Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen
[Dear children have many names].—German Proverb.

Child or boy, my darling, which you will.—Swinburne.

Men ever had, and ever will have, leave
To coin new words well-suited to the age.
Words are like leaves, some wither every year,
And every year a younger race succeeds.—Roscommon.

Child and its Synonyms.

Our word child—the good old English term; for both babe and infant are borrowed—simply means the "product of the womb" (compare Gothic kilthei, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon bearn, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic barn (the Gothic had a diminutive barnilo, "baby"), Sanskrit bharna, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to bear" and the German "ge-bÄren." Son, which finds its cognates in all the principal Aryan dialects, except Latin, and perhaps Celtic,—the Greek [Greek: yios] is for [Greek: syios], and is the same word,—a widespread term for "male child, or descendant," originally meant, as the Old Irish suth, "birth, fruit," and the Sanskrit sÛ, "to bear, to give birth to," indicate, "the fruit of the womb, the begotten"—an expression which meets us time and again in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. The words offspring, issue, seed, used in higher diction, explain themselves and find analogues all over the world. To a like category belong Sanskrit gÁrbha, "brood of birds, child, shoot"; Pali gabbha, "womb, embryo, child"; Old High German chilburra, "female lamb"; Gothic kalbÔ, "female lamb one year old"; German Kalb; English calf; Greek [Greek: delphus], "womb"; whence [Greek: adelphus], "brother," literally "born of the same womb." Here we see, in the words for their young, the idea of the kinship of men and animals in which the primitive races believed. The "brought forth" or "born" is also the signification of the Niskwalli Indian ba'-ba-ad, "infant"; de-bÁd-da, "infant, son"; Maya al, "son or daughter of a woman"; Cakchiquel 4_ahol_, "son," and like terms in many other tongues. Both the words in our language employed to denote the child before birth are borrowed. Embryo, with its cognates in the modern tongues of Europe, comes from the Greek [Greek: embruon], "the fruit of the womb before delivery; birth; the embryo, foetus; a lamb newly born, a kid." The word is derived from eu, "within"; and bruo, "I am full of anything, I swell or teem with"; in a transitive sense, "I break forth." The radical idea is clearly "swelling," and cognates are found in Greek [Greek: bruon], "moss"; and German Kraut, "plant, vegetable." Foetus comes to us from Latin, where it meant "a bearing, offspring, fruit; bearing, dropping, hatching,—of animals, plants, etc.; fruit, produce, offspring, progeny, brood." The immediate derivation of the word is feto, "I breed," whence also effetus, "having brought forth young, worn out by bearing, effete." Feto itself is from an old verb feuere, "to generate, to produce," possibly related to fui and our be. The radical signification of foetus then is "that which is bred, or brought to be"; and from the same root fe are derived feles, "cat" (the fruitful animal); fe-num, "hay"; fe-cundus, "fertile"; fe-lix, "happy" (fruitful). The corresponding verb in Greek is [Greek: phuein], "to grow, to spring forth, to come into being," whence the following: [Greek: phusis], "a creature, birth, nature,"—nature is "all that has had birth"; [Greek: phuton] "something grown, plant, tree, creature, child"; [Greek: phulae, philon] "race, clan, tribe,"—the "aggregate of those born in a certain way or place"; [Greek: phus], "son"; [Greek: phusas], "father," etc.

