Surnames are very indefinite and shifting matters. If Musa has a son named Jurjus, the boy will naturally be known as Jurjus Musa. But the father will, of course, change his own name to Abu Jurjus. Many surnames are taken from occupations. Haddad or “Smith” is here, as in every country, one of the most common. Others are derived from localities. Hanna Shweiri is “John from Shweir,” and Suleiman Beiruti is “Beirut Solomon.” Real family or clan names, however, are not uncommon, especially among the aristocracy. As a man becomes more prosperous he will often drop his commonplace appellation in favor of a more dignified one, which perhaps revives an ancient but long neglected designation of his family. This easy putting on and off of names sometimes leads to considerable confusion. I once asked all over a mountain village for the house of a friend whom I had known in Beirut, and met with the most positive assurances that no such person lived there. Fortunately I happened to remember that my friend’s father was a baker. “John Baker! Oh, yes, everybody in town knows _him_! But that other fellow you’ve been asking about—we never heard of him.” The mountain boys, especially, used often to take new surnames when they came to college. Sometimes they afterward exchanged these for still better ones. So a facetious professor greeted a returning student with “Well, Eliya, what is your name _this_ year?” An exasperated inquirer, who had vainly tried to pin down a certain youth to a satisfactory statement of his chosen titles, finally exclaimed, “Now, tell me, what _is_ your name?” Then came the maddeningly irritating answer which so frequently tempts the Occidental to commit homicide, “As you like, sir!” Another young man, who had narrowly escaped expulsion for his various misdeeds, decided to turn over a new leaf; so he came back to the college the next autumn with a different name—and made it good. The Syrian understands better than do we the full content of the divine promise of “a new name.”[7] At first this seems a land of inexplicable contrasts. I could write of its ravaging pestilences so that one would find it hard to believe that Syria is notable for its healthfulness. I could record fearful massacres until the reader would think me foolishly daring for never carrying a weapon during all my travels. I could—quite truthfully—tell how a Syrian landscape lacks so many of the old familiar aspects of our home scenes, and give no hint of the glorious panoramas of this fertile, well-watered, bright-colored land—where the mountains sit with their feet in the Great Sea and their heads among the glorious clouds, while mantles of shimmering silver fall above their richly tinted garments.