IV. HISTORICAL GREEK NAMES CONSISTING OF EPITHETS…

IV. HISTORICAL GREEK NAMES CONSISTING OF EPITHETS

SECTION I.—Agathos.

After passing from the fascinating but confused tales and songs that group around the ship Argo, the doomed family of Œdipus, and the siege of Troy, the Greeks are well-nigh lost for a time, but emerge again in the full and distinct brilliancy of the narratives of Herodotus and his followers, who have rendered their small aggregate of fragmentary states and their gallant resistance to Asiatic invasion the great nucleus of interest in the ancient world.

In the days of these wise and brave men, the nomenclature was, for the most part, expressive and appropriate, consisting of compounds of words of good augury from the spoken language, and, usually, as has been before shown, with a sort of recurring resemblance, from generation to generation, so as to make the enumeration of a pedigree significant and harmonious.

Of these was ἀγαθός (the good), precisely the same word as our own good and the German guth, only with the commencing α and a Greek termination.

Classical times showed many an Agathon, and Agathias, and numerous compounds, such as Agathocles (good fame), to be repeated in the Teutonic Gudred, and other varieties; but the abiding use of the word as an European name was owing to a Sicilian girl, called Agatha, who in the Decian persecution was tortured to death at Rome. Sicily considered her as one of its guardian saints. Thus, the festival day of this martyred virgin is observed by both the Eastern and Western Churches, and her name is found among all the nations that ever possessed her native island. Greece has transmitted it to Russia, where the th not being pronounceable, it is called Agafia; and the masculine, which is there used, Agafon; and the Slavonian nations derive it from the same quarter. The Normans adopted it and sent it home to their sisters in Neustria, where it was borne by that daughter of William the Conqueror who was betrothed to the unfortunate Earl Edwin, and afterwards died on her way to a state marriage in Castille. In her probably met the Teutonic Gytha and the Greek Agatha, identical in meaning and root, and almost in sound, though they had travelled to her birth-place in Rouen by two such different routes from their Eastern starting-place. Agatha was once much more common as a name than at present in England, and seems still to prevail more in the northern than the southern counties. Haggy, or Agatha, is the maid-servant’s name in Southey’s Doctor, attesting its prevalence in that class before hereditary or peculiar names were discarded as at present.

France did not fail to take up Agatha. Spain had her Agatha like that of the Italians, both alike omitting the h of θ. Portugal makes it Agneda; and the only other change worth noting is that the Letts cut it short into Apka.

Aristos (best) was a favourite commencement with the Greeks. Aristides, most just of men, was thus called the son of the best. He has reappeared in his proper form in modern Greece; as Aristide in republican France; as Aristides in America.

Aristobulus (best counsel) came originally from an epithet of Artemis, to whom Themistocles built a temple at Athens, as Aristoboulè, the best adviser. It was very common in the various branches of the Macedonian empire, and was thus adopted in the Asmonean family, from whom it came to the Herodian race, and thence spread among the Jews. In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul sends his greetings to the household of Aristobulus; and Welsh ecclesiastical antiquaries endeavour to prove that Arwystli, whom the Triads say was brought by Bran the blessed to preach the Gospel in Britain, was the same with this person.

Aristarchus (best judge) is also a Scriptural name; and besides these we have Aristocles (best fame), Aristippos (best horse), Aristagoras (best assembly), and all the other usual Greek compounds among the Greeks.

Perhaps this is the fittest place to mention that Arethusa is in use among the modern Greeks, and interpreted by them to mean the virtuous, as coming from this source. Aretino has been used in Italy.[34]

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Footnote 34:

Smith; Jameson; Rees, Welsh Saints.

SECTION II.—Alexander, &c.

Conquering Macedon was the portion of Greece, if Greece it could be called, that spread its names most widely and permanently; and as was but right, no name was more universally diffused than that of the great victor, he who in history is as prominent as Achilles in poetry. Ἀλέξανδρος (Alexandros), from ἀλέξω (alexo), to help, and ἄνδρες (andres), men, was said to have been the title given to Paris by the shepherds among whom he grew up, from his courage in repelling robbers from the flocks. It was afterwards a regular family name among the kings of Macedon, he who gave it fame being the third who bore it. So much revered as well as feared was this mighty conqueror, that his name still lives in proverb and song throughout the East. The Persians absolutely adopted him into their own line, and invented a romance by which ‘Secunder’ was made the son of a native monarch. Among the eastern nations, Iskander became such a by-word for prowess, that even in the sixteenth century the Turks would find no greater title of fear for their foe, the gallant Albanian, Georgios Kastriotes, than Skander Beg, or Lord Alexander.

Not only did the great conqueror possess many namesakes,—as indeed, there is a story that all the children born the year of his conquest of India were called after him,—but Alexandros was already frequent in Greece; and among the kingdoms formed out of the fragments of his empire, it recurred so as to become usual all over the Græcized East. Even the Maccabean Jews used it, and it was common in Judea, as well as elsewhere, in the time of the Gospels, so that a large proportion of saints and martyrs bore it and handed it on, especially in Greece and Italy. A pope, martyred in the second century, rendered it a papal assumed name; and the Italians used it frequently as Alessandro, shortened into Sandro. Nowhere, however, is it so thoroughly national as in Scotland, imported thither, apparently, with other Greek names, by Margaret Ætheling, who learnt them in the Hungarian court where she was born and brought up. Her third son was the first of the three Scottish Alexanders, under whom the country spent her most prosperous days.

No wonder his namesakes were numerous. In the Highlands they came to be Alaster, and formed the surname MacAlister; in the south, the contractions were Alick, Saunders, or Sandy, and the feminine Alexa, Alexandrina, and Alexandra, are chiefly German and Russian, though now and then occurring in France.

The first half of this name, Alexios, a defender, was in use in ancient Greece, where it belonged to a noted sculptor. Its saintly honours did not begin till the fifth century, when a young Roman noble, called Allexius or Alexis, is said to have been so much bent on a monastic life, that being compelled by his parents to marry, he fled away on his wedding day, and lived seventeen years in a convent in Syria; but, finding his reputation for sanctity too much for his humility, he came home in guise of a poor pilgrim, and spent another seventeen years as a beggar maintained on the scraps of his father’s kitchen, and constantly mocked and misused by the servants, until in his dying moments, he made himself known to his parents. His church at Rome, called St. Alessio, gives a title to a cardinal; and his day, July 17th, is observed by the Greeks as well as the Romans; and yet so strange is his history that it almost seems as if it might have been one of those instances in which an allegory acquired the name of a real saint, and attached itself to him as a legend. Alessio has in consequence always been an Italian name, and with the family of the Komnenoi, Alexios came into use among the Byzantine Greeks, with whom it was very frequent. Alexia is often found as a lady’s name in old records and accounts of the middle ages; but it is apparently intended merely as the Latin equivalent for Alice, which we shall show by-and-by to have had an entirely different origin.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │Spanish. │ │Alexander │Alexander │Alexandre │Alessandro │Alejandro │ │Alex │Alick │ │ │ │ │ │Sanders │ │ │ │ │ │Sandy │ │ │ │ │ │Sawny │ │ │ │ │ │Elshender │ │ │ │ │ │Elshie │ │ │ │ │ │Alaster │ │ │ │ ├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Slavonic. │ Ung. │ │ │Aleksander │Aleksander │Aleksander │Sandor │ │ │Ssachka │Leszek │Skender │ │ │ │Ssaschinka │ │ │ │ │ ├────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┤ │ FEMININE │ ├────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┤ │ English. │ Italian. │Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ │ │Alexis │Alessio │Aleixo │Alejo │ │ │Alexis │ │ │ │ │ │Alexe │ │ │ │ │ ├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Slavonic. │ Servian. │ Lusatian. │ Hungarian. │ │Alexei │Ales │Aleksa │Alex │Elek │ │Alescha │Leks │ │Halex │ │ │ │ │ │Holex │ │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

SECTION III.—Anēr, Andros.

We come to the names derived from ἀνήρ, gen. ἀνδρός (anēr, andros), a man. The word itself has connections in the Sanscrit nara, and Zend ner; but its compounds are all from its oblique cases.

The most interesting of these is formed by the corrupt Greek dialect used in Syria, namely, that which fell to Ανδρέας (Andreas), the Galilean fisherman, whom the Church Universal reveres as one of the foremost in the Glorious Company of the Apostles. The saint was martyred at Patras in Achaia, whence some of his relics were carried in the fourth century to Scotland, and were thus the occasion of St. Andrew’s becoming the Metropolitan see. Shortly after, the vision of Hungus, King of the Picts, of St. Andrew’s Cross, promising him victory, rendered the white saltire the national ensign, and St. Andrew became not only the patron saint, but in due time the knightly champion of Scotland, and made Andrew one of the most universal of names, and the patronymic Anderson very common. The other relics went first to Constantinople, and after the taking of that city, were dispersed through Europe. Philip the Good, of Burgundy, obtained some of them, and made St. Andrew the patron of the order of the Golden Fleece, and Andreas became a frequent Flemish and Dutch name. It has a feminine in the countries where it is most popular, and its variations are as follows:—

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ Dutch. │ Danish. │ │Andrew │Andrew │Andreas │Anders │ │Andy │Dandie │Andries │ │ │ │ │Andries │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ French. │ German. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ │André │Andreas │Andrea │Andres │ │Andrien │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Slavonic. │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ │Andrej │Andrej │Andrezej │Ondrej │ │ │Andias │Jedrzej │ │ │ │Necek │ │ │ │ │Andrejeek │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lusatian. │ Esthonian. │ Hungarian. │ Lapland. │ │Handrej │Andras │Andras │Anta │ │Rajka │Andrus │Bandi │Attok │ │Hendrijshka │ │ │Ats │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The feminines are the French Andrée and Italian Andreana. The Russians use Andrean as an equivalent for Henry!

Andronicus, man’s victory, was a great favourite, and occurs in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, probably having belonged to a Corinthian who had gone from the busy city of traffic on the Isthmus to the great Capital of the world. The name continued among the Greeks, and belonged to numerous emperors, but has not been subsequently in much favour.

SECTION IV.—Eu.

The word εὖ (well or happily) was the commencement of many a name of good augury from the earliest times, and mingles as much among Christian as among classical associations.

Thus in company with ἄγγελος, angelos (a messenger), it formed evangelus, happy messenger, or bearer of good tidings, the first time applied to a shepherd, who brought to Ephesus the tidings of a quarry of beautiful marble for the building of the temple that was the glory of the city and of all Asia. Adored with heroic honours as he was, the title must have seemed to the Ephesian Christians, above all, to befit those spiritual shepherds who brought the best of tidings, and Evangelista became the term for a preacher, as Evangelium of his doctrine, both becoming in time restricted to the four-writers of the personal history of our Lord, and their narrative, as being the very core and centre of the Good Tidings. Evangelista was an old Italian name; and Longfellow appears to have invented Evangeline for the heroine of his poem, whence many of the name have sprung up in America.

Εὔχειρ (Eucheir), dexterous hand, was no doubt at first a mere epithet of a sculptor, but afterwards considered as a name, and belonging to no less than four distinguished sculptors of ancient Greece.

Thence the Latinized Eucherius, which belonged to a Bishop of Lyons, a great author of ecclesiastical works, who died about A.D. 450; from him comes the Portuguese Euchario, the Italian Eucario, the French Euchaire, the Russian Jevcharij, the Polish Euckary.

Εὐδώρη (Eudora), happy gift, was one of the Nereids, and afterwards did duty as Eudore in French romance.

Eudocia and Eudoxia are so much alike as to be often confused, but have different significations. The first is Εὐδοκία (approval), the second Εὐδοξία (good fame of glory). Both were great favourites with the Greek empresses, and were assumed by imperial brides possessed of some appellation not supposed to befit the purple. Saints of the Greek Church handed Eudokhia on into Russia, where it has been worn upon the throne, and becomes in common parlance Jevdoksija.

