p. 41

V.

Here a further question arises, the answer to which contains the most interesting information that Aino studies yield. The question is: if the Ainos have borrowed so much from the Japanese, are then the Japanese under no similar obligations to the Ainos?

No, and yes. On the one hand, it is at present impossible to point to any words of the standard Japanese language as being certainly derived from Aino. At most, we may assume it as not unlikely that the names of some few animals and plants, which belong to both languages, were Aino before they were Japanese. Thus rakko, **a seal,'* may have been originally Aino. The initial r, which is foreign to Japanese linguistic habits, favours the sup- position, together with the fact that the animal is known only in the northern portion of Japan, whither the Ainos were the first to penetrate. Taking a

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wider view of the subject of such international borrowings, the analogy of the Celtic loans to French, Italian, and English, the adoption by the European colonists in America of such aboriginal American terms as "squaw*' and " wig-wam, '* and other instances, all the world over, of more civilized races occasionally borrowing from their less civilized predecessors, show that the chances are in favour of Aino having lent some words to Japanese, and lead us at the same time to infer that such loans have been confined within very narrow limits. But there is one portion of the field to which this reasoning does not apply. It does not apply to geographical nomenclature. Conquerors are rarely, if ever, at the pains of re-naming all the towns, rivers, and provinces of a country. They mostly begin by adopting the native names, mispronouncing them of course to a greater or less degree. It is only when they build new towns or villages, or when, in process of time, new associations here and there suggest new appellations, that they will invent names derived from their own language. The Americans built Salem, Portland, and Concord where no towns had stood ; and the names are English accordingly. But they have left the Potomac and the Mississippi, Niagara, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and scores of other aboriginal Indian designaiions, just as they found them. In time, as the alien names increase, so will the aboriginal names tend to disappear together with ancient landmarks. But they never can disappear completely. The names of several places in Normandy, indeed the word " Normandie " itself,
still testify, after the lapse of a millennium, to the presence in North-Western France of a race that has left scarcely any other trace behind. So with the Celtic name borne to this very day by Saxon Britain.