WHAT'S IN A NAME.

By Charles L. Youmans '20. Lancaster, N. H.: Bisbee Press,1955. 79 PP.

What's in a Name is about American surnames where they came from, how and why they were changed, and what they mean.

The author points out that the names of today are closely related to a way of life now long past, and he shows, to prove his contention, how his own name, derived from Yeoman, means a long-bow-man.

The book has a certain fascination by providing the semantics of names and it will be an unusual reader who does not go first to his own - unless, of course, he is so erudite that he already knows the derivation of his name.

Mr. Youmans deals with state names; words coined from names; the Americanization of surnames; names from animals, from foods, from occupations, and localities; and he treats of names of particular nationalities such as the French, Teutonic, Spanish, Basque and Arabic.

Necessarily, since the volume contains only seventy-nine pages, the treatment is brief and to the point, but it has enough content to make it interesting reading.

The book has the advantages of being fitted with an index and bibliography, which add materially to its usefulness.

Line cuts illustrating chapter headings are by Claude L. Brusseau, and the book was attractively designed and printed by Roderick D. Stinehour '50 of the Bisbee Press.