Εὐγενή (Eugenes), well born, was a very old Greek author; but Eugenios was the more usual form in classical times, and was carried on as Eugenius by the Romans. St. Eugenius was an African Confessor, and another Eugenius was Bishop of Toledo in 646. Both these gave much popularity to their name; the first in the East, the second in Italy, where Eugênio came to that high-spirited Savoyard who, growing weary of lingering at the court of Louis XIV., and hearing himself called le petit Abbé du Roi, rendered the sound of Prince Eugène dear to Austria and England; terrible to France and Turkey. Foe as he was, it is to his fame that the great popularity of Eugène in France is owing, whilst even in the country for which he fought Eugen is far less common. The Russians have it as Jevgenij; and the Servians as Djoulija; indeed, well may these last remember the gallant prince who turned back the wave of Turkish invasion.

Eugenius stands forth again and again in the early roll of Scottish kings, but whether these sovereigns ever lived or not, their appellation was certainly not Eugenius, nor any corruption from it; but the Keltic Eoghan, Ewan, or Evan, still extremely common in the Highlands, and meaning a young warrior, though, after the favourite custom of the Gael, Anglicized and Latinized by names of similar sound. The Welsh Owain or Ywain appears to have had the same fate, as the first means a lamb; but this is not equally certain, as the British had many Latin and Greek names current among them, and this may be a corruption of Eugenius.

Eugenia was a virgin Roman martyr, of whom very little is known; but this convenient feminine for Eugène has been in favour in the countries where the masculine was popular, and the Empress Eugénie rendered it the reigning name in France.

The names beginning with this favourite adverb are almost beyond enumeration, and it is only possible to select those of any modern interest. Εὐνίκη (Eunike), Eunice, happy victory, was one of the fifty Nereids, from whom the name passed to Greek women, and thus to Eunice, the Jewish mother of Timothy, whence this has become a favourite with English lovers of Bible names.

John Bunyan would have been reminded of his town of Fair Speech by the number of Greeks called by words of this signification: Eulalius, Eulogius, Euphemius, all with their feminines, besides Euphrasia.

The feminines were more enduring than the masculines. Eulalia was a child of ten or twelve years old, who, with that peculiar exaggeration of feeling that distinguishes Spanish piety, made her escape from the place of safety where her parents had taken refuge, entered Merida, and proclaiming herself a Christian, was martyred with the utmost extremity of torture in the persecution of Diocletian, and was sung by the great Christian poet Prudentius, himself a Spaniard. His verses spread her fame into the East, where the Russians carry on her name as Jevlalija; the Servians, as Evlalija or Lelica. Another virgin martyr of the same name, under the same persecution, died at Barcelona, whence her relics spread into Guienne and Languedoc, and thus named the villages of Ste. Olaille, Ste. Aulazie, and Ste. Aulaire, the last a familiar seignoral title! Eulalia and Eulalie have been often used in Spain and France, and the former is found in the register of Ottery St. Mary, Devon—also frequently in Cornwall.

Euphemia originally meant at once fair speech and abstinence from the reverse, so that almost in irony it signified silence, and was applied to the stillness that prevailed during religious rites, or to the proclamation of silence. The Euphemia who was the parent of the wide-spread name, was a virgin-martyr of Bithynia, whose legend of constancy, unshaken and invulnerable, alike by lion and flame, strongly impressed both the East and the West. Jevfimija, in Russia; Jeva, in Servia; Bema, in Lusatia; and Pimmie, in Lithuania. Then she is almost as much changed as by the Effie and Phemie of Scotland, which together with Euphame have prevailed since very early times. It is a question whether this Scottish Euphame were really one of the Greek names brought from Hungary by Queen Margaret, or if it be only another attempt to translate the Keltic Aoiffe. In the Highlands, however, the name is called Oighrigh; which, to English eyes and ears, seems equally distant from either Aoiffe or Euphemia. The church of Santa Eufemia at Rome gives title to a cardinal, and has spread the name in Italy and France.

It remains somewhat doubtful whether Eustace should be referred to Εὐστᾶθηος (steadfast), or to Εὔσταχος (happy in harvest). The Eostafie, or Eustathius, of the Greco-Slavonic Church, certainly has the same festival-day (September 20th) as the Eustachius of the Latin; but the Latin Church has likewise a St. Eustachius, a different personage with a different day. He of September 20th was a Roman soldier, who lived and suffered under the Emperor Adrian, but his wild poetical legend is altogether a work of the Western mind. It begins like that of St. Hubert, with his conversion by the apparition of a crucifix planted between the horns of a stag, and a voice telling him that he should suffer great things. A soldier saint was sure to be a great favourite in the middle ages, and the supposed transport of St. Eustace’s relics to St. Denis, in very early times, filled France with Eustache, and thence Eustace, Wistace, or Huistace, as English tongues were pleased to call it, came over in plenty at the Norman Conquest. Eustace ‘Comes,’ who holds land in Domesday Book before the Conquest, must have been he of Boulogne who had such a desperate quarrel with the Godwin sons. There were six householders of this name after the Conquest, and they, or their descendants, sometimes called their daughters Eustachie, or Eustachia. Eustachia, a kinswoman of Henry II., married Geoffrey de Mandeville; and Eustacie was once in favour in France; but all these have a good deal lost their popularity, though we sometimes hear of Eustace in these days. The Bavarian contraction is Staches. Eusebius and Eusebia mean gentle or holy, and have not been frequent.[35]

SECTION V.—Hieros.

The word ἵερος (hieros), sacred, gave the term for a priest, or any other person or thing set apart, and thus formed several names in the family of the kings of Syracuse, Hieron, Hieracles (holy fame), Hieronymus, i. e. Ἱερώνυμος (with a holy name). These continued in use among the Greeks, and came at length to that Dalmatian scholar and hermit, Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius, who is reckoned as one of the greatest of the Latin fathers. As a saint of high reputation, his name underwent the Italian process of changing its aspirate into a G, and he became San Geronimo, or even Girolamo, whence the French took their frequent Jerome, and we followed their example. The Germans did indeed hold fast to Hieronymus; and the old English reformers would quote St. Hierom; but Jerome is the abiding name by which the saint, his namesakes, and the friars who took his rule are called.

In Ireland, Jerome, like Jeremiah and Edward, has been forced into representing the good old Keltic Diarmaid.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ Italian │ │Hierom │Jeromino │Jeromo │Geronimo │ │ │Hieronimo │Jeromino │Girolamo │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ French. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Servian │ │Jerôme │Jeronim │Hieronim │Jerolim │ │ │ │Hirus │Jerko │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

In Cambrai, Hieronome was the form, with the Hieronomette for a feminine; and among the Swinburnes of Yorkshire, in the seventeenth century, Jeronima thrice occurs.[36]

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Footnote 35:

Liddell and Scott; Smith; Jameson; Sir Isumbras; Ellis, Domesday Book; Michaelis.

Footnote 36:

Grimm; Smith; Scott.

SECTION VI.—Pan.

A few words beginning with πᾶς (all) must here be mentioned, such as Pankratios (all ruling). A boy thus called is said to have suffered at Rome, in his 14th year, in 304, under Diocletian. Even in the time of Gregory of Tours, it was supposed that certain vengeance followed false oaths made at his shrine, and his relics were therefore very valuable. A present of some from Pope Vitalian to our King Oswy brought St. Pancras into fashion in England, and Pancrace and Pancragio have also named many churches in France and Italy. The lily called pancratium claims by its name to excel all others.

Πανταλέων, Pantaleon (altogether a lion), was one of the numerous Christian physicians who suffered martyrdom. He died at Nicodemia, but his relics were brought to Constantinople, and thence to France, where he is the chief saint of the largest church at Lyons, and he is the patron of doctors next after St. Luke. His name was in use in France and Italy before. As a peasant name, he fell, with Arlechino and Colombina, into comedy. His dress was on the stage made to fit tight to his body, as if all in one piece, and he was always a feeble old man, whence Shakespeare speaks of the lean and slippered pantaloon. Thence again, when the entire leg was covered by the trousers instead of by stockings and breeches meeting at the knee, the name of pantaloon was applied to the new garment.

Νίκη (victory) was an auspicious word, which, being of feminine gender, as befitted a goddess, was a favourite close for women’s names; such as Stratonike (army victory), Φερενίκη, Pherenike (bringing victory). Berenike was the Macedonian pronunciation of this last, and was in constant use among princesses of the two Greek kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. From these ladies, those of the Herod family took the name, and thus it was borne by that Bernice who heard St. Paul’s defence. Oddly enough, the peasants of Normandy are fond of calling their daughters Berenice. Veronica is sometimes said likewise to be a corrupt form.

In men’s names Nike was the prefix, as in Nikon, Niklias, Nikodemos (conquering people), Nikolaos (Νίκολαος), a word of like meaning. This last, after belonging to one of the seven first deacons, and to the founder of a heresy doomed in the Apocalypse, came to the Bishop of Myra, from whom it acquired a curious legendary fame that made it universal. St. Nicholas is said to have supplied three destitute maidens with marriage portions by secretly leaving money at their window, and as his day occurred just before Christmas, he thus was made the purveyor of the gifts of the season to all children in Flanders and Holland, who put out their shoe or stocking in the confidence that Santa Klaus or Knecht Clobes, as they call him, will put in a prize for good conduct before the morning. The Dutch element in New England has introduced Santa Klaus to many a young American who knows nothing of St. Nicholas or of any saint’s day. Another legend described the saint as having brought three murdered children to life again, and this rendered him the patron of boys, especially school-boys.

A saint of both the East and West, with a history so endearing, and legends still more homely and domestic, Nicholas was certain of many followers throughout Christendom, and his name came into use in Europe among the first of the sainted ones. To us it came with the Norman Conquest, though not in great abundance, for only one Nicolas figures in Domesday Book, but his namesakes multiplied. The only English pope was Nicolas Breakspear; and Nicole or Nicola de Camville was the brave lady who defeated the French invaders at Lincoln, and secured his troublesome crown to Henry III. She deserves to have had more ladies called after her in her own country, but the feminines are chiefly confined to France, where, in the fifteenth century, its contraction was beatified in the person of a shoemaker’s daughter, Collette Boilet, who reformed the nuns of St. Clara, and died in the odour of sanctity. The southern nations almost always contract their names by the omission of the first syllables, as the northern ones do by leaving out the latter ones; and thus, while the English have Nick, the Italians speak of Cola, a contraction that became historical when the strange fortunes of “Cola di Rienzi, the tribune of the people,” raised him to his giddy height of honour, and then dashed him down so suddenly and violently, that “You unfortunate Rienzi” has ever since been a proverbial expression of pity in Italy.

The French language generally has both varieties of contractions, perhaps according as it was influenced by the Provençal or the Frank pronunciation, and thus its Nicolas becomes Nicole or Colas, sometimes Colin. Thence it has been suggested that Colin Maillard, or blind-man’s-buff, may be Colin seeking Maillard, the diminutive of Marie, which would drolly correspond to the conjecture that the “N or M” of our catechism and marriage service, instead of being merely the consonants of nomen, stand for Nicholas and Mary as the most probable names. The French Colin is probably Nicolas, and is the parent of all the Arcadian Colins who piped to their shepherdesses either in the rural theatricals of the ancient regime, in Chelsea china, or in pastoral poetry. The Scottish Colin may, perhaps, have been slightly influenced by French taste, but he bears no relation to Nicolas, being, in fact, formed from the Irish missionary, Saint Columba. The true Scottish descendant of the patron of scholars is to be found in that quaint portrait, Baillie Nicol Jarvie. The h with which Nicolas is usually spelt in English was probably introduced in the seventeenth century, which seemed to think good spelling consisted in the insertion of superfluous letters.

Niel, a pure Keltic word, which was adopted by the Northmen, and became naturalized in Scandinavia and Normandy, has also been translated by Nicolas, but quite incorrectly. Nils is the only real Nicolaus except Klaus used in the North, though Niel, and even Nigel, are sometimes confounded with it. Denmark has had a King Klaus; otherwise this popular name has only been on the throne in the instance of that great Tzar whom we had respected till the last year of his life, when his aggression forced us into war.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Danish. │ │Nicholas │Nicol │Nicolas │Nikolaus │ │Nick │ │Nicole │Niklaas │ │Nicol │Colas │Colin │Klaus │ │ │ │ │Nils │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Dutch. │ German. │ Bavarian. │ │ │Niklaas │Nikolaus │Niklau │Swiss. │ │Klasse │Niklas │Nickel │Chlaus │ │ │Klaus │Likelas │ │ │ │Nikolaus │Klasl │ │ │ │Niklas │ │ │ │ │Klaus │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ Russian. │ Slavonic. │ │Nicola │Nicolaio │Nikolaj │Nikola │ │Nicolo │ │Nikolascha │Miklaoz │ │Cola │ │Kolinka │ │ │ │ │Kolja │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Lett. │ Finland. │ Ung. │ │Mikolej │Klavinsh │Laus │Mikos │ │ │Klassis │Nilo │ Lapland. │ │ │ │Niku │Nikka │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The German Sieg answers exactly to the Greek Nike.

