APPELLATION, the name or title by which any thing is commonly known or distinguished.
It is both amusing and instructive to trace the changes which have gradually arisen in names, either from ca sual corruption, the ignorance of those by whom they are applied, or the progressive alteration of manners and customs. It is thus that the term villain, is now never employed but as a term of severe reproach, and implying disgraceful conduct ; whereas, originally, it meant no more than a boor, or permanent inhabitant of the country, in the days of feudalismovhen the peasants were uniformly attached to the soil; and, consequently, a much more degraded order of beings than they are at present.
Somewhat similar, is the history of the term pagan, as given by Mr Gibbon, and traced through seven suc cessive stages. 3. liar', in the Doric dialect, which was the most familiar to the inhabitants of Italy, denotes a fountain; whence the rural neighbourhood, which frequented the same fountain, was called pagus and pa ganus. 2. By an easy extension of the word, pagan and rural became almost synonimous (Plin. Nat. list. 28. 5.); and the meaner rustics acquired the name, which has been corrupted into peasants, and the correspond ing terms in the modern languages of Europe. 3. The great increase of the military order, during the decline of the empire, introduced the necessity of a co-relative term ; and all the people who were not inlisted in the service of the prince, were branded with the contemp tuous epithet of pagans, as early as the reign of Valen tinian (A. D. 355) ; when we find it introduced into im penal laws theological writings. 5. Christianity having gradually filled the cities of the empire, the old religion retired, and languished in obscure villages ; and the word pagans, as we find from Prudentius and Orosius, with its new signification, reverted to its pri mitive origin. 6. Since the worship of the heathen deities has expired, the title of pagans has been successively applied to all the idolaters and polytheists of the old and new world. 7. The Latin Christians bestowed it without scruple on their mortal enemies the Mahome tans ; and thus, says our historian, the purest Unita rians were branded with the unjust reproach of idolatry and paganism. Gibbon, vol. 3, p. 410.--Svo.) Some singular corruptions and misconceptions have arisen from the misunderstanding and mispronouncing of French terms, which were once so familiarly em ployed in England ; and constituted even the technical phraseology of our courts of justice. It is thus that the cryer of a court now bawls out " 0 Yes ! 0 Yes !" in stead of the French " Oyez," listen, or pay attention ; and it is thus that the yeomen of the king's guard are now facetiously called beefeaters, instead of buffetiers, or attendants on the buffet ; an office which it was their duty to perform on all great solemnities. Our sailors have been much addicted to this kind of national war fare against the French language, and use no ceremony in Anglicising every French name that they may have occasion to pronounce ; thus, the French ship called the Bienfaisant, was converted into the Bonny Pheasant ; and the Blanc-nez, or White Headland, on the French coast near Calais, was, without ceremony, metamorphos ed into Blackness.
This kind of leger-de-main has produced some sin gular effects upon the names and graphical designs of some of our most celebrated signs. We are indebted to the Spectator for a satisfactory account of the history of some of these metamorphoses ; particularly in the case of the well-known signs of the Bull and Mouth, and the Bull and Gate. King Henry VIII., having taken the town of Boulogne in France, and caused its gates to be deposited at Hardes in Kent, where they still remain, the picture of these gates became a popu lar subject for a sign, under the title of the Boulogne Gate ; and the port or harbour of Boulogne became the sign of a noted inn at Holborn, under the title of the Boulogne Mouth. The name of the inn and its sign, long outliving the tradition on which it was founded, an ignorant painter, employed by an ignorant landlord, tra vestied the design, by substituting in its place a bull and a large gaping human mouth ; thus exhibiting, for the Boulogne Mouth, the Bull and Mouth. A similar process converted the Boulogne Gate into the Bull and Gate. The same author has explained the sign of the Bell and Savage, or Bell Savage inn, with plausibility, by supposing it to have been originally the picture of a beautiful female found in the woods of France, and call ed La belle sauvage. It has, however, since been as serted, that the inn was once the property of a Lady Arabella Savage, and familiarly called Bell Savage's inn ; now figured by a bell placed beside a savage man ; either from a ridiculous blunder, or as an intended rebus on the name, rebuses being much in fashion in the 16th century.
The very common sign of the Eagle and Child, is said to have been originally nothing less than the insignia of the far-famed corporation of tailors, to wit, the Needle and Thread, in French, L'Aiguille et fl ; which some blunderer had converted into et fits, and then translated the Eagle and Child. And the whimsical sign which combines together the Devil and the Bag of Wails, is said to have had at first the classical subject of the Satyr and the Bacchanals ; afterwards more famili arly styled the Devil and the Bacchanals, and at length converted, by misnomer, into the Devil and the Bag ()Wails.
To conclude the subject of signs with the pawn-bro ker's Three Blue Balls, and the barber's Pole : The first was the arms of a set of Lombardy merchants, who began the traffic of publicly lending money upon pledges, and who gave its name to Lombardy street, in London, as well as to another of the same designation in Paris. The second was intended to spew, that the master of the shop practised surgery as well as shav ing ; such a staff being, to this day, put into the hand of a patient undergoing phlebotomy, by every village practitioner. The white band which is painted entwin ing the staff, was meant to represent the fillet which was to tie up the patient's arm. (in)