Chapter XIV

The Name and the House

There are two facts so intimately interwoven with the Family as we know it, that it is difficult for us to conceive of it as existing apart from them. The one is the Name, in which all its members share, and by which they are known to the outside world; the other is the House or habitation within which its members dwell, and in which they find seclusion from the outside world. Neither of these can be said to be essential in the sense that they actually form constituent parts of the family; yet both contribute in a very marked degree to its strength and preservation, and cannot be altogether omitted from the present study.

To consider first the family Name. Amongst members of the same family circle this is rarely if ever used; they have no need of a distinguishing mark to tell them who are relations and who are merely visitors or friends or servants; and for purposes of identification the Christian or forename suffices. But in the absence of a strong family likeness there is nothing but the name to enable us to classify the people we casually see or hear about into their respective Families, which means really to assign to them a definite and recognisable position in the community. It seems probable that originally, and amongst some peoples at least, the family name would derive a great part of its importance from the fact that to certain Families within the State certain public duties were assigned; and for official purposes and in order to know who was responsible for those duties it was essential that each individual should bear the distinguishing mark of his Family. Thus amongst the Jews every member of the Family of Levi was by birth a priest. In communities where the distribution of function by hereditary caste no longer survives, the name loses this official significance, and a further distinguishing mark which has no reference to the family, such as M.P. or L.C.C., has to be added.

In the higher ranks of "society" the family name still bears a sort of quasi-official significance in that it enables the expert to determine quickly and easily the details arising out of considerations of social conventions or precedence. And even in circles where the man is taken "on his own merits," the family name is an index to far more of those " merits" or characteristics than he can show to any but his most intimate friends.¹

It is in our intercourse with the external world, between people who have no intimate relations, that the need for the family name arises; and in proportion as the Family is self-contained and powerful as against the community we find the family name least in evidence, and the forename taking on other distinguishing marks. The natural history of naming is a study in itself,² and here we are concerned with it only in reference to the Family; but though the distinction between the name which belongs to an individual as such, and the name which assigns to him his place in a Family, is very definite, yet there is a frequent transition between the two, forenames becoming surnames and surnames forenames; while there are certain processes of naming which are constantly repeating themselves in social history.

One of the most complicated systems of naming was that of the Romans, and as we have taken our illustration of the Patriarchal Family from them, so also we may take their system of names, though only in its most general outline. The normal Roman had four names, or rather four kinds of names. First there was the name which belongs to the individual as such, the name "with which he is born and with which he dies," the name which his parents choose and give to him as his first and most intimate possession. How far the choice is an arbitrary one, and how far it is determined by family or other considerations, we will note presently. This is the name to which what we now call the "Christian" name corresponds in general.

Then there was the gentile name, which denoted to what race or Family in the largest sense the individual belonged. This had its origin in variousways; it might refer to some remote common ancestor, or to the district to which the Family belonged, or to the arms which it bore. It corresponds in general to the name of the Scotch clan, perhaps to the name of primitive tribes, and in part to our "family name." But these two by themselves become insufficient to particularise the individual when the clan becomes large, or when the choice of individual or forenames is small. Hence a third name is necessary to limit still further the group to which the individual is assigned; and that is done by adding the name of the head of the family group in its narrower and stricter sense. Amongst the Romans this was the head of the Patriarchal Family, which included not only wife and children, but slaves and all dependants; and the "patronymic" was thus a bond between men of highest and of lowest estate. A striking parallel to this usage was to be found until lately in modern slaveholding communities; but for the most part the relation now indicated by it is strictly that between parent and child. It is still to be found wherever the family community consisting of several generations and households persists, notably in Russia. What is wanted here for purposes of daily intercourse is a name to indicate, not to what Family an individual belongs, but of which brother he is the child; thus Peter, son of Paul, would be distinguished from Peter, son of Andrew. The usage is common also in districts such as Wales, where the variety of family names is very small. Here it becomes quite necessary to distinguish the individual in some other way than by the combination of his Christian and family name, and though there are other methods, perhaps the commonest is by the addition of his father's or mother's Christian name. How old this device is, is shown by the surviving prefixes which signify "the son of," "Fitz" in Norman English, "Mac" in Scotch, "Ap" in Welsh (Pritchard = ap Richard, Price = ap Rice).