With the a before it, which in Greek contradicts the ensuing word, like the Latin in, and Teutonic un, we have Ἀνίκητoς, Aniketos, Anicetus, unconquered, the name of a pope, a friend of St. Polycarp, and an opponent of heresy, whence he is a saint both of East and West, and is called Aniceto at Rome, Anicet in France, and Anikita in Russia.[37]

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Footnote 37:

Liddell and Scott; Rollin; Jameson; Butler; Michaelis; Ellis, Domesday Book; Warton, English Poetry.

SECTION VII.—Polys.

Πoλύς (Polys), much, very, or many, was a frequent opening for Greek names. Polydoros (Πoλύδωρος), many-gifted, was the youngest and last survivor of the sons of Priam; and as mediæval Europe had a strong feeling for the fate of Troy, and the woes of ‘Polydore’ had an especial attraction for them, so Polidoro was revived in Italy, and has never quite died away.

His sister Polyxena, the feminine of very hospitable, had an equally piteous fate, being slain by the Greeks at the tomb of Achilles. According to the legends of the Eastern Church, a lady named Eusebia (gentle), who had been born at Rome, fled from an enforced marriage with a king, and took refuge, first at Alexandria, and then in the Isle of Cos, where she was called Xena, or the stranger. She founded a monastery at Mylassa in Caria, and there died in the 5th century. Kseenia, as she is called in Russia, has many namesakes, and probably was made ornamental by being lengthened into Poliksenja, which is likewise in use, with the contraction Polinka; and Polixene has also been used from an early period in Germany.

Πολύευκτος (Polyeuctos), much longed for, answering to the Desiderio of Italy, and Desirée of France, was an old classic name, and an officer who was martyred in Lesser Armenia about the middle of the third century, was placed in the martyrology of both East and West; but only has namesakes in Russia, where he is called Polieukt.

Πολύκαρπος (Polycarpos), that glorious Bishop of Smyrna, “faithful unto death,” and “receiving a crown of life when he played the man in the fire,” has had still fewer imitators of his suitable Christian name, much-fruit.

SECTION VIII.—Phile, &c.

Φίλος (Philos) was a most obvious and natural opening for names. It stood alone as that of several Macedonian ladies, and again with numerous men called Philon.

Philemon (loving thought) was the good old Phrygian who, with his wife Baucis, entertained Zeus and Hermes, and were rewarded with safety when their churlish neighbours were destroyed. Philemon was very common among the Greeks, and the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossian master of the runaway Onesimus, has made it one of the Scriptural names of the English. The Maories call it Pirimona.

The Ptolemys of Egypt were particularly fond of surnaming themselves after their love to their relations, though they generally contrived so to treat them as to make the epithet sound ironical: Ptolemy Philadelphos (love brother), because he murdered his brother; Ptolemy Philopater, because he poisoned his father; though at least Philometer does seem to have had a good mother, and to have loved her. Such surnames were imitated by the Greek kings of Pergamus, all of whom were named Attalus, and it was from Attalus Philadelphus, the second of them, that the city of Philadelphia, mentioned in the Apocalypse, took its title. This perished city of brotherly love seemed to William Penn to afford a suitable precedent for the title of the capital of his Quaker colony, which has ever since been Philadelphia. Less happily, Philadelphia has even been used among English women, apparently desirous of a large mouthful of a name.

Whether Philadelphia set the fashion, or whether the length of name is the allurement, Americans have a decided turn for all these commencements with ‘Phile’; and Philetus, Philander, &c., are to be found continually among the roughest inhabitants of the backwoods and far-west. With us they are at a discount, probably owing to the fashion of the last century of naming imaginary characters from the qualities they possessed.

Philaret, fond of virtue, is however popular in Russia, for the sake of some Eastern saint, who no doubt derived it from Philaretos, a Greek physician.

The verb πράσσω (prasso), to do or act, and the substantives πρᾶγμα (pragma), πρᾶξις (praxis), business, were fertile in derivatives.

The Christian interest of the words from this source is through Praxedes, who, according to the legend, was the daughter of the house in which St. Peter lodged at Rome, and devoted herself, together with her sister, to attending on Christians in prison, and burying them when they were put to death; a course of life that resulted in a glorious martyrdom. In honour of these two faithful women was built one of the first churches of Rome, consecrated, it is said, as early as 141, and still existing in all the glory of its ancient mosaics. Santa Prassede, as modern Rome terms it, gives title to a cardinal; and the admirable Carlo Borromeo was thus distinguished, deserving, perhaps, more than any other known ‘hinge-priest’ of Rome to be called after the saint of holy activity. Prassede has continued in vogue among Italian women, who frequently learn their names from Roman churches. I have found Plaxy in Cornwall, possibly from this source. Here, too, we should place Anysia (Ἀνύσια), from ἀνύω (anuo), to accomplish or complete. She was a maiden of Thessalonica, put to death there under Maximian. Her day is the 30th of October, in the Greek calendar, and Annusia is a Russian name, but she is not in the Roman calendar; and how the Normans heard of her it is hard to guess, unless it was either from the Sicilian Greeks, or in the Crusades; nevertheless, we are often met by Annys, Anisia, Annice, or Annes, in older pedigrees. The latter form occurs down to 1597 in the registers of the county of Durham. In later times the form was absorbed by Anne.

Τροφή, Trophe (food or nourishment), formed Τρόφιμος, Trophimos (the fruitful or nourishing), the name of an old Greek sculptor, and afterwards of the Ephesian companion of St. Paul who was left sick at Miletus. The people at Arles consider that he afterwards preached the Gospel in their city, and have made him the patron of their cathedral; but it is Russia that continues the use of his name as Trofeem.[38]

Even among the heathen Greeks, Τρυφή, Tryphe (daintiness, softness, or delicacy), had not a respectable signification. Yet Τρύφον, or Tryphon, was a favourite with persons of inferior rank—artists, architects, and physicians; and in the Decian persecution, a martyr so called was put to the extremity of torture in Bithynia, and has remained highly honoured in the calendar of the Greek Church; Trypho continuing in use as a Russian name.

The feminine form, Τρυφαίνα (Tryphæna), was given to two of the daughters of the Ptolemys in Egypt, where it was far from inappropriate; but, probably, the two women whom St. Paul greets so honourably at Rome as Tryphæna and Tryphosa, were either Alexandrian Jewesses whom he had met at Corinth on their way to Rome, or else merely so called as being the daughters of some Tryphon. They were not canonized, and the dainty Tryphæna has only been revived in England by the Puritan taste.

SECTION IX.—Names connected with the Constitution.—Laos, &c.

The democratic Greeks delighted in names connected with their public institutions—ἀγορά (agora), the assembly, δῆμος (dêmos), the public, λαός, also the people, gave them numerous names, with which were closely connected the formations from δίκη (dike), justice, and κλέος (kleos), fame.

Λαοδάμας (Laodamas), people-tamer, had a feminine Λαοδάμεια (Laodameia), principally noted for the beautiful legend of her bitter grief for her husband, the first to fall at Troy, having recalled him to earth for three hours under the charge of Hermes. Probably Florence must have had a local saint named Laodamia, for it has continued in vogue there.

The demos better answered to the commons; they expressed less the general populace than the whole voting class of free citizens, and were more select. We find them often at the beginning or end of Greek names, like the Theut of the Teutons: Demodokos, people’s teacher; Demoleon, people’s lion; Nikodemos, conquering people, etc.

Κλέος (Kleos), fame, from κλείω (kleio), to call, had as many derivatives as the Frank hlod, or loud, for renowned, but most of them have passed out of use, though Κλεάνθης (Kleanthes), famous bloom, the name of a celebrated sculptor, so struck the fancy of the French that Cleanthe—their epicene form—was one of the favourite soubriquets for their portraits of living characters. Even Cleopatra (Κλεοπάτρα), fame of her father, with all her beauty and fame, did not hand on the name which she had received in common with a long course of daughters of Egypto-Greek kings. Russia alone accepts it as a frequent Christian name, and it is occasionally to be found in England and America.

The wreath of the conqueror was an appropriate allusion to those games where the Greek youth delighted to contend, and very probably the first Stephanos (Στέφανος) was so called by an exulting family whose father had returned with the parsley, or pine-leaf, crown upon his brow, and named the infant in honour of the victory. For Stephanos was an old Greek name, which had belonged among others to a son of Thucydides, before it came to that Hellenist deacon who first of all achieved the greatest of all the victories, and won the crown.

Besides St. Stephen’s own day, another on the 3rd of August for “the invention of St. Stephen’s relics,” which were pointed out in a dream to a priest of Caphargamala in the year 415, by no less a person than the Jewish doctor, Gamaliel, in a white robe, covered with plates of gold. The bones were carried to the church on Mount Sion, and thence dispersed into all quarters; even St. Augustin rejoiced in receiving a portion at Hippo, other fragments were taken to the Balearic Isles, while Ancona laid claim to the possession of a bone, carried off at the time of the saint’s martyrdom!

No wonder the name is common. Seven saints bore it besides the proto-martyr, and among them, that admirable King of Hungary, who endeared it to his people, and left the crown so highly honoured at Prague. Our name of Stephen is probably due to the acquaintance of the Normans with Ancona, whence William the Conqueror obtained such interest in St. Stephen as to dedicate to him the Abbey built at Caen. There is no instance of the name in Domesday Book, and our king of turbulent memory derived it from his father, the Count de Blois. In the roll of Winchester householders in Stephen’s reign we find, however, already Stephen de Crickeled and “Stephen the Saracen.” Could this last have been a convert brought home from the East, and baptized in honour of the pious Count de Blois, father of the king—perhaps an adherent of the family? It is everywhere in use, varied according to the manner in which the tongue treated the double consonant. The feminine began at Cambrai at least as early as the thirteenth century, and it is frequent in Caen, probably in honour of St. Stephen’s Abbey at Caen.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ German. │ French. │ Italian. │ │Stephen │Stephan │Etienne │Stefano │ │ │Steffel │Tiennon │Steffano │ │ │ │Tiennot │ │ │ │ │Estevennes │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ Dutch. │ Russian. │ │Estevan │Estevao │Steven │Stefan │ │Esteban │ │ │Stepan │ │ │ │ │Stenka │ │ │ │ │Stepka │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Illyrian. │ Esthonian. │ Hungarian. │ │Sscezepan │Stepan │Tewa │Istvan │ │ ————————— │Stepo │ │ │ │ Lusatian. │Stepko │ │ │ │Scezpan │Stepika │ │ │ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ Portuguese. │ Russian. │ │Stephan │Estephanie │Estephania │Stefanida │ │ │Stefanie │ │———————— │ │ │Etiennette │ │ German. │ │ │Tiennette │ │Stephanine │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

I venture here to include the numerous names of which the leading word is Ὀλυμπ. They are generally derived from Mount Olympos, the habitation of the gods; but I cannot help thinking them more likely to be connected with the Olympian games, and to have been first invented for children born in the year of an Olympiad.

There were numerous varieties, but none have survived except the feminine Olympias, belonging to the proud but much beloved mother of Alexander, and, like all other Macedonian names, spreading through the East. A Byzantine widow, of great piety and charity, who stood faithful to St. Chrysostom during his persecution by the empress, was canonized, and sent Olympias on to be a favourite with the Greeks, so that it flourishes among all ranks in the Ionian Islands. Italy had her Olimpia, probably through the Greek connections of Venice; and the noble and learned Olimpia Morata rendered it famous. It was brought to France by the niece of Mazarin, the Comtesse de Soissons, of evil fame as a poisoner, and yet the mother of Prince Eugène. From her, apparently, Olympe spread among French ladies and long continued fashionable, and Surtee’s History of the County Palatine of Durham mentions an Olympia Wray, married in 1660.

