Here again there are a few exceptions. The Spanish
discoverers of America gave the "Indians" an Asiatic
name. The first Teutonic invaders of England called
the natives welisce men "foreigners," and we still call
them "Welshmen." Cities also usually have the same
name the world over, although there are instances of the
change of a city-name, as when Constantine renamed
"Byzantium" in his own honor, or when "New Amster-
dam" fell into the hands of the British and became
"New York." Rivers, mountains, etc., are likely to
have the same name in all languages, and they usually
keep their name whatever language comes to be spoken



CHANGE IN VOCABULARY 125

in their neighborhood. Most American rivers have
Indian names, such as "Connecticut," "Mississippi,"
"Illinois"; but, oddly enough, mountains in the United
States usually have English names.
Words from Proper Names

The tendency of proper names to remain the same in
spite of a change from one language to another is one
side of the general isolation of proper names from other
speech material. Even the phonetic laws often leave
proper names untouched; gradual changes, such as that
of Latin unaccented a to l, probably always affect them,
but a sound-change that spreads from word to word may
or may not be applied by any individual to his own name,
and we usually pronounce a man's name according to his
preference. '

The isolation of proper names is not complete, how-
ever. They may spring from other linguistic material,
as Miller, Stephenson, Cascade City, Bald Mountain,
Little River. Conversely proper names frequently yield
other proper names, common nouns, and even verbs.