Finally we find amongst the Romans the cognomen, originally like the forename in being strictly peculiar to the individual, but unlike it in that it is given only after the recipient has passed early childhood, is not used within the family circle, and is not recognised in strictly official documents. In a sense it is even more individual than the forename, in that it frequently indicates some purely personal peculiarity; later it becomes hereditary, and so loses something of this individuality, but in its original use it corresponds very closely to what we call a "nickname." Here again we find an exact modern parallel in districts where family names are few in variety; personal peculiarities or personal occupations are frequently used in Wales and other districts in addition to the proper name for purposes of identification; and that these tend to become hereditary, and so to become family names in our modern sense, any list of names in common use would abundantly make manifest. In a note to Guy Mannering Scott writes: "The distinction of individuals by nicknames when they possess no property is still common on the Border, and indeed necessary, from the number of persons having the same name. In the small village of Lustruther, in Roxburghshire, there dwelt, in the memory of man, four inhabitants called Andrew, or Dandie, Oliver. They were distinguished as Dandie Eassil-gate, Dandie Wassil-gate, Dandie Thumbie, and Dandie Dumbie. The two first had their names from being eastward and westward in the street of the village; the third from something peculiar in the conformation of his thumb; the fourth from his taciturn habits." The passage to which this note is appended is itself so appropriate to the whole subject that I will quote it here: "Ye see, sir," said an old shepherd, rising and speaking very slow, "the folks hereabout are a' Armstrongs and Elliots, and sic like—twa or three given names—and so, for distinction's sake, the lairds and farmers have the names of their places that they live at—as, for example, 'Tam o' Todshaw,' 'Will o' the Flat,' 'Habbie o' Sorbietrees,' and our good master here, 'o' the Charlies-hope.' Aweel, sir, and then the inferior sort o' people, ye'll observe, are kend by sorts o' by-names, some o' them, as Glaiket Christie, and the Deuke's Davie, or may be, like this lad Gabriel, by his employment—as, for example, Tod Gabbie, or Hunter Gabbie."

Under certain circumstances the forename itself, though properly speaking strictly individual, may come to have a kind of indirect significance. Amongst the patrician Romans the choice of a forename for their male children was very limited; at one time only eighteen such names were in use,³ and particular Families were limited to a still smaller cycle. Moreover, these names, in contrast with the usage of the family name, were reserved for the use of sons of the house in the stricter sense; so that there must have been a time when the forename indicated not only gentle birth, but also the actual Family to which the bearer belonged. That by degrees the plebeians should appropriate the patrician names amongst other patrician privileges was, as Mommsen points out, natural enough; and the process is paralleled in our own times by the eagerness with which the democracy seek out for their children names which used to be considered appropriate for the aristocracy alone.

All vestiges of monopoly in Names have now disappeared, but traces still linger amongst us of the clinging of a Family to a particular series of names. There are probably few Families in which some at least of the children are not "called after" some previous member of the Family. In other countries this is perhaps even more the case than with us: "Beim hohen Adel und den echten Bauern sucht die Familie selbst ihren kleinen Kreis herkömmlichen Vornamen erblich beizubehalten, und wenn alle Prinzen eines Hauses Friedrich Wilhelm und alle Jungen einer Bauernsippschaft Hans und Peter heissen, so liegt beiden das gleiche Motiv konzentrierten Familienbewusstseins zu Grunde."⁴

But the choice of the forename has often a significance even wider than that of the Family or class. Our use of the term "Christian name" itself implies definite religious ceremonies, though the implication is no longer always justified. Riehl points out again how the names current at any period reflect the social mind or movements of that period. In the earlier Middle Ages, he tells us, the German people called their children after the heroes of their own race, and purely German names prevailed. Later, under the growing influence of the Roman church, the Greek and Latin names from the stories of the saints pushed out the old German, and in their turn made way in the Reformation time for Biblical names from both Old and New Testament. "To-day families of the nobility turn again to the mediæval names of chivalry, the peasant holds fast to the traditions of the last few centuries, while in the flat and genteel bourgeois world an eclecticism rules which amounts to complete confusion. name no longer characterises the personality, the family, the rank, the calling. It sinks into a purely external sign."

