The Green Bag
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as falsehood hath a “goodly outside” it will be found attractive, and our experi
women are more prone to false swearing than men, will probably also remain a
ence is that attractive things are rarely entirely abolished.
mooted question.
Whether,
as
some
jurists
declare,
To paraphrase the
Master, let the man who is free from lying make this charge against woman.
60 Wall Street, New York City.
The Right to Change One’s Name NE of the most entertaining legal opinions we have ever encountered was that written by Mr. Justice Irving G. Vann of the New York Court of Appeals in the case of Smith v. United States Casualty Company,
aspirations. The Duke of Wellington was not by blood a Wellesley but a Colley, his grandfather, Richard Colley, having assumed the name of a relative named Wesley, which
decided Feb. 8, 1910.
Baring-Gould's Famous Names and Their Story, 391). This author in his chapter on Changed Names gives many examples of men well known to history who changed their names by simply adopting a new one in place of the old. “Mr. Walsh, in his Handbook of Literary Curiosities, makes an interesting statement at page 778: ‘Authors and actors know the value of a mouth-filling name. Herbert Lythe becomes famous as Maurice Barry
This opinion, which
was not less able than interesting, was announced in an insurance case, the court upholding without a dissenting voice the
common law right of a man to change his name, and his right to recover a policy of insurance issued to him under an assumed name:— "The history of literature and art fur nishes many examples of men who aban doned the names of their youth and chose the one made illustrious by their writings or paintings. Melanchthon’s family name was Schwartzerde, meaning black earth, but as soon as his literary talents devel oped and he began to forecast his future he changed it to the classical synonym by which he is known to history. “Rembrandt's father had the surname Gerretz, but the son, when his tastes broadened and his hand gained in cunning, changed it to Van Ryn on account of its greater dignity. “A predecessor of Honoré de Balzac was born a Guez, which means beggar, and grew to manhood under that surname. When he became conscious of his powers as a writer he did not wish his works to be published under that humble name, so be selected the surname Balzac from an estate that he owned. He made the name famous, and the later Balzac made it irn~ mortal. "Voltaire, Moliere, Dante, Petrarch, Richelieu, Loyola, Erasmus and Linnaeus were assumed names. Napoleon Bonaparte changed his name after his amazing vic tories had lured him toward a crown, and he wanted a grander name to aid his daring
was afterward expanded to Wellesley (S.
more, Bridget O’Toole charms an audience
as Rosa d'Erina, John H. Broadribb becomes Henry Irving. Samuel C. Clemens and Charles R. Browne attract attention under the eccentric masks of Mark Twain and Artemus Ward. John Rowlands would never have become a great explorer unless he had first changed his name to Henry M. Stanley. James B. Matthews and James B. Taylor might have remained lost among the mass of magazine contributors but for their cunning in dropping the James and standing forth as Brander Matthews and Bayard Taylor. Would Jacob W. Reid have succeeded as well as Whitelaw Reid?’ While some of these names were merely professional pseudonyms, others were adopted as the real name and in time became the only name of the person who assumed it. “Many other instances of voluntary change of name, both given and surname, might
be added, but we will mention only two more." It is then recounted how Hiram Ulysses Grant came to be called Ulysses S. Grant, and how, in his teens, Stephen Grover Cleveland dropped his baptismal name.
