would be in English, "Chycovsky." The same thing is true, to a great
extent, of the Hungarian names, which are not rare in our larger cities.
They, too, would be greatly simplified to us by being spelled according
to English rules. A very frequent combination in Hungarian names, that
of _sz_ is really the same as our _ss_; while _s_ without the _z_ is
pronounced _sh_. The Hungarian name Szemelenyi under our system of
spelling would therefore be "Semelenye," which is less discouraging.

The foreign names in the United States that really present the most
serious difficulties to the native citizen are unquestionably the Welsh.
Some of the obstacles to easy pronunciation may even in their case be
removed by adaptation to our orthography; as is shown by the name Hwg
("hog"), which would be spelled by us "Hoog." But there are so many
sounds in Welsh that are not only unknown, but almost inconceivable to
English-speaking people, that the difficulties would still be very far
from being overcome. And some of these peculiar utterances are expressed
in Welsh by combinations of the Roman characters which in English stand
for familiar and simple sounds; so that an attempt to reduce the two
languages to a common system of spelling would not be at all easy. The
combination _ll_ stands in Welsh for a terrific gurgling, gasping sound,
which when once heard swiftly puts an end to all the romantic
associations that the name of Llewellyn has derived from history and
poetry.

But all such foreign--or, more strictly speaking, un-English--names,
after being in this country a generation or two, become, in a certain
sense, "acclimated." They undergo a change in pronunciation, in
spelling, or in both, which removes, in effect, the difficulties that
originally characterized them. In this way the German names Schneider,
Meyer, Kaiser, Kraemer, Schallenberger, Schwarzwaelder, and a host of