Perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider _née_, put after the
name of a married woman and before the family name of her father. The
Germans have a corresponding usage, Frau Schmidt, _geboren_ Braun. There
is no doubt that _née_ is convenient, and there is little doubt that
it would be difficult to persuade the men of culture to surrender it
or even to translate it. To the literate 'Mrs. Smith, born Brown',
might seem discourteously abrupt. But the French word is awkward,
nevertheless, since the illiterate often take it as meaning only
'formerly', writing 'Mrs. Smith, _née_ Mary Brown', which implies that
this lady had been christened before she was born. And there is a tale
of a profiteer's wife who wrote herself down as 'Mrs. John Smith, New
York, _née_ Chicago'.

Yet the French themselves are not always scrupulous to follow _née_ with
only the family name of the lady. No less a scholar than Gaston Paris
dedicated his _Poètes et Penseurs_ to 'Madame James Darmesteter, _née_
Mary Robinson'. Perhaps this is an instance of the modification of the
strict meaning of a word by convention because of its enlarged
usefulness when so modified.

Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a master
of language; but his is a dangerous example for the unscholarly, who are
congenitally careless and who are responsible for _soubriquet_ instead
of _sobriquet_, for _à l'outrance_ instead of _à outrance_, and for _en
déshabille_ instead of _en déshabillé_. The late Mrs. Oliphant in her
little book on Sheridan credited him with _gaieté du coeur_. It was
long an American habit to term a railway station a _dépot_ (totally
anglicized in its pronunciation--_deep-oh)_; but _dépôt_ is in French
the name for a storehouse, and it is not--or not customarily--the name
of a railway station. It was also a custom in American theatres to give