Background
Van Name was born on November 15, 1835, in Chenango, a few miles from Binghamton, New York. His father owned a sawmill and was interested in the shipping on the canal.
Van Name was born on November 15, 1835, in Chenango, a few miles from Binghamton, New York. His father owned a sawmill and was interested in the shipping on the canal.
Prepared for college at the Binghamton Academy and the Phillips Academy at Andover, Van Name graduated from Yale College in 1858 at the head of his class, having won distinction also in various other ways.
During one school year, probably in 1858-59, he taught in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. From July 1859 to January 1861, he was in Europe, spending the first year at the universities of Halle and Tubingen, and the last six months in travel.
Van Name passed the year following his return in Binghamton. In July 1861, he was appointed instructor in Hebrew in the theological department. He held this position until 1866. On May 2, 1865, he was licensed to preach by the (Congregational) New Haven West Association but never made any use of the license. In 1865, he was appointed librarian of Yale.
An article, "Contributions on Creole Grammar, " was published in the American Philological Association Transactions, 1867-70 (1871); in 1873 the Congress International des Orientalistes: compte rendu de la premiere session published his review of a book on the early history of Japan; in the same year, the American Cyclopaedia published his article on the Arabic language and literature, and in 1875 Johnson's New Universal Cyclopaedia had an article from his pen on the Chinese language and literature. He built up the Yale collection of oriental literature until it became one of the best in the United States and gave his own books on the Far East to Yale in 1920.
He was librarian of the American Oriental Society from 1873 to 1905, and of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1865 to 1905. He attended the meeting in 1876 at which the American Library Association was formed, and he was a member of many other bibliothecal, bibliophilic, and bibliographic societies both in this country and abroad. His Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collections of Early Books (1913) is an excellent description of a number of books gathered to illustrate the first century of printing.
When he took charge of the library it had about 44, 500 volumes; when he resigned it had 300, 000. This was a marvelous growth at a time when little money was available for books or service, but the most striking thing about this quarter of a million books is not their number but their quality. Becoming librarian emeritus in 1905, he spent some of his leisure years in Europe and his winters usually in Florida.
Van Name died in New Haven after a brief illness.
a member of the Acorn Club, a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
Van Name had an unusual range of interests, a remarkable memory for books, and extraordinarily good judgment in buying.
Van Name married in Berlin, Prussia, on August 19, 1867, Julia Gibbs, the daughter of Josiah Willard Gibbs, 1790-1861, and the sister of his classmate, Josiah Willard Gibbs, 1839-1903. She died January 4, 1916, leaving two sons and a daughter.