NEW NAMES FOR NEW STATES.
rilHE inarticulateness which is sometimes said to be the mark J- of Englishmen—it is not just now the reproach which editors would cast at them—is receiving a curious illustration on the Southern Continent. The settlers in New South Wales have suddenly woke up to the fact that the name of their Colony is ill-reputed, cumbrone to use, and incapable of an adjective, and have resolved to change it. They are right, for the name is not yet consecrated by time, and all the charges they bring against it are more or less well-founded. A savour of con- victism still adheres to New South Wales, the name is absurdly long and entirely without justification, and the absence of an adjective diminishes the individuality of the colonists, and, consequently, the fervour of their local patriotism. A "New South Welshman" is unmanageable, and, besides, suggests a Celtic relationship which does not exist; while a "New South Welsher" would, in a land of horses and sporting men, be con- sidered invidious and discreditable. This absence of an adjective presses heavily upon any people determined to be distinctive. It has destroyed the utility of "Great Britain" as a common description for this island, and has compelled the citizens of the United States to seize upon a title to which they have at beat but a remote reversionary claim. They call themselves "Americans," as if they possessed both divisions of the Continent, whereas they will probably not be even "North Americans," as the Spaniards call them, for another fifty years, and may wait for universal sovereignty in the West for at least two centuries. It is true that some of the most patriotic States in the Union have names not admitting of adjectives, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine ; but their citizens would be happier if they could avoid periphrasis, and describe them- selves in brief as Virginians, Texans, Marylanders, and Cali- fornians do. It can only have been necessity which has com- pelled the people of New York, while York has no adjective, to call themselves "New Yorkers," a name the utter grotesque- ness of which is only concealed by habitual usage. Let Colorado prosper ever so greatly, or even "pay the Debt of the Union with its cinnabar," as Mr. Lincoln once said it would do, and still a Texan will seem to himself to stand closer to his State because he describes himself simply by her name. A good name, too, is an advantage as well as a manageable one. France is a different country from what Gallia would have been ; and if we called Germany by its proper name of Deutschland, we should understand the separateness of its people far more completely than we do, and probably place them lower. We lose
all sense of the unity of India because we never employ the proper adjective, Indians, to describe its people, and if we had chanced to adopt the Hindoo name for the vast peninsula, " Bharata varshya " or" Bharuteland," we should have formed a radically different a prioriidea of its people and their continent. The House of Hapsburg owes half its position to the rather absurd habit of describing all its subjects as "Austrians;"- and if there did but exist a name describing the inhabitants of that peninsula, the Federation of the Balkans would be years neater to its accomplishment. A name with bad associations in the- ears of the world is a dead weight upon its people, and an island named Marderland would no more fill up than a Colony named Botany Bay.
The people of New South Wales are, therefore, quite in the right in changing the name of their Colony, and we do not. believe in the least in the difficulty of effecting the transmuta- tion. Well.known names of streets are changed every day ; though we have all read "Paul and Virginia," we have all-for-- gotten the Isle of France ; and no man now addresses a letter to Van Dieman's Land. The colonists may be sure of success for any name except the one which, in a fit of perversity, they have chosen to adopt. They appear, in fact, to have hem, fettered by that failure of inventive power which marks alike British builders and founders of American cities. The former, in their despair and their modesty, usually choose some muoh- used name, till there are, we believe, more than fifty George Streets in London alone ; while the latter steal some name from a map of Europe, and plant Rome down in Minnesota, cr Carthage in the interior of New Mexico. The New South Welsh- men hunted and searched for an acceptable name, but found none, and at last, with the oddest mixture of powerlessness and pride, declared that they would resume their old one, and call their Colony by the name of the entire continent. New South Wales should be Australia, and themselves Australians. The local Legislature has actually passed a Bill to this effect, and the local Premier defends the choice as a mere right of his Colony, an act not of audacity, but of resumption. This pretension is simply absurd. The word was, we believe, applied tothe Colony when it alone was inhabited by white men; but it has now been accepted finally as the descriptive name of the continent, and its adoption for a mere section would introduce endless con- fusion, not only in post-offices and children's geographies, but on the Exchanges of the world. An Australian loan is not a loan guaranteed by New South Wales. Naples might as well call itself Italy, or Greece, as the oldest civilised country in our quarter of the world, arrogate to itself the name of Europe. The Colony may call itself East Australia if it likes, and would perhaps be wise in doing so, for the name, though too pretentious, is suffi- ciently descriptive ; but if its people do not like that, they mpst look out for some name which shall be distinguishable among the recognised names of the geographer's world. Any word not absolutely cacophonous, or befouled by evil associations, will do- as well as any other, for it is history, and not foresight, which makes the name of a country great. Who knows whence Boma, came, or remembers that in a tongue not Roman the word. meant strength P Or what does it matter that America is but the feminine of the odd Christian name of the obscure Florentine who was not the first to discover the New' World P The word Calcutta conveys its full import, though, philologists have quarrelled over its meaning for a hundred years ; and who, as he speaks of Hindostan, ever thinks that. the word, with its suggestions of magnificence, signifies etymo- logically nothing but Blackeyland P England is mother of nations, though she derives her name from a little tribe of Jutland; and Russia may master the world, though her own. people cannot say with certainty whence they derive their name. If the people of New South Wales want to be separate, let them Choose some native word—expressing, perhaps, hot plains—as the settlers in Massachusetts did ; or if they want to be recognisable before the maps of the world are altered, let them call their Colony, from its capital, Sydneyland, and themselves Sydneylanders, or accept the title which, according to precedent, they ought to. have adopted, Cooksylvania. In choosing the former, they will only conform to the European habit which even now names the Southern Colonies in common parlance by their great cities only,, and speaks of Melbourne when Victoria is meant. Indeed, they might, if they would, without inconvenience call their Colony Sydney, and their great city Jackson, for the latter, though, forgotten in Europe, is known to all geographers and sailors. The very simplest names, such as Eastland for New South Wales, Southland for South Australia, West- land for West Australia, and Borland for the more tropical ball of Queensland, would speedily be recognised and become suggestive ; and so, if the colonists pleased, would arbitrary words, chosen solely for their sound. There is, indeed, no -objection to an arbitrary name—say, Aurelia, or Morena— for meaning has, in history, absolutely no importance. What descriptive word is more thoroughly definite or well under- -stood than China, which has, for Europeans, absolutely no meaning, as little as Peru, the meaning of which neither its aborigines nor the Spaniards are able to explain. The -most absurd name ever invented by a mind which in inventing it confessed its own sterility, "Newfoundland," has ceased to be ludicrous or commonplace ; and England will live, though her name is, except to her own children, of all names the one with least of melody. If the colonists are utterly sterile of invention, let them leave the name to the Queen, as the Canadians left the site of their capital, or, better still, call a Congress of Australian Premiers to rename once for all, such Colonies as are discontented with the titles imposed on them by discoverers, the Home Government, or fate. They cannot in any event be permitted to steal from a nation already as numerous as the Americans when they revolted, the name by which it is designated throughout the world, and under which it will one day rule an empire of islands stretching from bleak Saghalien, through every variety of tropical and semi- tropical treasure-house, down to the Antarctic ice. New South Wales to call itself Australia! Why, then, should not Buenos Ayres rename itself South America ?
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