46

46. On names

[Platonic philosophy attached a real power to names; Montaigne is sceptical. Even a great ‘name’ (a well-deserved reputation after death) is an empty thing for the dead heroes themselves. This chapter is in many ways a diptych to I:37, ‘On Cato the Younger’.]

[A] No matter how varied the greenstuffs we put in, we include them all under the name of salad. So too here: while surveying names I am going to make up a mixed dish from a variety of items.

I do not know why but every nation has some names which are taken in a bad sense: we do so with Jean, Guillaume and Benoît.

Item: in the genealogy of kings there seem to be some names beloved by Fate, as Ptolomey was for kings in Egypt, Henry in England, Charles in France, Baldwin in Flanders and, in our own Aquitania in olden times, Guillaume, from which they say is derived the name of Guyenne – a poor enough pun were there not equally crude ones in Plato himself.1

Item: a trifling matter, but nevertheless worthy of remembrance because of its oddness and its being vouched for by an eye-witness, is the fact that when Henry Duke of Normandy, son of King Henry II of England, held a great feast in France, such a huge crowd of the nobility had gathered together that it was decided for amusement to divide people up into groups bearing similar names: the first troop consisted of the Guillaumes, comprising one hundred and six knights of that name seated at table, without counting the ordinary gentlemen and servants. [B] Just as amusing as seating guests at table according to their names was the idea of the Emperor Geta who arranged his bill of fare according to the first letter of the name of each dish, serving up together those which begin with M, such as mutton, marcassin, merle, marsouin and so on.

[A] Item: they say that it is a good thing to have a good name (meaning renown and reputation); but it is also a real advantage to have a fine one which is easy to pronounce and to remember, since kings and the great can then recognize us more easily and less wilfully forget us. Even where our servants are concerned we usually summon for a job those whose names come most readily to our tongue. I noticed that King Henry II was never able to call a gentleman from our part of the world by his right name; and he even decided to call one of the Queen’s maidservants by her family name because the Christian name given her by her father seemed too awkward. [C] Socrates himself thought it was worth a father’s while to take trouble to give his children beautiful-sounding names.

[A] Item: it is said that the origin of the founding of Notre-Dame-La-Grand at Poitiers was the discovery by a local dissolute youth that the girl he had just picked up and whose name he had asked was called Mary; he felt such vivid awe and respect sweep over him on hearing the name of the Most Blessed Mother of our Saviour, that not only did he send the girl packing but brought amendment to the rest of his life; in consideration of this miracle a chapel was built to Our Lady on the square where the youth’s house stood, and subsequently there was built the church we can see there today.2

[C] That conversion by word and hearing, being pious, struck straight at the soul; the following is similar but was subtly introduced through the physical senses: Pythagoras was in the company of some young men: he heard them plotting, when they were inflamed with wine, to go and rape some chaste women in their own home: he ordered the minstrel-girl to change her musical mode, so that, by a weighty and grave tune meant for solemn drinking, he gently charmed away their hot lust and calmed it down.

[A] And will not posterity say that our present-day Reformation has been scrupulous and dainty indeed! It not only fought against error and vice, filling our whole world with piety, humility and obedience, with peace and with virtues of every kind, but it also went so far as to fight against our ancient Christian names of Charles, Louis and François, so as to people the earth with Methuselahs, Ezekiels and Malachis, names so much more redolent of our Faith!…

One of my neighbouring gentlemen, when listing the superiorities of former times over our own, did not forget to mention the proud and magnificent names of the noblemen in those days; by simply hearing names such as Don Grumedan, Quedragan or Agesilan, he felt they had been men of a different kind than our Pierres, Guillots and Michels.

Item: I am deeply grateful to Jacques Amyot for leaving Latin names as they were in the course of his French prose, without altering and changing their colour by giving them French endings. It seemed a bit harsh at first, but usage, because of the authority of his Plutarch, has removed their strangeness for us. And I have often wished that those who write our own history in Latin would leave French names alone, for when they make Vaudemont into Vallemontanus and change the shape of our names so as to robe them in the Greek or Latin style we no longer know where we are and cannot understand them any more.

To end my account, It is a custom worthy of villeins – and of great consequence for this France of ours – that we call people by the name of their lands and lordships: nothing in the world is so responsible for confusing and confounding our family trees. The younger son of a good family, having received as his portion lands by whose name he is honoured and known, cannot honourably go and dispose of them; but ten years after he is dead they do pass to a stranger, who then acts the same way. You can guess how far we get when we try to identify those men. We need to look no further for examples of this than to our own royal house: so many portions, so many surnames. Meanwhile we have lost the original stem.

[B] These mutations are allowed such licence that I know nobody in my own time who has had the good fortune to be elevated to some extraordinarily high rank who has not been immediately endowed with new genealogical styles of which his father knew nothing, or failed to be grafted on to some illustrious stock. Luckily it is the obscurer families which best lend themselves to such falsifications. How many mere gentlemen are there in France who are of royal stock… by their own reckoning! More I think than of any other rank.

