INITIALS

Evening Star, Issue 19408, 17 November 1926, Page 13

INITIALS

LACKING IN DEFINITION Rough calculations spread over save-, ral days show that of those who writ® letters to ‘ The Times ’ more than hassign only the initials, of their first, oir Christian, names. It is a practice rather difficult to understand (says tbalj journal). Initials are colorless’; they! lack both definition and suggestion*! This is so even with famous namds. The name of Milton defines the greSiifc poet. John Milton suggests also tjie secretary and the 5 sectary. J. Milton might be anyone, and is, on the face £>f it, no one, a man as unknown to favno as W. Shakespeare. It is equally, though less strikingly, true of names not famous. Among any set of frietAds there is nearly always one whose personal quality is better Mt off by ! his initials than by his name, and the Hise of them in addressing him implies friendship with a touch of banter in it. Initials, again, when steadiTy stuck to by persons of considerable ability, can acquire the force of names, as more than one successful modern writejp has proved. But even where well-kjfiown men are in question the initials, are nearly always most forcible when the surname, too, is abbreviated or dijojoped. “ W.E.G.” W.E.G. means more than W- E. Gladstone and something other s tWn the statesman’s full resounding naml?« Future ages may be excused for not knowing that W.G. was only _ two-tljJjrds of another famous man’s initials. And a single initial can acquire an , almost necromantic force. A bare K, a large F (in green pencil) have set War Office and Admiralty thrilling tot .a sense of power which the full n aim as could never have excited. If by nt> choice of your own you are, say, J.W.H..T., it is braver (no matter what jokes, may be fitted to the proud array) t<>. let the world know it than to be shy about it, as some very tall men are shy about their height. No harsh cervjaure is deserved by those who adopt! an adroit arrangement. An ambitiousj young man has the name (if we may invent one for him) of Edward Wilson Baker. To write it Edward W. Baker is certainly to make it no more distinctive, and perhaps even to raise some doubt about his nationality. When it becomes E. Wilson Baker it is very nearly _ a double surname, and tire first initial might (who knows?) stand for Everard or Esme. But the use of bald initials only is nearly always to' fee traced to shyness. A prominent .example was that of a very modest man, Dr Jameson, until his baronetcy forced into the open his remarkable namtos of Leander Starr. Others may be ehyr because they have one or more of those names which, for some reason not extyknned, carry a suggestion of the coir/ical. And behind these, again, lies the great body of people who have ruerfhing ridiculous in their names, but whom a natural shrinking from self-nevelation constrains to conceal them* This idea may be a little difficult to r<£concile with the frequency with which some of them write to the nowspafiers; but something must always be allowed for the persistence into adult life of the old private school notion that first names were soft and girlish things, to which a fellow need confess, ouly in his family- ‘