In English, we formerly had the phrase "to look babies in the eyes," and we still speak of the pupil of the eye, the old folk-belief having been able to assert itself in the every-day speech of the race,—the thought that the soul looked out of the windows of the eyes. In Latin, pupilla pupila, "girl, pupil of the eye," is a diminutive of pupa (puppa), "girl, damsel, doll, puppet"; other related words are pupulus, "little boy"; pupillus, "orphan, ward," our pupil; pupulus, "little child, boy"; pupus, "child, boy." The radical of all these is pu, "to beget"; whence are derived also the following: puer, "child, boy"; puella (for puerula), a diminutive of puer, "girl"; pusus, "boy"; pusio, "little boy," pusillus; "a very little boy"; putus, "boy"; putillus, "little boy"; putilla, "little girl,"—here belongs also pusillanimus, "small-minded, boy-minded"; pubis, "ripe, adult"; pubertas, "puberty, maturity"; pullus, "a young animal, a fowl," whence our pullet. In Greek we find the cognate words [Greek: polos] "a young animal," related to our foal, filly; [Greek: polion], "pony," and, as some, perhaps too venturesome, have suggested, [Greek: pais], "child," with its numerous derivatives in the scientifical nomenclature and phraseology of to-day. In Sanskrit we have putra, "son," a word familiar as a suffix in river-names,—Brahmaputra, "son of Brahma,"—pota, "the young of an animal," etc. Skeat thinks that our word boy, borrowed from Low German and probably related to the Modern High German Bube, whence the familiar "bub" of American colloquial speech, is cognate with Latin pupus.

To this stock of words our babe, with its diminutive baby, seems not akin. Skeat, rejecting the theory that it is a reduplicative child-word, like papa, sees in it merely a modification (infantine, perhaps) of the Celtic maban, diminutive of mab, "son," and hence related to maid, the particular etymology of which is discussed elsewhere.

Infant, also, is a loan-word in English. In Latin, infans was the coinage of some primitive student of children, of some prehistoric anthropologist, who had a clear conception of "infancy" as "the period of inability to speak,"—for infans signifies neither more nor less than "not speaking, unable to speak." The word, like our "childish," assumed also the meanings "child, young, fresh, new, silly," with a diminutive infantulus. The Latin word infans has its representatives in French and other Romance languages, and has given rise to enfanter, "to give birth to a child," enfantement, "labour," two of the few words relating to child-birth in which the child is directly remembered. The history of the words infantry, "foot-soldiers," and Infanta, "a princess of the blood royal" in Spain (even though she be married), illustrates a curious development of thought.

Our word daughter, which finds cognates in Teutonic, Slavonic, Armenian, Zend, Sanskrit, and Greek, Skeat would derive from the root dugh, "to milk," the "daughter" being primitively the "milker," —the "milkmaid,"—which would remove the term from the list of names for "child" in the proper sense of the word. Kluge, however, with justice perhaps, considers this etymology improbable.

A familiar phrase in English is "babes and sucklings," the last term of which, cognate with German SÄugling, meets with analogues far and wide among the peoples of the earth. The Latin words for children in relation to their parents are filius (diminutive filiolus), "son," and filia (diminutive filiola), "daughter," which have a long list of descendants in the modern Neo-Latin or Romance languages,—French fils, fille, filleul, etc.; Italian figlio, figlia, etc. According to Skeat, filius signified originally "infant," perhaps "suckling," from felare, "to suck," the radical of which, fe (Indo-European dhe), appears also in femina, "woman," and femella, "female," the "sucklers" par excellence. In Greek the cognate words are [Greek: titthae], "nurse," thaelus, "female," thaelae, "teat," etc.; in Lithuanian, dels, "son." With nonagan, "teat, breast," are cognate in the Delaware Indian language nonoshellaan, "to suckle," nonetschik, "suckling," and other primitive tongues have similar series.

