Jack, Dick, and Tom were of this class: These my father called neutral names;--affirming of them, without a satire, That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and good men, since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;--so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other's effects; for which reason, he would often declare, He would not give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them.
Bob, which was my brother's name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names, which operated very little either way; and as my father happen'd to be at Epsom, when it was given him,--he would oft-times thank Heaven it was no worse.

Andrew was something like a negative quantity in Algebra with him;--'twas worse, he said, than nothing .-- William stood pretty high:--Numps again was low with him:--and Nick, he said, was the Devil.
But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion for Tristram;--he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,--thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was frequently involved,--he would sometimes break off in a sudden and spirited Epiphonema, or rather Erotesis, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the discourse,--and demand it categorically of his antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say, he had ever remembered,--whether he had ever read,--or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called Tristram, performing any thing great or worth recording ?--No,--he would say,--Tristram!--The thing is impossible.
What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world?
Little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,--unless he gives them proper vent:--It was the identical thing which my father did:--for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express Dissertation simply upon the word Tristram,--shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.
When this story is compared with the title-page,--Will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul ?--to see an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho' singular,--yet inoffensive in his notions,--so played upon in them by cross purposes;--to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been plann'd and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations .-- In a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day suffering sorrow;--ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers Tristram!--Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven .-- By his ashes! I swear it,--if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,--it must have been here;--and if it was not necessary I should be born before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account of it..