Was this habit not put to shame with good grace by one of my friends? Several gentlemen had gathered together on account of a dispute between a lord and a certain gentleman who had in truth some precedence by tide and alliance which did raise him above the ordinary men of his rank. On the subject of this precedence, all the other gentlemen strove to make themselves his equal, each alleging this origin or that, or some similarity of name or arms or some old family document: even the least among them proved to be remotely descended from some king of Outremer!3 When dinner was served that Lord, instead of taking his seat, walked backwards bowing deeply, begging the assembled company to pardon his temerity for having heretofore lived with them as an equal: but now, having been informed of their ancient lineages he would start honouring each according to his degree: it was not for him to take a seat in the presence of so many princes. When this farce was over he addressed a great many rebukes to them: ‘In God’s name let us be content with [C] what contented our ancestors and with [B] whatever we are; if we can sustain that, we are good enough. Let us not disown the fortune and circumstances of our forefathers; let us get rid of such stupid fancies: they will never run out for such as are impudent enough to allege them.’

Coats-of-arms are no more reliable than our family names. Say I sport Azure, semee of trefoils, or; lions rampant, also or; armed, fesse gules. What privilege is accorded to this design to remain specific to my house? A son-in-law will transport it to some other family; some wretched man will buy it for his first coat-of-arms: such changes and confusion can be found nowhere else.

[A] This consideration drags me into another subject. Let us make our soundings go a little deeper and for God’s sake look at the foundations on which we build all that honour and glory for which the world is thrown into chaos. To what do we attach the reputation which we seek after with such labour? Why, it is a man called Pierre, or Guillaume who enjoys it, guards it and who is touched by it. [C] (Oh what a sagacious faculty is hope, which for a moment arrogates infinity, immensity and eternity to a mortal creature! What a nice little toy Nature has given us there.)

[A] In the first place: this Pierre or this Guillaume, what is it, if you come to think of it, but a spoken noun or three or four pen-strokes so easily corrupted that you may well wonder who actually did get the honour of all those victories: was it Guesquin, was it Glesquin, was it Gueaquin?4 (There are better grounds for a law-suit here between Letter S and Letter T than there are in Lucian,5 for,

non levia aut ludicra petuntur Præmia;

[the prize they seek is no light or trivial one;]6

this is serious.) The question is, which letters of the alphabet in those names are to be credited with all those sieges, battles, wounds, imprisonments and duties undertaken on behalf of the Crown of France by her famous Constable?

Nicolas Denisot was only concerned with the letters of his name: he strung them together in a different arrangement as the ‘Conte d’Alsinois’, to which name he gave all the glory of his poetry and painting.7 But the historian Suetonius was attached only to the meaning of his; his father’s name was Lenis (‘Calm’): he disowned it and bequeathed his own reputation as a writer to Tranquillus.8 Who would ever have believed that the fame of Capitaine Bayard is all borrowed from the deeds of a man called Pierre Terrail, or that the name Antoine Escalin should allow itself to be robbed, with its eyes wide open, of all its voyages over land and sea undertaken by a Capitaine Poulin and a Baron de la Garde?9

In the second place: those pen-strokes are shared by hundreds of men. How many people are there of the same kindred who all bear the same name and surname? [C] And how many are there of different kindred, periods and countries? History has known three men called Socrates, five Platos, eight Aristotles, seven Xenophons, twenty Demetriuses and twenty Theodores; just guess how many she has never known!

[A] What can stop my ostler calling himself Pompey the Great?10 When all is said and done, what means or links are there which can securely attach that glorious spoken name or pen-strokes either to my ostler, once he is dead, or to that other man whose head was severed in Egypt, in such a way that they can profit by them?

[Al] Id cinerem et manes credis curare sepultos?

[Do you think that bothers spirits and ashes in their tombs?]11

[C] What can they feel now, the following two heroes who share in fellowship the highest bravery known to me? Can Epaminondas hear that glorious verse about him so frequently on our lips:

Consiliis nostris laus est attonsa Laconum

[My counsels clipped the praise of Sparta]?12

Can Scipio Africanus hear these:

A sole exoriente supra Mæotis paludes Nemo est qui factis me æquiparare queat

[There is no man from where the eastern sun rises above the marshes of the Scythian Lake who can match my deeds]?13

It is those who survive who are moved by the sweetness of those sounds; stirred by a desire to rival those dead men, without reflection they mentally attribute their own emotions to them and deceive themselves into thinking that they too will be able to feel them in their turn. God knows that is true.

[A] Nevertheless:

ad hæc seRomanus, Graiusque, et Barbants Induperator Erexit, causas discriminis atque laboris Inde habuit, tanto major famæ sitis est quam Virtutis.

[For this were Roman, Greek and Barbarian chiefs aroused; this was the motive of their risks and labours, so much more did they thirst for fame than virtue.]14