The Modern High German word for child is Kind, which, as a substantive, finds representatives neither in Gothic nor in early English, but has cognates in the Old Norse kunde, "son," Gothic -kunds, Anglo-Saxon -kund, a suffix signifying "coming from, originating from." The ultimate radical of the word is the Indo-European root gen (Teutonic ken), "to bear, to produce," whence have proceeded also kin, Gothic kuni; queen, Gothic qvÊns, "woman"; king, Modern High German KÖnig, originally signifying perhaps "one of high origin"; Greek genos and its derivatives; Latin genus, gens, gigno; Lithuanian gentis, "relative"; Sanskrit janas, "kin, stock," janÚs, "creature, kin, birth," jantÚ, "child, being, stock," jÂtÁ, "son." Kind, therefore, while not the same word as our child, has the same primitive meaning, "the produced one," and finds further cognates in kid and colt, names applied to the young of certain animals, and the first of which, in the slang of to-day, is applied to children also. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland Kind has the sense of boy; in Thuringia, for example, people speak of zwei Kinder und ein MÄdchen, "two boys and a girl." From the same radical sprang the Modern High German Knabe, Old High German chnabo, "boy, youth, young fellow, servant," and its cognates, including our English knave, with its changed meaning, and possibly also German Knecht and English knight, of somewhat similar import originally.

To the same original source we trace back Greek [Greek: genetaer], Latin genitor, "parent," and their cognates, in all of which the idea of genesis is prominent. Here belong, in Greek: [Greek: genesis], "origin, birth, beginning"; [Greek: gynae], "woman"; [Greek: genea], "family, race"; [Greek: geinomai], "I beget, produce, bring forth, am born"; [Greek: gignomai], "I come into a new state of being, become, am born." In Latin: gigno, "I beget, bring forth"; gens, "clan, race, nation,"—those born in a certain way; ingens, "vast, huge, great,"—"not gens," i.e. "born beyond or out of its kind"; gentilis, "belonging to the same clan, race, tribe, nation," then, with various turns of meaning, "national, foreign," whence our gentile, genteel, gentle, gentry, etc.; genus, "birth, race, sort, kind"; ingenium, "innate quality, natural disposition"; ingeniosus, "of good natural abilities, born well-endowed," hence ingenious; ingenuus, "native, free-born, worthy of a free man," hence "frank, ingenuous"; progenies, "descent, descendants, offspring, progeny"; gener, "son-in-law"; genius, "innate superior nature, tutelary deity, the god born to a place," hence the genius, who is "born," not "made"; genuinus, "innate, born-in, genuine"; indigena, "native, born-there, indigenous"; generosus, "of high, noble birth," hence "noble-minded, generous"; genero, "I beget, produce, engender, create, procreate," and its derivatives degenero, regenero, etc., with the many words springing from them. From the same radical gen comes the Latin (g)nascor, "I am born," whose stem (g)na is seen also in natio, "the collection of those born," or "the birth," and natura, "the world of birth,"—like Greek [Greek: phnsis],—for "nations" and "nature" have both "sprung into being." The Latin germen (our germ), which signified "sprig, offshoot, young bud, sprout, fruit, embryo," probably meant originally simply "growth," from the root ker, "to make to grow." From the same Indo-European radical have come the Latin creare, "to create, make, produce," with its derivatives procreare and creator, which we now apply to the Supreme Being, as the "maker" or "producer" of all things. Akin are also crescere, "to come forth, to arise, to appear, to increase, to grow, to spring, to be born," and Ceres, the name of the goddess of agriculture (growth and creation), whence our word cereal; and in Greek [Greek: Kronos], the son of Uranus (Heaven) and GÆa (Earth), [Greek: kratos], "strength," and its derivatives ("democracy," etc.).

Another interesting Latin word is pario, "I bring forth, produce," whence parens, "producer, parent," partus, "birth, bearing, bringing forth; young, offspring, foetus, embryo of any creature," parturio, parturitio, etc. Pario is used alike of human beings, animals, birds, fish, while parturio is applied to women and animals, and, by Virgil, even to trees,—parturit arbos, "the tree is budding forth,"—and by other writers to objects even less animate.