Here, too, must be mentioned Milone, though its connection with the subject is only through Milon, the famous Greek wrestler of Crotona, who carried a heifer through the Stadium at Olympia, and afterwards ate her up in a single meal; killed a bull with one stroke of his fist; and finally, was caught by the hands in the recoil of a riven oak, and there imprisoned till eaten by the wolves. Michaelis thinks the root of the word is the same with that of the old German verb milan, to beat or crush, the relation of our mills. Thence may likewise have come the Latin Miles, and the Keltic Milidh, both meaning a warrior.

Milo belonged to the realms of romance. In the story of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, Milon is the master of the house where the unfortunate hero undergoes his transformation; and having thus entered the world of imagination, Milon, or Milone as Italian poets call him, became a paladin of Charlemagne; Milan was a Welsh knight in one of Marie of Bretagne’s lays; and in a curious old French romance, Miles is the father of two children, one of whom is brought up by a lion, and defended by an ape as his champion. These stories, or their germs, must have struck the Norman fancy, for a Milo appears among the newly installed landholders in Domesday Book, and Milo Fitzwilliam stands early in the Essex pedigrees, but very soon the vernacular form became Miles. Among the Norman settlers in Ireland, Miles was a frequent name; and in the Stanton family, when it had become so thoroughly Hibernicized as to dislike the Norman appellation, one branch assumed the surname of MacAveely, son of Milo, according to the change of pronunciation undergone by Erse consonants in the genitive. Miles or Myles itself was adopted as an English equivalent for the native Erse Maelmordha, or majestic chief, and has now become almost an exclusively Irish name, though sometimes used in England by inheritance from Norman ancestors, and generally incorrectly derived from the Latin Miles, whereas its immediate parent is certainly the Greek Milo.[39]

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Footnote 38:

Butler; Surius; Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, Extracts from Parish Registers.

Footnote 39:

Liddell and Scott; Butler; Neale, Hymns of the Greek Church; Smith; Dunlop, History of Fiction; Hanmer, Chronicle of Ireland; Publications of Irish and Ossianic Societies.

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V. CHRISTIAN GREEK NAMES

SECTION I.

The names that we place in this class are such as arose under the Christian dispensation. Some, indeed, are older, and many more may be so, and may have been in use among slaves, peasants, and persons of whom history took no cognizance; but the great mass, even if previously invented, were given with a religious meaning and adaptation, and many embodied ideas that no heathen could have devised. Greek, above all others the ecclesiastical tongue, has sent forth more widely diffused names of truly Christian meaning than any other language; the formations of Latin, German, and English, in imitation of these are, in comparison, inharmonious and ungainly, carrying their meaning too openly displayed.

Among these are here mixed, when they belong evidently to the same race, the exclusively modern Greek names, which have arisen since Greece and her dependencies ceased to be the great store-house of martyrs and saints, and the dispenser of sacred thought to the Christian world. Many, indeed, of these names may be of equally ancient date, only not belonging to any individual of sufficient renown to have transmitted them to other countries.

Perhaps no land has been less beholden to others in her nomenclature than modern Greece. Hebrew names have, indeed, come in through her religion; a very few were accepted from the Latin in the days when Constantinople was the seat of the Roman empire, and when the churches were one; but scarcely one of the wide-spread ‘Frank’ names has ever been adopted by the Greeks. Even in Slavonic Russia the nomenclature remains almost exclusively Byzantine; the native Slave names are comparatively few, and those that come in from other nations are discarded, as at Constantinople, for some supposed Greek equivalent.

SECTION II.—Names from Theos.

Already in speaking of Zeus it has been explained that this and Θεός (Theos) are but differing forms of the same term for Divinity, although one became restricted to the individual Deity; the other was a generic term in heathen days, retaining, however, so much of spiritual majesty that it was employed in the Septuagint to express the true Creator, and thus Christians embraced it as the designation of the supreme object of worship.

The word Theos itself had been assumed as a surname by one of the worst of the line of the Syrian Antiochus, and Theon had never been infrequent among the Greeks. Θεόφιλος (Theophilos), God-beloved, to whom is dedicated the Gospel of St. Luke, must have been so called before his Christianity. Thenceforward Theophilus became a name in the Church; but it has been less used on the Continent than in England. There, probably from its occurrence in Holy Scripture, and also from being generally the title of the favourite speaker in religious dialogues, it has been in some use. The feminine, Theophila, was the name of the mother of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian and │ Portuguese. │ │ │ │ Spanish. │ │ │Theophilus │Théophile │Teofilo │Theophilo │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Theokles (Θέοκλής), divine fame, was an ancient heathen name, and it is most probable that Θεκλα (Thekla) is the contraction of the feminine. St. Thekla was said to have been a disciple of St. Paul, at Inconium, and to have been exposed to lions at Antioch. Though they crouched at her feet instead of tearing her, she is considered as the first virgin martyr, and it was deemed that the highest possible praise for a woman was to compare her to St. Thekla. Another Thekla of Alexandria is believed to have been the scribe of that precious copy of the Gospels given by Cyril Lucar to Charles I., and now in the British Museum; and thus Thekla has always had high reputation in the East, though less known in the West, except that ‘Tecla’ is the patroness of Tarragona.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ German. │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian │ │Thekla │Técla │Tecla │Tjokle │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Θεόδορος (Theodoros), and Θεόδορα (Theodora), divine gift, are the most usual of these names; the first universal in the East and West, the second prevalent in the Eastern Church, but less common in the Western than the incorrect feminine Dorothea.

There were numerous saints called Theodorus; the favourite of the West being he of Heraclea, a young soldier, who burnt the temple of Cybele, and was martyred in consequence. The Venetians brought home his legend, and made him their champion and one of their patron saints, whence Teodoro has prevailed in the city of the Doge; and from a church dedicated to him at Rome the Spaniards must have taken their Teodor, the French their Théodore, and the Germans the similar Theodor, which has always been frequent there.

The ancient Britons must have known and used this name; for among their host of obscure saints of princely birth appears Tewdwr; and the Welsh made so much use of this form that when the handsome Owen ap Tewdwr won the heart of the widow of Harry of Monmouth, Tudor was an acknowledged surname, and in two generations more it became a royal one.

Here, however, the Theodores are a recent introduction. They seem only to have been really hereditary in Wales, Greece, and Venice. By Greece is also meant all those Greco-Slavonic countries that received their nomenclature from Constantinople, in especial Russia, where the th is exchanged for ph, so as to produce the word Feodor; and the Germans, receiving it again, spell it Pheodor.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ Welsh. │ French. │ Portuguese. │ Spanish │ │Tewdwr │Théodore │Theodoro │ and Italian. │ │ ——————— │ │ │Teodoro │ │ English. │ │ │ │ │Theodore │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Hamburg. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ │Theodor │Tedor │Feodor │Feodor │ │Pheodor │Tetje │Fedor │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Slavonic. │ Illyrian. │ Lett. │ Hungarian. │ │Todor │Todor │Kodders │Twador │ │ │Toso │Kwedders │ ————————— │ │ │ │ │ Finland. │ │ │ │ │Theotari │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The feminine Theodora has two independent saints, a martyr and a Greek empress. It suffers no alterations except the Russian F at the commencement, and is not common except in the East. The West prefers the name reversed, and rendered incorrect. Dorotheus and Theodorus may indeed be exact equivalents; but the invention of Theodora makes the giver feminine instead of the gift. It is the beauty of the legend of St. Dorothea that has made her name so great a favourite. Never did pious fancy form a more beautiful dream than the story of the Cappadocian maiden, who sent the roses of paradise by angelic hands as a convincing testimony of the joy that she was reaping. The tale is of western growth, and the chief centre of St. Dorothea’s popularity as a patroness was in Germany; but the name was likewise in great favour in England, where Massinger composed a drama on her story. Dorothy was once one of the most usual of English names; and ‘Dolly’ was so constantly heard in every household, that it finally became the generic term for the wooden children that at least as late as the infancy of Elizabeth Stuart, were called babies or puppets. In the days of affectation, under the House of Hanover, Dorothy fell into disuse, but was regarded as of the same old Puritan character as Abigail or Tabitha. Probably from the influence of German literature, the German contraction Dora, or more properly Dore, has come in as almost an independent name, which, perhaps, ought to be translated as simply a gift, though often used as a contraction for Dorothea. The fashion has again come round, and Dorothy has become the favourite name. In the last century, Dorinda was a fashionable English fancy embellishment, Doralice a French one—perhaps from the German Dorlisa—Dorothea Elisa. The Russian Darija is reckoned as a translation; but it does not seem probable, for the patroness of this latter was an Athenian lady, martyred with her husband, Chrysanthus, at Rome, and buried in a catacomb, which was opened in the days of Constantine the Great. The modern Greeks call the name, Thorothea.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ German. │ Bavarian. │ │Dorothea │Dorothée │Dorothea │Derede │ │Dorothy │Dorette │Dore │Duredel │ │Dolly │Doralice │Dorlisa │Durl │ │Dora │Dorothea │ │ │ │Dorinda │Dore │ │ │ │ │Dorlisa │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Swiss. │ Dutch. │ Danish. │ Spanish. │ │Torli │Dört │Daarte │Dorotea │ │ │Dortchen │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Portuguese. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ │Dorothe │Dorotea │Dorofei │Dorota │ │ │ │Darija │Dorosia │ │ │ │Darha │ │ │ │ │Daschenka │ │ │ │ │Dorka │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Illyrian. │ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ │Doroteja │Dora │Darte │Tigo │ │Dora │Horta │Tike │Tio │ │Rotija │Horteja │Tiga │ │ │Horta │Vortija │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lithuanian. │ Ung. │ │ │ │Urte │Doroltya │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Before leaving the word doros, we may mention the name Isidoros, a very old and frequent one among the ancient Greeks, and explained by some to mean Gift of Isis; but this Egyptian deity is an improbable origin for a name certainly in use before the Greek kingdom in Egypt was established, and it seems more satisfactory to refer the first syllable to ἰς (strength), a word which when it had its digamma was Γις, exactly answering to the Latin vis (force or strength). It commenced many old Greek names, but none that have passed on to Christian times except Isidorus, which was first borne by one of the grim hermits of Egypt, then by an Alexandrian author, and then by three Spanish bishops of Cordova, Seville, and Badajos. They probably received it as a resemblance of the Gothic names beginning with eisen (iron). In consequence, Isidoro and the feminine Isidora have continued national in Spain, and Isodoros in Greece, whence Russia has taken Eesidor.

Theodotos (God-given) was in common use among the Greeks of the early empire, and apparently in Spain was corrupted into Theodosius, since Spain was the native land of him who rendered this form illustrious. Theodosia has been in favour in many parts of Europe, copied probably from some of the Byzantine princesses. The canonized personages of the masculine and feminine forms are, however, by no means imperial; the one being a hermit, the other a virgin martyr. Theone is also a German feminine.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ │ French. │ Italian. │ │Theodosius │ │Théodose │Teodosia │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ English. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Illyrian. │ │Theodosia │Teodosia │Feodosia │Desse │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The entire race of Greek words thus derived must be carefully distinguished from the Gothic ones, which at first sight appear to resemble them: such as Theodoric, Theudebert, &c., but are all, in fact, taken from the Teuton word Theut (the people).

Of Theophanos we shall speak among the names taken from sacred festivals, but we must not leave these titles of pious signification without mentioning Τιμόθεος (honour God), from τιμὴ (honour or worship), the noun formed from τίω (to honour or esteem), connected of course with the Latin timor (fear).

Timotheus had been in use even in heathen times, as in the case of Alexander’s musician.

But probably it was with a full religious meaning that the good Eunice chose it for that son who was to be the disciple of St. Paul and the first bishop of Ephesus. From him, and from several subsequent Saints, the East and West both learnt it, but at the present day it flourishes chiefly in Russia as Teemofe. In Ireland, it was taken as one of the equivalents of the native Tadgh (a bard), and the absurdities of Irish Tims have cast a ridiculous air over it, mingled with the Puritan odour of the Cromwellian days, such as to lower it from the estimation its associations deserve. Mr. Timothy Davison, in 1670, named his daughter Timothea, but happily his example does not seem to have been followed.[40]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ │Timothy │Timothée │Timoteo │Timofei │ │Tim │ │ │Timoscha │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Slavonic. │ Lett. │ │ │Tymotensz │Timoty │Tots │ │ │Timoty │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

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Footnote 40:

Smith; Jameson; Butler; Liddell and Scott; Hartwell Horne, Introduction to the Bible; Le Beau, Bas Empire; Michaelis.