It is easy to trace similar influences in other countries. The Presbyterian movement in England and Scotland introduced a series of Biblical and quasi-theological names, many of which sound most incongruous to modern ears, and it is probable that the distinction between aristocratic and plebeian names dates from the struggle between Normans and Saxons, and was reinforced by the hatred of Cavalier and Roundhead. Now there is a tendency for the aristocrats to seek piquancy in names of rustic association, while in other classes the caprice of choice reflects every passing incident of the day. A popular novelist will be responsible for a generation of Guys or Marcellas; and a popular preacher or statesman or poet scatters namesakes all over the land. And if there were any chance of forgetting the date of the South African campaign the historian would only need to consult the ages of the unfortunate children whose names record its victories.

The true family name is far less subject to caprice and fashion in that it is with few exceptions hereditary. Hence it reflects or commemorates not passing events or moods in the external world, but something in the history or circumstances or nature of the Family itself when it first became recognised as an independent self-contained group. And it is interesting in this connection to note how frequently the word chosen to designate the Family is the word which represents either the place from which the Family comes, in many cases the family estate, or the occupation in which the Family was engaged. These, as we have seen, have always been two of the most powerful factors in preserving the unity of the Family; and they perfect their work in this direction when they also give the name which is to be both the outward sign of the Family and an additional bond between its members.

For in proportion as the family community became dispersed the family Name would become important, not only as a means of identification to outsiders, but also as a tie to hold the scattered members of the Family together; in the absence of a common designation it would be next to impossible for a widespread cousinhood even to know, much less to maintain communication with, its various members. For purposes of merely individual identification the use of a "cognomen" or "nickname" is sufficient; and it would probably be found that in large communities where the use of these to the exclusion of the family Name is common (as whenever large numbers of labourers associate together), there all family ties but the very closest are quickly lost sight of.

The House

It may be doubted whether the House was primarily a protection against the weather or against the intrusion of "other people." It certainly serves both functions, more or less imperfectly; and which is the predominant motive at any time or place probably depends upon the climate. But it is significant that popular usage does not dignify by the name of House the mere "shelter" which is open to all comers, though it keeps out the weather. Like the Name, the House serves both to hold the members of the Family together and to guard them from confusion with, or intrusion from, members of other Families, and it does so in an even more marked and obvious way in so far as bricks and mortar are more solid and tangible than words.

Houses are nowadays built for other purposes than the reception of single Families, and for that reason it would have been convenient to use the word Home to represent the House or part of a house which serves to shelter more or less permanently the single Family with its dependants. But unfortunately the word Home has itself been misapplied to institutions which share few of the characteristics of family life, and it will perhaps be less misleading to adhere to the word House, defining it to mean any shelter from the weather which is reserved for the use of a particular Family.

It is an essential feature of the House in this sense that it can be closed against outsiders. If it is nothing more than a gipsy's van, or the shelter of cave or tree, so long as its limits are respected by the rest of the community, the privacy and consecutiveness of family life can be preserved, and no longer. And this power of exclusion is not of merely negative value, exercised against the outsider; it gives rise to the whole range of virtues and rights and duties which gather around the conceptions of hospitality and guest and host. To hold the balance true between the duties of the house towards the outside world, in the exercise of hospitality, and the duties of the house towards the Family in preserving its privacy, is no small part in the problem of its management; the family life may as easily become swamped in a multiplicity of guests, as it may become selfish in its exclusiveness.

The size of the House is not an essential feature; the definite space which is held sacred to the family life may be a palace, or it may be a single room, and in so far as a palace is more liable to intrusion it is always possible that the single room may be more of a home. But neither of these extremes represents the typical family House which is built with reference to the needs of a Family.

Riehl points out how domestic architecture has changed in proportion as the conception and organisation of the Family itself has changed. His own theory of the House is that it should be designed to hold three or four Families with their common ancestor and their dependants; a conception corresponding rather to the needs of the patriarchal than of the modern Family. There are two tendencies in particular which he notices and deprecates. The one is the tendency to abandon the large "living-room," where the whole Family lived together by day, carrying on their various occupations, and to substitute a series of smaller rooms for the use of particular members—one room for the man, another for his wife, another for the children. In quite modern houses we may notice a reaction in favour of the family room, but it is probably incompatible with the development of intellectual work, such as that of the student or artist or musician.