In the Latin enitor, "I bring forth or bear children or young,"—properly, "I struggle, strive, make efforts,"—we meet with the idea of "labour," now so commonly associated with child-bearing, and deriving from the old comparison of the tillage of the soil and the bearing of the young. This association existed in Hebrew also, and Cain, the first-born of Adam, was the first agriculturist. We still say the tree bears fruit, the land bears crops, is fertile, and the most characteristic word in English belonging to the category in question is "to bear" children, cognate with Modern High German ge-bÄren, Gothic gabairan, Latin ferre (whence fertilis), Greek [Greek: ferein], Sanskrit bhri, etc., all from the Indo-European root bher, "to carry"—compare the use of tragen in Modern High German: sie trÄgt ein Kind unter dem Herzen. The passive verb is "to be born" literally, "to be borne, to be carried, produced," and the noun corresponding, birth, cognate with German Geburt, and Old Norse burthr, which meant "embryo" as well. Related ideas are seen in burden, and in the Latin, fors, fortuna, for "fortune" is but that which is "borne" or "produced, brought forth," just as the Modern High German Heil, "fortune, luck," is probably connected with the Indo-European radical gen, "to produce."

Corresponding to the Latin parentes, in meaning, we have the Gothic berusjos, "the bearers," or "parents"; we still use in English, "forbears," in the sense of ancestors. The good old English phrase "with child," which finds its analogues in many other languages, has, through false modesty, been almost driven out of literature, as it has been out of conversational language, by pregnant, which comes to us from the Latins, who also used gravidus,—a word we now apply only to animals, especially dogs and ants,—and enceinte, borrowed from French, and referring to the ancient custom of girding a woman who was with child. Similarly barren of direct reference to the child are accouchement, which we have borrowed from French, and the German Entbindung.

In German, Grimm enumerates, among other phrases relating to child-birth, the following, the particular meanings and uses of which are explained in his great dictionary: Schwanger, gross zum Kinde, zum Kinde gehen, zum Kinde arbeiten, um's Kind kommen, mit Kinde, ein Kind tragen, Kindesgrosz, Kindes schwer, Kinder haben, Kinder bekommen, Kinder kriegen, niederkommen, entbinden, and the quaint and beautiful eines Kindes genesen,—all used of the mother. Applied to both parents we find Kinder machen, Kinder bekommen (now used more of the mother), Kinder erzeugen (more recently, of the father only), Kinder erzielen.

Our English word girl is really a diminutive (from a stem gir, seen in Old Low German gÖr, "a child") from some Low German dialect, and, though it now signifies only "a female child, a young woman," in Middle English gerl (girl, gurl) was applied to a young person of either sex. In the Swiss dialects to-day gurre, or gurrli, is a name given to a "girl" in a depreciatory sense, like our own "girl-boy." In many primitive tongues there do not appear to be special words for "son" and "daughter," or for "boy" and "girl," as distinguished from each other, these terms being rendered "male-child (man-child)," and "female-child (woman-child)" respectively. The "man-child" of the King James' version of the Scriptures belongs in this category. In not a few languages, the words for "son" and "daughter" and for "boy" and "girl" mean really "little man," and "little woman"—a survival of which thought meets us in the "little man" with which his elders are even now wont to denominate "the small boy." In the Nahuatl language of Mexico, "woman" is ciuatl, "girl" ciuatontli; in the Niskwalli, of the State of Washington, "man" is stobsh, "boy" stÓtomish, "woman" slÁne, "girl" chÁchas (i.e. "small") slÁne; in the Tacana, of South. America, "man" is dreja, "boy" drejave, "woman" epuna, "girl" epunave. And but too often the "boys" and "girls" even as mere children are "little men and women" in more respects than that of name.

In some languages the words for "son," "boy," "girl" are from the same root. Thus, in the Mazatec language, of Mexico, we find indidi "boy," tzadi "girl," indi "son," and in the Cholona, of Peru, nun-pullup "boy," ila-pullup "girl," pul "son,"—where ila means "female," and nun "male."

In some others, as was the case with the Latin puella, from puer, the word for "girl" seems derived from that for "boy." Thus, we have in Maya, mehen "son," ix-mehen "daughter,"— -ix is a feminine prefix; and in the JÍvaro, of Ecuador, vila "son," vilalu, "daughter."