SECTION III.—Names from Christos.

The Greek verb χρίω (chrio), to touch, rub, or anoint, formed the term Χριστός, which translated the old Hebrew prophetic Messiah (the Anointed), and thence became the title of the Saviour, the very touch-stone of faith.

Therefore it was that at Antioch the disciples came to be called Χρίστιανοι (Christianoi), a Greek word with a Latin termination, the title that they accepted as their highest glory, and which has ever since been the universal and precious designation of a believer. The first person who is known to have been baptized after this title, was St. Christina, a Roman virgin of patrician birth, who was martyred in 295. Her marvellous legend declares that she was thrown into lake Bolsena, with a mill-stone round her neck, but that she floated to the surface, supported by angels, and that she was at last shot to death with arrows. She is therefore, of course, patroness of Bolsena and of the Venetian States, where Cristina is frequent; and her fame travelled to Greece, Bohemia, and Hungary, from which last place the Atheling family brought it to England and Scotland in the person of Christina, Abbess of Romsey. Christian, like the other Greek names of this importation, took deep root in Scotland, where Kirstin is its abbreviation among the peasantry; and Christina, or Stine, and Tine, is common in Germany. John Bunyan’s Christiana, as the feminine of his allegorical Christian, has made this form the most common in England. Christine, either through Germany or Scotland, found its way to Scandinavia, where the contraction is Kirste, or Kirstine. Being vigorous name-makers at the time of their conversion, the Northmen were not content to leave this as a mere lady’s name inherited from the saint, but invented for themselves a masculine Christian, or Christiern as they call it in Denmark, which has belonged to many a sovereign in that kingdom, where it is especially national, and contracts into Kirsten.

Christabel was already a name before Coleridge’s time. It is to be found in Cornwall, in 1727, and in the North of England. It occurs at Crayke, in Yorkshire, between 1538 and 1652.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ German. │ French. │ Swedish. │ │Christian │Christian │Chrestien │Kristian │ │ │ │Chrétien │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Danish. │ Netherlands. │ Dantzig. │ Frisian. │ │Christian │Kerstan │Zan │Tsassen │ │ │Karston │ —————— │Tziasso │ │ │Krischân │ Dutch. │Zasso │ │ │Kruschan │Korstiaan │Sasze │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Swiss. │ Polish. │ Slavonic. │ Illyrian. │ │Krista │Krystyan │Kristijan │Kristian │ │Chresta │ │ │Kersto │ │Chresteli │ │ │Hristo │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lusatian. │ Bulgarian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ │Khrystjan │Krustjo │Kristo │Kersti │ │Kristo │ │Skersto │ —————— │ │Kito │ │ │ Hungarian. │ │ │ │ │Kerestel │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ German. │ Bulgarian. │ │Christiana │Christine │Christiane │Khrustina │ │Christian │ │Christine │ —————— │ │Christina │ │Stine │ Lithuanian. │ │Chrissie │ │Tine │Krikszte │ │Xina │ │Kristel │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │ Danish. │ │Christinha │Cristine │Cristina │Karstin │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Slavonic. │ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ │Kristina │Krystla │Kristine │Kirstin │ │Kina │Kita │Kersti │Kirste │ │ │Kitka │Skersten │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

From the same holy title was derived that of Χριστοφόρος (Christ-bearer), claimed by many an early Christian as an expression of his membership, as St. Ignatius on his trial spoke of himself as Θεοφορος. To this title was attached the beautiful allegory of the giant ever in search of the strongest master, whom he found at last in the little child that he bore on his shoulders over the river. Simplicity soon turned the parable into credited fact, and St. Christopher became the object of the most eager veneration, especially as there had been a real martyr so called, and mentioned in the Mozarabic service-book. He was put to death in Lycia, and his relics were supposed to have been at first at Toledo and afterwards at St. Denis. The sight of St. Christopher’s image was thought to be a protection from sickness, earthquake, fire, or flood, for the rest of the day, and it was therefore carved out and painted in huge proportions outside churches and houses, especially in Italy, Spain, and Germany. The cumbrous length is cut down in England into Kit, Kester, and Chris. The modern Greeks shorten Christophoros into Christachi. The two feminine are the German Christophine and English Christophera.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Swedish. │ │Christopher │Christopher │Christophe │Kristofer │ │Kester │Christal │ │Kristofel │ │Kit │ │ │ │ │Chris │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Netherlands. │ German. │ Swiss. │ Italian. │ │Toffel │Christoph │Chrestoffel │Cristoforo │ │Toff │Stoffel │Stoffel │Cristovano │ │ │Stoppel │ │Gristovalo │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ │Christovao │Cristoval │Christofer │Kristof │ │ │ │Christof │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ │ │Kitto │Kristoppis │Kristuppas │ │ │ │Kristagis │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Christopher was once far more common in England than it is at present. In the list of voters at Durham in the year 1500, there were thirteen Christophers, and in 1813 there were as many as ten. The Germans have also Christophilon, meaning, loved by Christ.[41]

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Footnote 41:

Milman, Christianity; Liddell and Scott; Jameson.

SECTION IV.—Sophia.

Perhaps we ought to consider Sophia (Σοφία) as one of the words most closely connected with divine attributes, since its use as a name was owing to the dedication of that most gorgeous of Christian temples by which Justinian declared that he had surpassed Solomon. It was called, and it has borne the title through its four hundred years of bondage to Islam, Sta. Sophia (the holy wisdom of God), that figurative wisdom whom Christians considered the Book of Proverbs to point out as the Word of God. Moreover, the words of the ‘Preacher,’ in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, “Wisdom (Σοφία) is the mother of fair Love and Hope and holy Fear,” suggested an allegory of a holy woman with three daughters so called, and thus, in compliment, no doubt, to the glorious newly-built church, the niece of Justinian’s empress, afterwards wife to his nephew and successor, was called Sophia, a name which thenceforward became the fashion among the purple-born daughters, and spread from them among the Slavonian nations, who regarded Constantinople as the centre of civilization.

Through these Slavonians Sophia spread to Germany. A Hungarian princess was so called in 999; another, the daughter of King Geysa, married Magnus of Saxony, in 1074, and Saxony scattered its Sophias in the next centuries all over the neighbouring states and into Denmark, where it has always been a royal name. Very nearly had the Electress Sophia brought it to our throne, and though the unhappy Sophia Dorothea of Zelle never took her place in the English Court, her grand-daughters made it one of the most fashionable ladies' names under the House of Hanover; and though its reign has passed with the taste for ornamental nomenclature, yet the soft and easy sound of Sophy still makes her hold her own.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ German. │ Danish. │ Frisian. │ │Sophia │Sophie │Sophia │Saffi │Vye │ │Sophy │ │Fieke │ │ │ ├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤ │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Lett. │ Hungarian. │ │Sofia │Ssofija │Zofia │Sappe │Zsofia │ │ │Ssonia │Zosia │Wike │Zsofe │ │ │Ssoniuska │ │ │ │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

SECTION V.—Petros.

Great is the controversy that hangs on the form of Πέτρος, the surname divinely bestowed upon the faithful disciple Simon Barjona, when he made his great confession of faith in the Godhead and Messiahship of his Master.

“Thou art Petros (a stone), and on this Petra (a rock) I will build my Church,” are the words.

The apostle was sometimes called in his own lifetime by the Hebrew or Syriac equivalent Κηφᾶς, or Cephas; but Petros, or Petrus, being both Greek and Latin words, he went down to posterity thus distinguished. Many a Pietro was called after him in Italy, to be cut down into Piero or Pier, and amplified into Pietruccio, or Petruccio and Petraccio. The devout Spaniards caught up the name, and had many a Pedro, nay, three Pedros at once were reigning at a time in three Peninsular kingdoms, and the frequency of Perez as a surname shows how full Spain is of the sons of Pedro. France had many a Pierre, Pierrot, or, in Brittany, Perronnik. Perrault, a common surname, may be a derivation from it, as is St. Pierre, one of the territorial designations. Before the Revolution, La Pierre and La France were the unvarying designations of the two lackeys that every family of any pretension always kept in those days of display.

England had Peter, which Peter-pence, perhaps, hindered from being a favourite, and borrowed from the French, Piers and Pierce. Feories is the Irish version of Pierce. Pedder or Peer are both much used in the North, and Peter in Germany; while the great Muscovite made Petr notable in his empire. The Irish, regardless of the true history of Patricius, want to make St. Patrick a namesake of St. Peter, and therefore the Paddys own not only their national apostle, but the prince of apostles, for their patrons. The feminines of Peter are Petronilla, said to have been his daughter, and whence has come Petronilla in Spanish, Petronille shortened into Nille in Norway, Pernel or Parnel, once exceeding common, though now forgotten, in England; but other female names have been made direct from that of the saint, Peronetta in Italy, Perretta in France, and even Petrina in Scotland and Sweden.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Swedish. │ Danish. │ │Peter │Pierre │Per │Peder │ │Piers │Pierrot │ │ │ │Pierce │Perrin │ │ │ │ │Peire │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Dutch. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ │Pieter │Pietro │Pedro │Pedro │ │Piet │Piero │ │Pedrinho │ │ │Pier │ │ │ │ │Pietruccio │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Illyrian. │ Lusatian. │ │Petr │Picti │Petai │Pjeti │ │Petruscha │Pies │Pero │Petsch │ │Petrinka │ │Petrica │Peto │ │ │ │Pejo │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Bulgarian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ Kelt. │ │Petur │Peteris │Pedo │Pétar } Erse │ │Petko │ │Pet │Feoris } │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Per } Breton│ │ │ │ │Petrik } │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ │Petrina │Perette │Petronilla │Petronilha │ │Petronella │Petronelle │ ———————————— │ ———————————— │ │Pernel │Petrine │ German. │ llyrian. │ │ │ │Petronille │Petra │ │ │ │Nelle │Petrija │ │ │ │Nillel │Petrusa │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────┘

SECTION VI.—Names of Immortality.

Rejoicing that “life and immortality had been brought to light” quickly broke out in the very names given to Christians at their baptism, and full of import were the appellations invented in these early ages of the Church, to express the joyful hope of everlasting life.

Even in the Sanscrit, a-mrita expresses the elixir of life, “the amreeta cup of immortality,” which terminates the woes of Kailyal in the Curse of Kehama, and according to Hindoo myth was produced by the celebrated churning of the ocean. The name is traced to a privative and mri, a word to be met with again in mors, murder, &c., and the notion of a water of life continued to pervade all the Indo-European races. Among the Greeks this life-giving elixir was ἀμβροσία (ambrosia), immediately derived from ἄμβροτος (immortal), a word from the same source. In various legends this ambrosia served to express the human craving for heavenly and immortal food, until at length, in later times, ambrosia came to be regarded as the substantial meat of the gods, as nectar was their drink.