The other tendency which Riehl deprecates is the modern way of building "from without in," instead of "from within out," that is, of building the house to suit the street, instead of to suit the needs of the Family. More especially he laments the disappearance from German houses of the "Erker," or overhanging oriel windows, for the "Erker" was the corner assigned to the unmarried relative of the household, who there lived as one of the Family, and yet, to some extent, apart from it. But the "Erker" spoiled the line of the street, police regulations abolished it, and the elderly relative has lost her corner in the family house. In the same way, he thinks, "in Society and in the Family also we build symmetrically and mechanically from without inwards, instead of organically from within outwards."⁵

It was in keeping with this change that the fashion grew up of numbering the houses. "The organic house had a name, the symmetrical house has only a number." And where symmetry has reached its fullest development even the streets lose their names and are identified by numbers or letters of the alphabet.

It is not, of course, purely want of imagination which has led to the substitution of numbers for names; in towns it is a distinct convenience to have a system of numbering both streets and houses which will ensure them being easily found. On the other hand, it is not impossible to devise a system of naming which should indicate the locality, and yet be more interesting and more easily remembered than bare numbers. There is a small district in one of the dullest, poorest parts of London where the names of the streets suggest that the vestrymen responsible for them must just have returned from their summer holidays. Cambridge Street, York Street, Boston Street, Weymouth Street, Tuilerie Street, serve at least to bring pleasant associations into a somewhat dreary region; but it is when we find Shap Street, Scawfell Street, and Appleby Street in close proximity that we realise what use might be made of a geographical or, possibly, even an historical scheme of naming.

The possibility of recovering names for houses in the town seems very remote; yet every one who can make his house significant enough to carry a name will do so. The speculative builder of the suburbs knows his business when he labels each little dwelling-place as Ivy Villa, or Laburnum House, or The Gables; there is at least the suggestion of something distinctive, some quality sufficiently marked to give rise to a name. It is a feeling analogous to that attaching to the names of human beings; were it not for the greater mobility of men as compared with houses there would be nothing impossible in substituting a system of numbers and letters for our present system of names. But when it is done, as in prisons, we feel that the people numbered have suffered a serious loss of individuality, almost of humanity. And in a lesser degree we feel that our houses suffer a loss when they are known merely as one in a numerical series.

One of the most marked differences between town and country is, that in the town the house is ceasing to represent externally the needs and character of the Family inhabiting it. It is not the case, as is so often assumed by writers on town life, that monotonous, dreary streets necessarily represent monotonous, dreary lives; what they really represent are three factors entirely independent of family life: scarcity of land, building bye-laws, and speculative builders. In the country these factors are less universal, though, as a matter of fact, even in the country comparatively few houses are built to suit the needs of the actual Families occupying them. But in the country there is generally some room for the Family to express itself externally, either by actual addition or ornamentation to the house itself, or at any rate in the garden, which is a continuation of the house. Even in the town, in the poorest and dullest streets, this power is not entirely absent, small decorations adorn many of the houses, such as window boxes, ingeniously contrived to look like miniature garden palings. And inside the house, however small, the Family still finds room to express itself in furniture and arrangements. It is significant in this respect that amongst town-dwellers the "home" means not the actual house, but the furniture which bears the impress of their use and needs and aspirations. Hence the comparative readiness with which they move from one house to another—they take their home with them; while the country Family in moving leaves a large part of its home in the house and garden upon which it has impressed its own personality. But to say that the houses in a street are all alike because they all have the same number of doors and windows in the same places, and are of approximately the same colour, is much like saying that human beings are all alike because they all have the same number of limbs and features in the same places, and are of approximately the same colour. It is within that we must look for characteristic differences. And when we look within we find that in every house which is sufficiently inhabited, whether by rich or poor, the Family leaves its characteristic mark upon every detail of adornment and furniture, even the furniture which is turned out by the hundred thousand. I remember one extreme case in which every small article in a room had been gilded all over, with an effect dazzling to the outsider, but no doubt eminently satisfactory and expressive to the owner.