Among very many primitive peoples, the words for "babe, infant, child," signify really "small," "little one," like the Latin parvus, the Scotch wean (for wee ane, "wee one"), etc. In Hawaiian, for example, the "child" is called keiki, "the little one," and in certain Indian languages of the Western Pacific slope, the Wiyot kusha'ma "child," Yuke Únsil "infant," Wintun cru-tut "infant," Niskwalli chÁ chesh "child (boy)," all signify literally "small," "little one."

Some languages, again, have diminutives of the word for "child," often formed by reduplication, like the wee wean of Lowland Scotch, and the pilpil, "infant" of the Nahuatl of Mexico.

In the Snanaimuq language, of Vancouver Island, the words k·Ä'ela, "male infant," and k·Ä'k·ela, "female infant," mean simply "the weak one." In the Modoc, of Oregon, a "baby" is literally, "what is carried on one's self." In the Tsimshian, of British Columbia, the word wok·Â'Ûts, "female infant," signifies really "without labrets," indicating that the creature is yet too young for the lip ornaments. In Latin, liberi, one of the words for "children," shows on its face that it meant only "children, as opposed to the slaves of the house, servi"; for liberi really denotes "the free ones." In "the Galibi language of Brazil, tigami signifies 'young brother, son, and little child,' indiscriminately." The following passage from Westermarck recalls the "my son," etc., of our higher conversational or even officious style (166.93):—

"Mr. George Bridgman states that, among the Mackay blacks of Queensland, the word for 'daughter' is used by a man for any young woman belonging to the class to which his daughter would belong if he had one. And, speaking of the Australians, Eyre says, 'In their intercourse with each other, natives of different tribes are exceedingly punctilious and polite; … almost everything that is said is prefaced by the appellation of father, son, brother, mother, sister, or some other similar term, corresponding to that degree of relationship which would have been most in accordance with their relative ages and circumstances."

Similar phenomena meet us in the language of the criminal classes, and the slang of the wilder youth of the country.

Among the Andaman Islanders: "Parents, when addressing or referring to their children, and not using names, employ distinct terms, the father calling his son dar Ô-dire, i.e. 'he that has been begotten by me,' and his daughter, dar Ô-dire-pail-; while the mother makes use of the word dab Ê-tire, i.e. 'he whom I have borne,' for the former, and dab Ê-tire pail- for the latter; similarly, friends, in speaking of children to their parents, say respectively, ngar Ô-dire, or ngab Ê-tire (your son), ngar Ô-dire-pail-, or ngab Ê-tire-pail- (your daughter)" (498. 59).

In the TonkawÉ Indian language of Texas, "to be born" is nikaman yekÉwa, literally, "to become bones," and in the Klamath, of Oregon, "to give birth," is nkÂcgÎ, from nkÁk, "the top of the head," and gÎ, "to make," or perhaps from kÁk'gÎ, "to produce bones," from the idea that the seat of life is in the bones. In the Nipissing dialect of the Algonkian tongue, ni kanis, "my brother," signifies literally, "my little bone," an etymology which, in the light of the expressions cited above, reminds one of the Greek [Greek: adelphos], and the familiar "bone of my bone," etc. A very interesting word for "child" is Sanskrit toka, Greek [Greek: teknon], from the Indo-European radical tek, "to prepare, make, produce, generate." To the same root belong Latin texere, "to weave," Greek [Greek: technae] "art"; so that the child and art have their names from the same primitive source—the mother was the former of the child as she was of the chief arts of life.

"Flower-Names."

The people who seem to have gone farthest in the way of words for "child" are the Andaman Islanders, who have an elaborate system of nomenclature from the first year to the twelfth or fifteenth, when childhood may be said to end. There are also in use a profusion of "flower-names" and complimentary terms. The "flower-names" are confined to girls and young women who are not mothers. The following list shows the peculiarity of the name-giving:—

1. Proper name chosen before birth of child: .dÔ'ra.

2. If child turns out to be a boy, he is called: .dÔ'ra-Ô'ta; if a girl, .dÔ'ra-kÂ'ta; these names (Ô'ta and kÂ'ta refer to the genital organs of the two sexes) are used during the first two or three years only.