It was reserved for Christianity to proclaim the true ambrosia, the veritable food of Paradise, and thus it was that Ambrosios became a chosen name, borne in especial by that great Archbishop of Milan, who spent one of the most illustrious lives recorded in Church history. The Church has never forgotten this great saint; and Milan, where his own liturgy has never been discontinued, is especially devoted to her Sant' Ambrogio, but his history is perhaps a little too much in the clear light of day to afford the convenient shadow requisite for name-spreading legend, and his name has but moderate popularity. Already, as we may suppose, his fame had spread to Britain when Aurelius Ambrosius, the brave champion who so long withstood the Saxon invaders, bore it and left it to the Welsh as Emrys.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Russian. │ │Ambrose │Ambroise │Ambrogio │Ambrosio │Amvrossij │ │Brush │ │ │ │ │ ├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Lusatian. │ Hungarian. │ Welsh. │ │Ambrozij │Ambroz │’Bros │Ambrus │Emrys │ │ │ │Mros │ │ │ │ │ │Brosk │ │ │ │ │ │Mrosk │ │ │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

In the same spirit was formed Ἀθανασίος (Athanasios), from the word θάνατος (death). The Undying was in itself a name of good hope for a Christian, and it became dear to the Church at large through the great Alexandrian patriarch, the bulwark of the faith. It is in the East that his name has been kept up; the West, though of course knowing it and using it for him individually, shows few namesakes except in Italy, where it is probably a remnant of the Greek influence upon Venice and Naples. The feminine Atanasia is, I believe, solely Italian.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Servian. │ │Athanase │Atanasio │Afanassij │Atanacko │ │ │Atanagio │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

So again the new Christians took the old word ἀνάστασις (meaning an awakening or raising), from ἀνίστημι (to make to stand up), and used it to signify the Resurrection; then formed from Ἀναστάσιος (Anastasios), of the Resurrection,—having the elements of the Resurrection within him or her, for the feminine Anastasia was as early and as frequent as the masculine. Indeed the strange caprices of fate have decreed that, though the masculine form is exceedingly common all over the Eastern Church, it should, in spite of three saints in the calendar, one of papal dignity, be almost unused in the West, except in Bavaria, whilst the feminine, borne by two virgin martyrs, is prevalent everywhere, and chiefly in Ireland. England once used the name more than at present, and then Anglicized it into Anstace. Anstiss, Anstish, Anstyce, all occur frequently as female names in the elder pages of a Devonshire parish register, where Anstice is now a surname. Anstis Squire is in the Froxfield register in 1587, and the name must once have been much more usual.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ French. │ Italian. │ Polish. │ Bavarian. │ │Anastase │Anastagio │Anastazij │Anastasl │ │ │ │ │Stas │ │ │ │ │Stasl │ │ │ │ │Stasi │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ Irish. │ French. │ Russian. │ │Anastasia │Anastasia │Anastasie │Anastasia │ │Anstace │Anty │ │Nastassja │ │ │Stacy │ │Nastenka │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Amongst these well-chosen baptismal titles may be mentioned Ζωή (Life), no doubt given as meaning that the principle of Eternal Life was then implanted. It is strange that neither the Eastern nor Western calendar shows a Zoë, though a woman thus entitled was said to have been cured of dumbness by a miracle of St. Sebastian, and afterwards to have been the first of the martyrs in the persecution in which he died, about the year 286. After this, Zoë became frequent among the women of the Greek Church, belonging to many of the royal ladies of the Blachernal, among others to her who endeavoured to shake the constancy of the sea-king, Harald Hardrada, to his Muscovite Elisif. From the lower empire it travelled to Russia, where Zoia is at present very common, and in the time of romantic interest in the new Greek kingdom, Zoé became fashionable in France, and still is much used there.[42]

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Footnote 42:

Liddell and Scott; Southey, Notes to Curse of Kehama; Snorre, Sturleson, Heimskringla; Le Beau, Bas Empire.

SECTION VII.—Royal Names.

Σέβας (Sebas), awe or veneration, was compounded into the word Σεβαστός (Sebastos), as a translation for Augustus, the imperial title coined by Octavianus to express his own peculiar sacred majesty.

It was not, however, apparently used for the original Augustus; at least St. Luke calls him Αὔγουστος; and its technical use probably did not begin till the division of the empire by Diocletian, and his designation of two emperors as Augusti or Sebastoi, with their heirs as Cæsars.

Subsequently to this arrangement no one would have dared to assume the name so intimately connected with the jealous wearers of the purple; and, accordingly, it was a contemporary of the joint emperors, who is the martyr-saint of this name—Sebastianus, a soldier at Rome, who, when other Christians fled, remained there to encourage the flock in the first outburst of the last persecution. He endured a double martyrdom; first, by the well-known shower of arrows directed against him; and next, after his recovery under the care of a pious widow, who had carried away his supposed corpse to bury it, he defied the emperor again, and was beaten to death in the arena by clubs.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ │ │ │ │ │ │Sebastian │Sebastien │Sebastiano │Sebastian │ │ │Bastien │Bastiano │ │ │ │ │Basto │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Portuguese. │ German. │ Norse. │ Bavarian. │ │Sebastião │Sebastian │Sebastian │Bastian │ │Bastiao │Bastian │Baste │Basti │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Swiss. │ Russian. │ Slavonic. │ Hungarian │ │Bastia │Ssevastjan │Bostjan │Sebestyen │ │Bastiali │ │Bostej │ │ │Bascho │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ German. │ French. │ Russian. │ Bohemian. │ │Sebastiane │Sebastienne │Ssevastjana │Sebesta │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Devout women buried him in the catacombs, and his name slept for at least a hundred years till Pope Damasus built a church over his catacomb, which has ever since been called after him, and subsequent popes made presents of his relics to Tuscany, France, and other countries. A notion arose, Mrs. Jameson thinks, from his arrows reminding the classical world of the darts of Apollo, that he was connected with pestilence. His name is thus found all over Europe, though less commonly in England and the Protestant parts of Germany than farther south. Indeed its especial home is Portugal, where it must have been specially cherished in memory of the rash Don Sebastião, the last of the glorious House of Avis, for whose return from the fatal African campaign his country so long looked and longed.

More ancient was the term βασιλεύς (basileus), a king or prince, properly answering to the Latin rex, as did Sebastos to Augustus, but usually applied in the Greek-speaking countries to the emperor. Thence came many interesting words, such as the term used in the empire for courts of royal judgment, Basilica, whence upon their conversion into places of Christian worship, the title Basilicon became synonymous with church.

So, too, that royal-looking serpent who was supposed to wear a crown on his head, and to kill with a look, was the basilisk; and the familiar basilicon ointment was so termed as being fit for a king.

Βασίλειος (kingly) was not infrequent among the early Christians, and gained popularity through that great father of the Church, the Bishop of Neo-Cæsarea, as well as other more obscure saints. It is extremely common in the Eastern Church, and especially in Russia, where the first letter suffers the usual change into V. The feminine, Basilia, is still in use among the modern Greeks, and once even seems to have been known among English ladies, since the sister of Earl Strongbow is thus recorded in history, but its use has died away amongst us.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ │Basil │Basile │Basilio │Vassilij │Bazyli │ │ │Basine │ │Vasska │ ———————— │ │ │ │ │ │ Illyrian. │ │ │ │ │ │Vassilij │ │ │ │ │ │Vaso │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

SECTION VIII.—Irene.

In heathen days Εἰρήνη (Eirene), peace, was personified and adored as a goddess; in Christian times, when peace on earth was preached, it was formed into a name—that which we know as Irene. Irene was the pious widow, whose care revived St. Sebastian after his first martyrdom, and in 303, three sisters, Agape (love), Irene, and Chionia underwent martyrdom at Thessalonica, but Irene seems to have absorbed almost all the subsequent honour, although Agapè is occasionally to be found in modern Greece, and formed the masculine surname Agapetus, once the property of a pope, and still used in Russia.

Irene was extremely frequent among the Greek empresses, and belonged to the lady who would fain have added herself to the list of Charlemagne’s many wives. Thence the Russians have it as Eereena, and in that ancient Greek colony at Sorrento, where the women’s features so strongly recall their Hellenic descent, Irene is continued as one of their baptismal names.

Thence was derived the name of the great father of the Church, Εἰρηναῖος (Eirenaios), Irenæus; but few of the fathers had popular names, and Irenæus has been little copied, except in Eastern Europe, where the Russians call it Irinej, and the Hungarians, Ernijó.

The Teuton fried and Slavonic mir have been infinitely more fruitful in names than the Greek Irene, and as to the Roman pax, its contributions to nomenclature are all posthumous.

Erasmus comes from ἰράω (íráo), to love, and is related to Eros. The first Erasmus was tortured to death in Diocletian’s persecution, at Formici, whence his relics were transferred to Gaeta, and he there became the patron of the Mediterranean sailors, who used to invoke him as St. Ermo or St. Elmo, at the approach of a storm, and he thus was thought to send the pale pure electric light that shimmers on the topmast, warning the sailor of the impending storm. The name of Erasmus was assumed by the learned Dutchman, under the belief that it translated his name of Gerhard (really spearhard), and from him Rasmus and Asmus are common in Holland, and Rasl has somehow found its way to Bavaria. Russia, too, has Jerassom, but this name lies in doubt between Erasmus and Gerasimus (the venerable), one of the early ascetics of Palestine.

Gelasius, the laugher, was the name of a pope, and for that reason was considered as appropriate and ecclesiastical. It has had the strange lot of being used in Ireland as the substitute for their native name of Giolla Iosa, or servant of Jesus, and was actually so used by the Primate reigning at the time of the English annexation of Ireland.[43]

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Footnote 43:

Le Beau; Smith; Michaelis.

SECTION IX.—Gregorios.

Γρηγόριος (Gregorios), came from γρηγορέω, a late and corrupt form of the verb ἐγείρω (to wake or watch). A watchman was a highly appropriate term for a shepherd of the Church, and accordingly Gregorios was frequent among early bishops. Gregorios Nazianzen the friend of St. Basil, Gregorios Thaumaturgos or the wonder-worker, and others of the same high fame, contributed to render it highly popular in the East, and in the West it was borne by the great pope, for whose sake it became a favourite papal title, so that it has been borne by no less than sixteen occupants of the chair of St. Peter.

It has, however, been far less popular among those who own their sway than among the Eastern Christians who are free from it, and though we find it in Scandinavia, this is only as a modernization of the Norse Grjotgard, while the Macgregors of Scotland draw their descent not from Gregory, but from Grig or Gairig, a Keltic word meaning the fierce.[44]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Danish. │ │Gregory │Gregoire │Gregorio │Gregos │ │ │ —————————— │ │Gregus │ │ │ German. │ │ —————————— │ │ │Gregor │ │ Swedish. │ │ │Gregus │ │Greis │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Slavonic. │ │Grigorij │Grzegorz │Rehor │Gregor │ │Grischa │ │ │Grega │ │ │ │ │Gorej │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Illyrian. │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ Hungarian. │ │Gregorije │Grigg │Greszkus │Gergelj │ │Gerga │ │Grygallis │Gero │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

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Footnote 44:

Michaelis; Butler.

SECTION X.—Georgos.

The Maronite Christians have a tradition that Georgos was a Christian sentinel at Damascus, who connived at the escape of St. Paul, when he was let down in the basket, and was therefore put to death; but whether this be true or false, among what may be called the allegorical saints of the Greek Church, one of the most noted is our own patron Γῆ (Ge), earth, and ἔργω (ergo), anciently Γέργω (fergo), descended from the same source as our own verbs to work and to urge, formed Γεωργός (earthworker or husbandman). A Cappadocian saint and martyr, of whom nothing was known but that he had been a soldier and died in the last persecution, bore the name of Georgios, and was deeply reverenced in the East, where Constantine erected a church in his honour at Byzantium. As in the case of St. Christopher, and probably of St. Alexis, this honoured name became the nucleus of the allegory, of the warrior saint contending with the dragon, and delivering the oppressed Church, and of course the lovers of marvel turned the parable into substance. In 494, Pope Gelasius tried to separate the true Georgius from the legend, which he omitted from the offices of the Church, but popular fancy was too strong for the pope, and the story was carried on till the imaginations of the Crusaders before Jerusalem fixed upon St. George as the miraculous champion whom they beheld fighting in their cause, as Santiago had done for Galicia. Thereby Burgundy and Aquitaine adopted him as their patron saint; and the Burgundian Henry carried him to Portugal, and put that realm under his protection; as a hundred years later Richard I. did by England, making “St. George for merry England” the most renowned of battle-cries. From Burgundy he was taken by the Germans as a patron; and Venice, always connected with Greece, already glorified him as her patron, so that “In the name of St. George and St. Michael I dub thee knight,” was the formulary throughout half Europe, and no saint had so many chivalrous orders instituted in his honour.

Still the name was less early used in the West than might have been expected, perhaps from the difficulty of pronunciation. Georgios always prevailed in the East, and came to Scotland in the grand Hungarian importation, with the ancestor of the House of Drummond, who bear three wavy lines on their shield in memory of a great battle fought by the side of a river in Hungary, before the Atheling family were brought back to England, attended by this Hungarian noble. On the usurpation of Harold, he fled with them to Scotland, and there founded a family where the Eastern Christian name of George has always been an heir-loom. It was probably from the same Hungarian source that Germany first adopted Georg, or Jürgen, as it is differently spelt, and thence sent it to England with the House of Brunswick; for, in spite of George of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., and a few other exceptions, it had been an unusual name previously, and scarcely a single George appears in our parish registers before 1700, although afterwards it multiplied to such an extent as to make it doubtful whether George, John, or Charles be the most common designation of Englishmen.

