[102] It is mainly among the people, rather than with philosophers, that the power of inventing names has lingered. Some write the name Plonplon, and make it a familiar abbreviation of Napoleon; but accomplished Frenchmen give differing accounts of the word.
[103] “Ὄνομα ποίεω. Ὀνοματοποιΐα est dictio ad imitandum sonum vocis conficta, ut cum dicimus _hinnire_ equos, _balare_ oves, _stridere_ valvas.” Charis. iv. p. 245. Lersch, i. 129-232. The Latins call it “fictio nominis.”
[104] Renan, p. 136. We have already endeavoured to guard against the misconception that language is in any sense a _result_ of imitation: a mere power of imitating the sounds of nature belongs to animals as well as to man.--Heyse, s. 91, and supra ch. i.
[105] Wedgwood’s _Etym. Dict._ p. v. It is necessary to be cautious, of course, in deducing the processes of language from the observation of children. See Heyse, s. 47. The word moo-cow is a mixture of pure onomatopœia, and onomatopœia after it has become conventional.
[106] See the lists of such vocabularies in the _Transactions of the Philol. Soc._
[108] L. 45. “Proprium tigridis, a sono. Alii leg. _raucant_.”--Forcellini, _Lex._
[109] Wedgwood, p. vi. The name is not native probably, for the native tribe-names mostly end in qua; as Griqua, Namaqua, &c.
[110] Nodier, p. 79 seq. Dr. Pickering quotes an account of the _original people_ of Malay, in which it is said that “their language is not understood by any one: they lisp their words, _the sound of which is like the noise of birds_.” (_Races of Man_. Bohn ed. p. 305.)
[111] Bunsen, _Outlines_, ii. 82. The poet Shelley implied the same thought in _Alastor_:
“I wait breath, Great Parent, that my song May _modulate_ with motions of the air, And murmurs of the forest and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and _the deep heart of man_.”
[112] Locke _on the Human Understanding_, iii. I. § 1, 2.
[113] Harris’s _Hermes_, bk. ii. ch. 2, 3rd ed. p. 325.
[114] Renan, p. 139, quoting Adelung, _Mithrid._ i. p. xiv. Grimm, _Über die Namen des Donners_. (Berlin, 1855.) If the words “tonitru,” “donner,” &c., be not originally onomatopœian, as some assert (who derive them from _tan_, Gr. τείνειν), they _became_ so from a feeling of the need that they should be.--Heyse, s. 93.