3. Until he reaches puberty, the boy is called: .dÔ'ra dÂ'la, and the girl, .dÔ'ra-po'il'ola.

4. When she reaches maturity, the girl is said to be Ún-lÂ-wi, or Â'kÀ-lÁ-wi, and receives a "flower-name" chosen from the one of "the eighteen prescribed trees which blossom in succession" happening to be in season when she attains womanhood.

5. If this should occur in the middle of August, when the Pterocarpus dalbergoides, called chÂ'langa, is in flower, ".dÔ'ra-po-ilola would become .chÀ'garu dÔ'ra, and this double name would cling to the girl until she married and was a mother, then the 'flower' name would give way to the more dignified term chÄn'a (madam or mother).dÔ'ra; if childless, a woman has to pass a few years of married life before she is called chÄn'a, after which no further change is made in her name."

Much other interesting information about name-giving may be found in the pages of Mr. Man's excellent treatise on this primitive people (498. 59-61; 201-208).

Sign Language.

Interesting details about signs and symbols for "child" may be found in
the elaborate article of Colonel Mallery on "Sign Language among North
American Indians" (497a), and the book of Mr. W. P. Clark on Indian
Sign Language (420).

Colonel Mallery tells us that "the Egyptian hieroglyphists, notably in the designation of Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for 'child.' It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak, in-fans." This conjecture, however, the author rejects (497a. 304). Among the Arapaho Indians "the sign for child, baby, is the forefinger in the mouth, i.e. a nursing child, and a natural sign of a deaf-mute is the same;" related seem also the ancient Chinese forms for "son" and "birth," as well as the symbol for the latter among the Dakota Indians (494 a. 356). Clark describes the symbol for "child," which is based upon those for "parturition" and "height," thus: "Bring the right hand, back outwards, in front of centre of body, and close to it, fingers extended, touching, pointing outwards and downwards; move the hands on a curve downwards and outwards; then carry the right hand, back outwards, well out to front and right of body, fingers extended and pointing upwards, hand resting at supposed height of child; the hand is swept into last position at the completion of first gesture. In speaking of children generally, and, in fact, unless it is desired to indicate height or age of the child, the first sign is all that is used or is necessary. This sign also means the young of any animal. In speaking of children generally, sometimes the signs for different heights are only made. Deaf-mutes make the combined sign for male and female, and then denote the height with right hand held horizontally" (420. 109).

For "baby," deaf-mutes "hold extended left hand back down, in front of body, forearm about horizontal and pointing to right and front; then lay the back of partially compressed right hand on left forearm near wrist" (420. 57).

Names.

The interesting and extensive field of personal onomatology—the study of personal names—cannot be entered upon exhaustively here. Shakespeare has said:—

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet,"—

and the same remark might be made of the children of some primitive peoples. Not infrequently the child is named before it is born. Of the Central Eskimo we read that often before the birth of the child, "some relative or friend lays his hand upon the mother's stomach, and decides what the infant is to be called; and, as the name serves for either sex, it is of no consequence whether it be a girl or a boy" (402. 612, 590). Polle has a good deal to say of the deep significance of the name with certain peoples—"to be" and "to be named" appearing sometimes as synonymous (517. 99). "Hallowed be Thy name" expresses the ideas of many generations of men. With the giving of a name the soul and being of a former bearer of it were supposed to enter into and possess the child or youth upon whom it was conferred. Kink says of the Eskimo of East Greenland, that "they seemed to consider man as consisting of three independent parts,—soul, body, name" (517. 122). One can easily understand the mysterious associations of the name, the taboos of its utterance or pronunciation so common among primitive peoples—the reluctance to speak the name of a dead person, as well as the desire to confer the name of such a one upon a new-born child, spring both from the same source.