The feminine is quite a modernism. The first English lady on record, so called, was a godchild of Anne of Denmark, who caused her to be christened Georgia Anna. The name had, however, previously existed on the Continent.

Venice took its Giorgio direct from Greece, but the name was not popular elsewhere in Italy; and at Cambrai, an isolated instance occurs in the year 1300, nor has it ever been common in France. The Welsh Urien (Uranius) descends from heaven to earth by considering George as his equivalent. The Irish translate the name into Keltic as Seoirgi.[45]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │ │ │ │ │ │ │George │George │Georges │Giorgio │ │Georgy │Geordie │Georget │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ Wallachian. │ Provençal │ │Jorge │Jorge │Georgie │Jortz │ │ │Jorgezinho │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Frisian. │ Bavarian. │ Swiss. │ │Georg │Jurgen │Görgel │Jörg │ │Jurgen │Jurn │Gergel │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Swedish. │ Danish. │ Dutch. │ Russian. │ │Göran │Georg │Georgius │Gayeirgee │ │ │Jorgen │Joris │Georgij │ │ │ │Jurriaan │Jurgi │ │ │ │Jurria │Egor │ │ │ │ │Egorka │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Slavonic. │ Illyrian. │ │Jerzy │Jiri │Jurg │Giuraj │ │ │ │Jurck │Giuro │ │ │ │ │Giuko │ │ │ │ │Djuradj │ │ │ │ │Djurica │ │ │ │ │Juro │ │ │ │ │Jurica │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ Esthonian. │ │Juro │Jorrgis │Jurgis │Jurn │ │Jurko │Jurrusch │Jurguttis │ │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ German. │ Portuguese. │ │Georgiana │Georgine │Georgine │Georgeta │ │Georgina │Georgette │ │ —————————— │ │ │ │ │ Illyrian. │ │ │ │ │Gjurjija │ │ │ │ │Gjurgjinka │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

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Footnote 45:

Liddell and Scott; Jameson; Butler; Michaelis; O'Donovan.

SECTION XI.—Barbara.

Of the four great virgin saints, revered with almost passionate affection in the Roman Catholic Church, each has been made the representative of an idea. Probably Agnes, Barbara, Katharine, and Margaret were veritable maidens who perished in the early persecutions, and whose lives, save for some horrible incident in their tortures, were unknown; but around them crystallized the floating allegories of the Church, until Agnes became the representative of the triumph of innocence, Margaret of the victory through faith, Katharine of intellectual, and Barbara of artistic devotion. There was a speedy lapse from the allegory to the legend, just as of old, from the figure to the myth; and the virgins' popularity in all countries depended, not on their shadowy names in the calendar, but on the implicitly credited tales of wonder connected with them.

Barbara was said to be a maiden of Heliopolis, whose Christianity was revealed by her insisting that a bath-chamber should be built with three windows instead of two, in honour of the chief mystery of the Creed. Her cruel father beheaded her with his own hands, and was immediately destroyed by thunder and lightning. Here, of course, was symbolized the consecration of architecture and the fine arts to express religious ideas, and St. Barbara became the patroness of architects, and thence of engineers, and the protectress from thunder and its mimic, artillery. The powder room in a French ship is still known as la sainte Barbe. Her name has thus been widely spread, though chiefly among the daughters of artificers and soldiers, seldom rising to princely rank. Barbara is the feminine of βάρβαρος (a stranger), the term applied by the Greeks to all who did not speak their own tongue. Horne Tooke derives it from the root bar (strong), and thinks it a repetition of the savage people’s own reduplicated bar-bar (very strong); but it is far more probably an imitation of the incomprehensible speech of the strangers; as, in fact, the Greeks seem rather to have applied it first to the polished Asiatic, who would have given them less the idea of strength than the Scyth or the Goth, to whose language bar belonged in the sense of force or opposition. It is curious to observe how, in modern languages, the progeny of the Latin barbarus vary between the sense of wild cruelty and mere rude ignorance, or ill-adapted splendour.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │ │Barbara │Babie │Barbe │Barbara │ │Bab │ │ │ │ │Barbary │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Danish. │ German. │ Swiss. │ Russian. │ │Barbraa │Barbara │Baba │Varvara │ │ │Barbeli │Babali │Varinka │ │ │Barbechen │Babeli │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Slavonic. │ Illyrian. │ Bohemian. │ Lusatian. │ │Barbara │Barbara │Barbora │Baba │ │Barba │Varvara │ │Babuscha │ │Barbica │Bara │ │ │ │ │Vara │ │ │ │ │Barica │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ Hungarian. │ │ │Barbule │Barbe │Borbola │ │ │Barbe │Barbutte │Boris │ │ │Babbe │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The true old English form is Barbary. It appears thus in all the unlatinized pedigrees and registers; and the peasantry still call it so, though unluckily it is generally turned into Barbara in writing.[46]

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Footnote 46:

Jameson; Horne Tooke; Michaelis.

SECTION XII.—Agnes.

The word ἄγος (agos), a thing to which religious awe attaches, gave the adjective ἄγνος (agnos), sacred or pure, whence was named the tree whose twigs the Greek matrons strewed on their beds during the festival of Demeter, and which the Romans called by a reduplication of its title in both languages, the Agnus Castus. Agnus, the Latin for a lamb, is said to have come from the consecration of those creatures to sacred purposes; and thence, too, came Agnes, the name of the gentle Roman maiden, the place of whose martyrdom named the church of Sant' Agnese. It is said to have been built by Constantine the Great only a few years after her death, on the spot where she was put to the utmost proof; and it retains an old mosaic, representing her veiled only by her long hair, and driven along by two fierce soldiers.

Another very ancient church of Sant' Agnese covers the catacomb where she was interred, and she has always been a most popular saint both in the East and West, but most especially at her native city. There a legend became current, probably from her name, that as her parents and other Christians were weeping over her grave in the catacomb, she suddenly stood before them all radiant in glory, and beside her a lamb of spotless whiteness. She assured them of her perfect bliss, encouraged them, and bade them weep no more; and thus in all later representations of her, a lamb has always been her emblem, though it does not appear in the numerous very early figures of her that are still preserved.

A saint who was the object of so many legends could not fail of numerous votaries, and Agnes was common in England and Scotland, and was a royal name in France and Germany. The Welsh form is Nest. A Welsh Nest was the mother of Earl Robert of Gloucester. Iñes, as the Spaniards make it, indicating the liquid sound of the gn by the cedilla, gained a mournful fame in Portugal by the fate of Iñez de Castro, and Iñesila has been derived from it, while the former English taste for stately terminations to simple old names made the word Agneta. It is more common in Devonshire than in other counties. In Durham, there is a curious custom of calling any female of weak intellect, “a Silly Agnes.” Italy has invented the masculine Agnolo and Agnello, often confounded with Angelo, and used as its contraction.[47]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Welsh. │ Manx. │ French. │ │Agnes │Nest │Nessie │Agnes │ │Aggie │ │ │Agnies │ │Agneta │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Portugues │ Swedish. │ │Agnese │Ines │Inez │Agnes │ │Agnete │Inesila │ │Agneta │ │Agnesca │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Danish. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Slavonic. │ │Agnes │Agnessa │Agnizka │Neza │ │Agnete │Agnessija │ ————————— │Nezika │ │ │ │ Bohemian. │ │ │ │ │Anezka │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Servian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian │ Lithuanian. │ │Janja │Agnese │Neto │Agnyta │ │ ————————— │Nese │ │ │ │ Lusatian. │ │ │ │ │Hanza │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

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Footnote 47:

Jameson; Brand, Popular Antiquities; Liddell and Scott; Michaelis.

SECTION XIII.—Margaret.

No name has been the occasion of more pretty fancies than Μαργαρίτης (a pearl), itself taken from the Persian term for the jewel, Murvarid (child of light), in accordance with the beauteous notion that the oysters rising to the surface of the water at night and opening their shells in adoration, received into their mouths drops of dew congealed by the moon-beams into the pure and exquisite gem, resembling in its pure pale lustre nothing so much as the moon herself, “la gran Margherita,” as Dante calls her. The thought of the pearl of great price, and of the pearl gates of the celestial city, no doubt inspired the Christian choice of Margarite for that child of light of the city of Antioch in Pisidia, whose name as virgin martyr standing in the Liturgy without any authentic history, became, before the fifth century, the recipient of the allegory of feminine innocence and faith overcoming the dragon, even as St. George embodied the victory of the Christian warrior. Greek though the legend were, as well as the name, neither flourished in the Eastern Church; but Cremona laid claim to the maiden’s relics, and Hungary in its first Christianity eagerly adopted her name, and reckons two saints so called in the eleventh century, besides having sent forth the sweet Margaret Ætheling, the wife of Malcolm Ceanmohr, the gentle royal saint of the Grace Cup, who has made hers the national Scottish female name. From Scotland it went to Norway with the daughter of Alexander III., whose bridal cost the life of Sir Patrick Spens; and it had nearly come back again from thence with her child, the Maid of Norway; but the Maid died on the voyage, and Margaret remained in Scandinavia to be the dreaded name of the Semiramis of the North, and was taken as the equivalent of Astrid and of Grjotgard. From Cremona Germany learnt to know the child-like Margarethe, one of the saints and names most frequently occurring there; and Provence, then an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire, likewise adopted her. From her was called the eldest of the four heiresses of Provence, who married St. Louis, leaving Marguérite to numerous French princesses. Her niece, the daughter of Henry III., was the first English Margaret; but the name was re-imported from France in the second wife of Edward I., and again in Margaret of Anjou, from whom was called Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII., and founder of the Lady Margaret professorship.

In her grand-daughter, Margaret Tudor, it ceased to be royal in England, though it had taken root among the northern part of the population, while, strangely enough, it hardly ever occurs among the southern peasantry. The Italian reverence for Margherita, or Malgherita, as they called her, was increased by the penitence of Margherita of Cortona, whose repentance became so famed that she was canonized. Many are the contractions of this favourite name, since it is too long for the popular mouth. The oldest is probably the Scottish Marjorie, as Bruce’s daughter was called, and which cut down into Maisie, the “proud Maisie” of the ballad, and later into Mysie, and was treated as a separate name. Mr. Lower tells us that the surname of Marjoribanks is derived from the barony of Raltio, granted to Marjorie Bruce on her marriage with the High Steward of Scotland. Margaret turned into Meg before the time of “Muckle-moued Meg of the Border,” and this as well as Maggie was shared with England, which likewise had Margery and Marget, as well as the more vulgar Peggy and Gritty, and likewise Madge.

The French contraction was in the sixteenth century Margot, according to the epitaph, self-composed, of the Austrian, Flemish, or French damsel, who was so nearly Queen of Spain:

“Ci gît Margot, la gentille demoiselle, Qui a deux maris et encore est pucelle.”

But Gogo is not an improvement. Marcharit is the Breton form.

In Germany Grethel figures in various ‘Mahrchen,’ but Gretchen is now most common, and is rendered classical by Goethe. Mete in the time of Klopstock’s sway over the lovers of religious poetry was very fashionable; and Meta almost took up her abode in England, though the taste for simplicity has routed her of late.

Denmark, where the Semiramis of the North has domesticated the name, calls it Mette and Maret, and places it in many a popular tale and ballad as Metelill, or little Margaret.

Even the modern German Jews use it and call it Marialit; and the Vernacular Gaelic contraction used in Ireland is Vread, though Mairgreg is the proper form.[48]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │ │Margaret │Margaret │Marguérite │Margherita │ │Margaretta │Marjorie │Margot │Malgherita │ │Margery │Maisie │Margoton │Ghita │ │Maggy │Maidie │Goton │Rita │ │Meggy │Maggie │Gogo │ │ │Madge │Meg │ │ │ │Marget │May │ │ │ │Peggy │ │ │ │ │Gritty │ │ │ │ │Meta │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Spanish. │ German. │ Swiss. │ Danish. │ │Margarita │Margarethe │Margarete │Margarete │ │ ————————— │Grete │Gretli │Mette │ │ Portuguese. │Gretchen │ │Maret │ │Margarida │Grethe │ │Melletel │ │ │Grethel │ │ │ │ │Grel │ │ │ │ │Marghet │ │ │ │ │Mete │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Slavonic. │ Finland. │ │Margareta │Markota │Marjarita │Reta │ │Malgorzata │ │Marjeta │ │ │Malgosia │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ Lithuanian. │ Hungarian. │ │Margrete │Maret │Magryta │Margarta │ │Greta │Kret │Gryta │Margit │ │Maije │Krot │Greta │ │ │Madsche │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Footnote 48:

Reeves, Conchology; Liddell and Scott; Butler; Michaelis; Grimm; Weber, Northern Romance.

