name of this innocent animal at sea, is, or was, reckoned by the Aberdeenshire fishermen an act of impiety, the punishment of which could be averted only by some mysterious charm. The Laplanders never mention the name of the bear, but prefer to speak of him as “the old man with the fur-coat.” The motive here appears to be a fear that by naming the dreaded object his actual presence will be evoked; and this idea is preserved in one of our commonest sayings. Even if the object of terror does not actually appear, he will at least listen when he hears his name; and if anything unpleasant is said of him he is likely to resent it. Hence, in order to avoid even the semblance of reproach, his very name is made flattering. This phenomenon, generally termed euphemism, is of very common occurrence. The Greeks, for example, called the Furies the “Well-disposed ones;” and the wicked fairy Puck was christened “Robin Goodfellow,” by the English peasantry. The modern Greeks euphemise the name of vinegar into “the sweet one.” Were its real name to be mentioned, all the wine in the house would turn sour. We have an example of the converse of the principle of euphemism work in the case of mothers among the savage tribes of Tonquin giving their children hideous names in order to frighten away evil spirits from molesting them. It is, however, in the case of the most dreaded and most mysterious of all our enemies—Death—that the superstition becomes most apparent. “The very name of Death,” says Montaigne, “strikes terror into people, and makes them cross themselves.” Even the unsuperstitious have a vague reluctance to mentioning this dreaded name. Rather than say, “If Mr. So-and-so should _die_,” we say, “If anything should happen to Mr. So-and-so.” The Romans preferred the expression “He has lived” to “He is dead.” “M. Thiers _a vécu_” was the form in which that statesman’s death was announced; not “M. Thiers _est mort_.” The same reluctance is noticeable in mentioning the names of persons who are dead. A writer on the Shetland Isles tells us that no persuasion will induce a widow to mention her dead husband’s name. When we do happen to allude to a deceased friend by name, we often add some such expression as “Rest his soul!” by way of antidote to our rashness; and this expression seems to have been used by the Romans in the same way. As might be expected, we find this carried to a great extreme among savages. In some tribes, when a man dies who bore the name of some common object—“fire,” for instance—the name for fire must be altered in consequence; and as proper names among savages are almost invariably the names of common objects, the rapid change that takes place in the language and the inconvenience resulting therefrom may be imagined. Civilization has indeed made enormous progress from this cumbersome superstition to our own philosophy, which can ask with haughty indifference, “What’s in a name?”—_Chambers’s Journal._ * * * * *