is known popularly as an echo word. In English, however, rhyming reduplication is generally either juvenile (as in Humpty Dumpty or hokey-pokey) or pejorative (as in namby-pamby or mumbo-jumbo); further, Hobson and Jobson were stock characters in Victorian times, used to indicate a pair of yokels, clowns, or idiots. The title thus produced negative associations – being at best self-deprecatory on the part of the authors, suggesting themselves a pair of idiots – and reviewers reacted negatively to the title, generally praising the book but finding the title inappropriate. Indeed, anticipating this reaction, the title was kept secret – even from the publisher – until shortly before publication. Influence and evaluations The volume received praise on its initial publication from, among others, Rudyard Kipling. Paul Pelliot, the French Sinologist, welcomed the 1903 version, though including a list of corrections and questions. More recently, however, the scholar Vijay Mishra objected that neither Yule nor Burnell had sound training in the languages required. He further objected that "it may be said that built into these hobson-jobsons is a contemptuous attitude, an ironic belittling of the values contained in the original vernacular words." That is, the British colonialists represented in the volume did not know or care to know the original meanings of the words. He gives as an example the word "babu” (babú) which in the original is “an educated or distinguished person" and a term of respect. But as a hobson-jobson “baboo" is degrading as it "attempts to reduce educated Indians (especially Bengalis) to mimics and harlequins." James A. Murray made extensive use of Hobson-Jobson in writing entries on South Asian words for the Oxford English Dictionary. Law of Hobson-Jobson The term "law of Hobson-Jobson" is sometimes used in linguistics to refer to the process of phonological change by which loanwords are adapted to the phonology of the new language, as in the archetypal example of "Hobson-Jobson" itself. Webster's Third International Dictionary gives as examples of the law of Hobson-Jobson: Spanish becoming English , and English becoming French . See also Anglo-Indian cuisine Folk etymology Hanklyn-Janklin List of English words of Hindi origin Phono-semantic matching Notes References (Searchable database) Nagle, Traci (2010). "'There is much, very much, in the name of a book' or, the Famous Title of Hobson-Jobson and How it Got That Way", in Michael Adams, ed., Cunning passages, contrived corridors': Unexpected Essays in the History of Lexicography, pp.