shades of the prison-house"
which come gradually betwixt us and nature with advancing years; it
affords no weapon against the philosophy of names.

In after life, although we fail to trace its working, that name which
careless godfathers lightly applied to your unconscious infancy will
have been moulding your character, and influencing with irresistible
power the whole course of your earthly fortunes. But the last name,
overlooked by Mr. Shandy, is no whit less important as a condition of
success. Family names, we must recollect, are but inherited nicknames;
and if the _sobriquet_ were applicable to the ancestor, it is most
likely applicable to the descendant also. You would not expect to find
Mr. M'Phun acting as a mute, or Mr. M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of
dancing. Therefore, in what follows, we shall consider names,
independent of whether they are first or last. And to begin with, look
what a pull _Cromwell_ had over _Pym_--the one name full of a resonant
imperialism, the other, mean, pettifogging, and unheroic to a degree.
Who would expect eloquence from _Pym_--who would read poems by
_Pym_--who would bow to the opinion of _Pym_? He might have been a
dentist, but he should never have aspired to be a statesman. I can only
wonder that he succeeded as he did. Pym and Habakkuk stand first upon
the roll of men who have triumphed, by sheer force of genius, over the
most unfavourable appellations. But even these have suffered; and, had
they been more fitly named, the one might have been Lord Protector, and
the other have shared the laurels with Isaiah. In this matter we must
not forget that all our great poets have borne great names. Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley--what a
constellation of lordly words! Not a single common-place name among
them-