Note 223.5 — LIST OF SOME OF THE WORKS REFERRED TO

Placucci, 78, 23. The reason, however, may be derived from the belief that to bestow the name is to bestow a part of the life of the original owner of the name, who would thus lose it. The same ambiguity attaches to a superstition in the province of Posen (Polish Prussia), where, if a child die and the next year another child be born, it must not receive the name of the dead child lest it also die. iii. Zeits. f. Volksk., 233. This would seem to amount to complete identity, or else to some evil influence in the name, or perhaps to a mistake as to the identity on the part of some malicious spirit who had a spite against the dead child. At Chemnitz, if the first children take their parents’ names they die before the parents. Grimm, Teut. Myth., 1778. These cases want further inquiry. As to the renewal of family names by giving them to children, see Tylor, ii. Prim. Cul., 4; Kaindl, 6; Finamore, Trad. Pop. Abr., 74.