Though the monotonous line of the streets does not represent the lives of the Families inhabiting them, no doubt it reacts upon them indirectly by curtailing their field of self-expression in one important direction. How deeply inherent this need is in human nature may be seen in the eagerness with which all sorts and conditions of town-dwellers will grasp at any piece of land, however minute, which they can transform into a garden. It is a wonderful sight to watch the construction of a row of small suburban houses, each with its small plot in front and small strip behind. The builder leaves them hard and dusty and full of brickbats, a dreary spectacle. In six months, if the seasons are favourable, they are blossoming with every colour of the rainbow, and each presents its characteristic differOne aspires to roses, another is content with sunflowers; the scarlet of the Virginian creeper competes with the purple and white of the clematis next door; the utilitarian cherishes scarlet runners and strawberries, while the father of small children has a tiny lawn for the babies to roll upon. And just here and there the weeds are left to run riot and bear witness to another type of Family.

I must raise again here, though briefly, a question which I have discussed before,⁶ and on which my view has been called in question. This is not the place in which to discuss the Housing problem, but it is relevant to ask: Is it possible for family life to be carried on in the overcrowded condition of our large towns? My answer remains that it is not only possible, but that it is constantly and successfully done. That there are difficulties peculiar to town life I fully agree, but not primarily because the houses are small, or because Families are confined to one or two rooms. That is not a condition peculiar to town alone; there are country dwellings in every land where the Families are just as cramped for room as in the town; indeed, one important cause of the migration which is taking place into the towns is just that the young people find no house - room to start new Families in the country. And whereas in the town there is always the possibility of taking another room as the children begin to earn, in the country there may be no such possibility, and then they may be really forced to leave the Family. That even this does not necessarily mean its breaking up, every Family knows which has sent its sons and daughters out into the world without losing its hold upon their affections. We must look for other reasons than mere scarcity of house-room for weakness of family life, which is apt to show itself in crowded districts.

There are several directions at the present day in which the idea of a house devoted to the sole use of one Family seems to have been abandoned. hotel and the boarding-house, the common lodging house, the workhouse, the prison, the sisterhood, the asylum, the school, the settlement—all these stand on the same footing in that their inhabitants have more or less permanently preferred, or have had assigned to them, the life of another community than that of the Family, and have chosen their dwelling accordingly. With many it is a matter of quite temporary convenience, a mere interlude for business or holiday, in the normal family life. Of those who have chosen it as a permanent form of life in preference to the privacy of the family house, the majority are endeavouring to lessen the responsibilities of life by cutting out the burden of "housekeeping." So far the motives which actuate the habitués of hotels and boarding-houses seem to be much the same as those by which men and women of less wealth are moved to descend to lodging-houses and shelters and workhouses, rather than make the exertion of keeping up a home of their own. The greater facility of life on this level is undoubted; but it is one of the instances in which greater facility seems to be loss rather than gain. We hear much of the spread of boarding-house and hotel life, both here and in America, but in order to estimate the real strength of the movement we ought to know also how many of those who enter upon it weary of it after a few years, and are glad to resume the greater richness of home life with all its difficulties.

Perhaps one of the most interesting revivals in art which awaits us, which indeed is already manifesting itself, is that of domestic architecture. No doubt the prevailing idea of a dwelling-place in the builder's mind is still that of a square box divided into compartments; but there are few parts of the country where we may not see signs that we are once more awakening to the idea that a house may be beautiful as well as useful. And this is true not only of the houses of the few, but, what is far more important, of the homes of the many also. Even the builders of suburban villas and country cottages are beginning to realise their responsibilities in this matter, and to find that houses with a certain amount of character and individuality are more attractive.

Before concluding this chapter I must point out again that the Name and the House are alike in the double function they perform for the Family. On the one hand, they both emphasise its exclusiveness and assign its limitations; on the other hand, they both serve as instruments by which it transcends its exclusiveness and limitations. The Family which opens itself to the admission of a new member (whether wife or child or adopted child), does so formally by the gift of its most intimate and inalienable possession, its Name; while all to whom the shelter of the House is open are in a peculiar sense members of the Family so long as they avail themselves of it.

Notes