In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's serviceGrier, Sydney C.
General
In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's service
Grier, Sydney C.
British -- India -- Fiction; East India Company -- Fiction; India -- Fiction
In dealing with foreign names, the English author of the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries pursued one unfailing method. In
the case of European personal names, if he could find an English
equivalent, he used that, and if not, he resorted to a Latin form,
boldly rendering Emil by Æmilius, for instance. Sometimes he even
applied this method to surnames, as the forms Thuanus and Montisquius,
found for De Thou and Montesquieu in the ‘Book of Martyrs,’ will
testify. As an example of a foreign Christian name replaced by its
English equivalent, we need only recall that of the famous Don John of
Austria. Mr Carlyon is, therefore, only following the custom of his
time when he renders Sebastiaõ, Francisco, and Deodoro as Sebastian,
Francis, and Theodorus. In the same way Madam Heliodora’s real name
was Françoise Marie Louise Anne Aimée (or Amantine) Héliodore, and
her father’s Gaspard Dieudonné. With regard to names of places, the
case was different. It was only occasionally that an English form
could be used, as with Gascoign for Gascogne (a closer approximation
than our own Gascony), and St Thomas for San Thomé. The effort of the
writer seems generally to have been to make the names look as English
as possible. Hence we have Dhilly for Delhi, and Geminy for Jumna. He
had a marked objection to the letters _b_ and _k_, and a fondness for
_v_, _x_, and _z_. _J_ and _sh_ he often replaced by _ch_ or _s_.
Indian personal names come under the same category, for which reason I
have left them to the last. Here, as with the place-names, our
author’s spelling was strictly phonetic, in so far as he could make it
so. Loll Duss, Cogia Bux, and Rum Cunder are recognisable as Lal Das,
Khoja Baksh, and Ram Chanda; but Madda Gi is not easy to interpret as
Madhoji, and the modern spelling of Vincaly I have not been able to
discover. Eusoff is Yusuf. What adds to the difficulty of identifying
these Eastern names is that in many cases the chronicler adopted them
from a Portuguese or Dutch predecessor, who had left his own mark upon
them in the shape of a previous modification of the spelling in
accordance with his national taste. I have thought it better in all
cases to leave the names in the text in their original form (and so
also with a few misspelt English and Indian words), merely explaining
in a note those about which there might be some doubt, thus retaining
the quaint effect.
APPENDIX III.
PRIVATE TRADING BY THE COMPANY’S SERVANTS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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