The folk-lore and ceremonial of name-giving are discussed at length in Ploss, and the special treatises on popular customs. In several parts of Germany, it is held to be ominous for misfortune or harm to the child, if the name chosen for it should be made known before baptism. Sometimes, the child is hardly recognized as existing until he has been given a name. In Gerbstadt in Mansfeld, Germany, the child before it receives its name is known as "dovedung," and, curiously enough, in far-off Samoa, the corresponding appellation is "excrement of the family-god" (517.103).

The following statement, regarding one of the American Indian tribes, will stand for many other primitive peoples: "The proper names of the Dakotas are words, simple and compounded, which are in common use in the language. They are usually given to children by the father, grandfather, or some other influential relative. When young men have distinguished themselves in battle, they frequently take to themselves new names, as the names of distinguished ancestors of warriors now dead. The son of a chief when he comes to the chieftainship, generally takes the name of his father or grandfather, so that the same names, as in other more powerful dynasties, are handed down along the royal lines" (524. 44-45).

Of the same people we are also told: "The Dakotas have no family or surnames. But the children of a family have particular names which belong to them, in the order of their birth up to the fifth child. These names are for boys, Caske, Hepan, Hepi, Catan, and Hake. For girls they are, Windna, Hapan, Hapistinna, Wanske, and Wihake."

Terms applied to Children.

An interesting study might be made of the words we apply to children in respect of size, little, small, wee, tiny, etc., very many of which, in their etymology, have no reference to childhood, or indeed to smallness. The derivation of little is uncertain, but the word is reasonably thought to have meant "little" in the sense of "deceitful, mean," from the radical lut, "to stoop" (hence "to creep, to sneak"). Curiously enough, the German klein has lost its original meaning,—partly seen in our clean,—"bright, clear." Small also belongs in the same category, as the German schmal, "narrow, slim," indicates, though perhaps the original signification may have been "small" as we now understand it; a cognate word is the Latin macer, "thin, lean," which has lost an s at the beginning. Even wee, as the phrase "a little wee bit" hints, is thought (by Skeat) to be nothing more than a Scandinavian form of the same word which appears in our English way. Skeat also tells us that "a little teeny boy," meant at first "a little fractious (peevish) boy," being derived from an old word teen, "anger, peevishness." Analogous to tiny is pettish, which is derived from pet, "mama's pet," "a spoiled child." Endless would the list of words of this class be, if we had at our disposal the projected English dialect dictionary; many other illustrations might be drawn from the numerous German dialect dictionaries and the great Swiss lexicon of Tobler.

Still more interesting, perhaps, would be the discussion of the special words used to denote the actions and movements of children of all ages, and the names and appellatives of the child derived from considerations of age, constitution, habits, actions, speech, etc., which are especially numerous in Low German dialects and such forms of English speech as the Lowland Scotch. Worthy of careful attention are the synonyms of child, the comparisons in which the child figures in the speech of civilized and uncivilized man; the slang terms also, which, like the common expression of to-day, kid, often go back to a very primitive state of mind, when "children" and "kids" were really looked upon as being more akin than now. Beside the terms of contempt and sarcasm,—goose, loon, pig, calf, donkey, etc.,—those figures of speech which, the world over, express the sentiment of the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon regarding the foolishness of babes,—we, like the ancient Mexicans and many another lower race, have terms of praise and endearment,—"a jewel of a babe," and the like,—legions of caressives and diminutives in the use of which some of the Low German dialects are more lavish even than Lowland Scotch.

In Grimm's great Deutsches WÖrterbuch, the synonymy of the word Kind and its semasiology are treated at great length, with a multitude of examples and explanations, useful to students of English, whose dictionaries lag behind in these respects. The child in language is a fertile subject for the linguist and the psychologist, and the field is as yet almost entirely unexplored.