“Hideous Names”
Matthew Arnold, in his essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present Time, is moved by the case of Poor Wragg, who was “in custody,” to the following wail—
“What a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names—Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg!”
But this is the poet’s point of view. Though there may have been “no Wragg by the Ilissus,” it is not a bad name, for, in its original form Ragg, it is the first element of the heroic Ragnar, and probably unrelated to Raggett, which is the medieval le ragged. Bugg, which one family exchanged for Norfolk Howard, is the Anglo-Saxon Bucgo, a name no doubt borne by many a valiant warrior. Stiggins, as we have seen (Chapter XIII), goes back to a name great in history, and Higginbottom (Chapter XII) is purely geographical.