SECTION XIV.—Katharine.

The maiden martyr, whose name was chosen as the centre of the allegory of intellectual religion, was Καθαρινή (Kathariné), Catharina in Latin, from a virgin martyr of Alexandria, whose history being unknown, became another recipient of a half-allegorical legend. It is not found recorded earlier than the eighth century, and, indeed, the complete ignorance of the state of the Roman empire, shown by making her the daughter of a king of Egypt, argues its development at a very late period. Her exceeding wisdom, her heavenly espousals, her rejection of the suit of Maximus, the destruction of the wheels that were to have torn her in pieces, her martyrdom by the sword, and the translation of her body by angels to Mount Sinai, are all familiar through the numerous artistic works that have celebrated her. The legend is thought to have grown up to its full height among the monks of the convent that bears her name at the foot of Mount Sinai. And the many pilgrims thither had the zest of a new and miraculous legend, such as seems always to have been more popular than the awful truth beside which it grew up; but it never obtained credit enough in the East to make Katharina come into use as a name in the Greek Church, and it was only when the Crusaders brought home the story that it spread in ballad and mystery throughout the West. Indeed, the name did not prevail till it had been borne by the Italian devotee, Santa Caterina of Sienna, who tried to imagine the original Katharina’s history renewed in herself, and whose influence is one of the marvels of the middle ages. Before this, however, the fair Katharine, Countess of Salisbury, had been the heroine of the Garter, and John of Gaunt had named the daughter, who, as Queen of Castille, made Catalina a Spanish name, whence it returned to us again with Katharine of Aragon; but in the mean time Catherine de Valois, the Queen of Henry V., had brought it again from France.

The cause of the various ways of spelling this word would appear to be that the more ancient English made no use of the letter K, which only came in with printing and the types imported from Germany. Miss Catherine Fanshaw wrote a playful poem in defence of the commencement with C, avouching K to be no Saxon letter, and referring to the shrewish Katharina and the Russian empress as examples of the bad repute of the K; but her argument breaks down, since the faithful Spanish Catalina, as English queen, wrote herself Katharine, while the ‘Shrew’ in Italy could only have been Caterina, and the Russian empress is on her coins Ekaterina. On the whole, Katherine would seem properly to be a namesake of the Alexandrian princess, Catherine, the Votaress of Sienna. No name is more universal in all countries and in all ranks, partly from its own beauty of sound, partly from association, and none has more varied contractions. Our truest old English ones are Kate and Kitty—the latter was almost universal in the last century, though now supplanted by the Scottish Katie and the graceful Irish Kathleen.

Catherine has even produced a masculine name. Perhaps Anne and Mary are the only others which have been thus honoured; but the sole instance is Caterino or Catherin Davila, the historian, who had the misfortune to have Catherine de Medici for his godmother.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ Irish. │ Welsh. │ │Katharine │Catharine │Kathleen │Cathwg │ │Catherine │Katie │Katty │ │ │Catharina │ —————————— │ │ —————————— │ │Kate │ Dutch. │ │ Bret. │ │Kitty │Kaat │ │Katel │ │Katrine │Kaatje │ │Katelik │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ French. │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │ │Cathérine │Catharine │Catalina │Caterina │ │Catant │ │ │ │ │Caton │ │ │ │ │Gaton │ │ │ │ │Trinette │ │ │ │ │Cataut │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Swedish. │ Danish. │ German. │ Dantzic. │ │Katarina │Kathrina │Katharine │Trien │ │Kajsa │Karina │Kathchen │Kasche │ │Kolina │Karen │Kathe │ │ │ │Kasen │Thrine │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Bavarian. │ Swiss. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ │Katrine │Kathri │Ekaterina │Katarnyna │ │Kadreinl │Kathrili │Katinka │Kasia │ │Treinel │Tri │Katinsha │ │ │Kadl │Trili │Katja │ │ │Kattel │Trine │ │ │ │Ketterle │Hati │ │ │ │ │Hatili │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Slovak. │ Illyrian. │ Esthonian. │ Hungarian. │ │Katrina │Katarina │Katri │Katalin │ │Katra │Katica │Kaddo │Kati │ │Katrej │ │Kats │Katicza │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

SECTION XV.—Harvest Names.

From θέρω (to heat) was derived θέρος (summer), which, in sunny Greece, came likewise to mean the summer crop, just as in Germany Herbst serves for both autumn and harvest. θερίζω (to reap or gather in the crop), and from this verb comes the pretty feminine Theresa, the reaper. “The first to bear the predestined name of Theresa,” as Montalembert says, was a Spanish lady, the wife of a Roman noble called Paulinus, both devotees under the guidance of St. Jerome, whose writings most remarkably stamped the memory of his friends upon posterity; and this original Theresa was copied again and again by her own countrywomen, till we find Teresa on the throne of Leon in the tenth century. The name was confined to the Peninsula until the sixteenth century, when that remarkable woman, Saint Teresa, made the Roman Catholic Church resound with the fame of her enthusiastic devotion. The Spanish connection of the House of Austria rendered it a favourite with the princesses both of Spain and Germany. The Queen of Louis XIV. promoted it in France as Thérèse, and it is specially common in Provence as Térézon, for short, Zon. The empress-queen greatly added to its fame; and it is known everywhere, though more in Roman Catholic countries and families than elsewhere. That it nowhere occurs in older English pedigrees is one of the signs that it was the property of a saint whose claims to reverence began after the Reformation.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Portuguese. │ Spanish. │ │Theresa │Thérèse │Theresa │Teresa │ │Terry │Térézon │ │Teresita │ │Tracy │Zon │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Italian. │ German. │ Hamburg. │ Bavaria. │ │Teresa │Theresia │Tresa │Res’l │ │Teresina │ │Trescha │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Bohemian. │ Slavonic. │ Illyrian. │ Hungarian. │ │Terezie │Terezija │Tereza │Terezia │ │ │ │Terza │Threzsi │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The real popularity of the word, witnessed by its many changes of sound, is, be it observed, in those Eastern domains of the empress where her noble spirit won all hearts to the well-remembered cry “Moriamur pro Rege nostrâ Maria Theresa.”

Eustaches has already been explained as one of these harvest names. And to these may be added that of the old Cypriot shepherd hermit Σπυρίδων (Spiridōn), from σπυρίς (a round basket). He was afterwards a bishop, and one of the fathers of Nicea, then going home, died at a great age, asleep in his corn field; in honour of whom Spiridione, or Spiro, as the Italianized Greeks call it, is one of the most popular of all names in the Ionian Islands, and has the feminine Spira.[49]

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Footnote 49:

Liddell and Scott; Montalembert; Surius; Anderson, Genealogies.

SECTION XVI.—Names from Jewels.

Margaret, which has been spoken of elsewhere, is the most noted of jewel names, and it probably suggested the few others that have prevailed.

Σμάραγδος (Smaragdos) is supposed to have been named from μαίρω or μαρμαίρω (to twinkle or sparkle), whence the dog-star was called Μαῖρα (Maira). This beauteous precious stone, bearing the colour of hope, was further recommended to Christians because the rainbow of St. John’s vision was “in sight like unto an emerald.” Thus, Smaragdos was one of the early martyrs; and the same occurs occasionally in early times, once as an exarch of Ravenna; but it was never frequent enough to be a recognized name, except in two very remote quarters, namely, as the Spanish Esmeralda and the Cornish Meraud, the last nearly, if not quite, extinct.

The Sapphire was erased for ever from the nomenclature of Christians by the fate of the unhappy Sapphira, except that Σαπφήρω (Sapphēro), a name thus derived, is used among the modern Greeks of the Ionian Islands; and so also is Διαμάντω (Diamanto).

For want of a better place, the Italian name Gemma must here be mentioned, though purely Latin, and coming from a word meaning the young crimson bud of a tree, though since used for a gem or jewel. In Erse Gemlorg, gem-like, is almost exactly the same in sound and spirit.

Moreover, both precious metals are used as female names in modern Greece, Ἀργύρω (Argyro), silver, connecting itself with the Arianwen, or silver lady, of Wales; and Χρυσωῦχα (Chrysoucha) from Χρυσός (Chrysós), gold. This latter word has formed many other names, beginning from Chryses and his daughter Chryseis, whose ransom was the original cause of “Achilles' wrath of mighty woes the spring.” In the soubriquet of Chrysostomos, or Golden Mouth, we have already seen it, and it is found also in Χρύσανθος (Chrysanthos), golden flower, the husband of Saint Daria, in whose honour prevails the Bavarian Chrysanth or Santerl.

Muriel, an old English name, comes from μύρον (myrrh). Both it and Meriel were once common, and have lately been revived.[50]

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Footnote 50:

Smith, Life of Chaucer; Butler; Michaelis.

SECTION XVII.—Kosmos and Damianos.

The pursuit of the relics of saints had already begun even in the fourth century. No church was thought thoroughly consecrated save by the bones of some sainted Christian, and it was during the first fervour that led men to seek the bodies of the martyrs in their hiding-places, that St. Ambrose discovered the bodies of two persons at Milan, whom a dream pronounced to be Kosmos and Damianos, two martyred Christians.

They, of course, were placed among the patrons of Milan, and their names became favourites in Italy. Kosmos originally meant order; but, having been applied to the order of nature, has in our day come usually to mean the universe.

Cosimo, or Cosmo, as the Italians called it, was used at Milan and Florence, where it gained renown in the person of the great man who made the family of Medici eminent, and who prepared the way for their aspirations to the elevation that proved their bane and corruption. France calls the word Côme without using it as a name, and Russia adopts it as Kauzma.

Damianos was from the verb δαμάω, identical with our own tame, which we have already seen in composition. He had a good many chivalrous namesakes, as Damiano, Damiao, Damien, and the Russians call him Demjan. The old Welsh Dyfan is another form strangely changed by pronunciation.

SECTION XVIII.—Alethea, &c.

Ἀλήθεια (Aletheia), truth, came from α and λήθω (to hide), and thus means openness and sincerity.

When it first came to be used as a name is not clear. Aletha, of Padua, appears in 1411; and the princess, on whose account Charles I., when Prince of Wales, made his journey to Spain, was Doña Maria Aletea. About that time Alethea made her appearance in the noble family of Saville, and either to a real or imaginary Alethea were addressed the famous lines of the captive cavalier:—

“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.”

Moreover, in 1669, Alethea Brandling, at the age of nine, was married to one Henry Hitch, esq., and the name occurs several times in Durham pedigrees.

As far as the English Alethea is concerned, she is probably the alteration of an Irish name, for she chiefly belongs to the other island, and is there called Letty. What feminine it was meant to translate must be uncertain, perhaps Tuathflaith (the noble lady). Tom Moore called his Egyptian heroine Atethe, from the adjective, and this has been in consequence sometimes used as a name.

The name Althea must not be confounded with it. This last is Ἄλθεια (wholesome). It belonged of old to the unfortunate mother of Meleager, and now designates a genus of mallows, in allusion to their healing power.

We find the prefix πρό, forming part of the word προκοπή (progress), whence the name Προκόπιος (Prokopios); in Latin, Procopius, progressive. It was the name of a martyr under Diocletian, in Palestine, and is a favourite in the Greek Church. The short-lived successor of Jovian was so called; also the great Byzantine historian; and now Prokopij is very common among the Russian clergy; and Prokop or Prokupek has found its way into Bohemia. Russia, likewise, uses in the form of Prokhor, the name of Próchorus (Πρόχορας), one of the seven deacons, and much Græcized indeed must the imaginations of his Jewish parents have been when they gave him such an appellation, signifying the leader of the choral dances in the Greek theatres.

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I. LATIN NOMENCLATURE

Hitherto we have had to deal with names at once explained by the language of those who originally bore them. With a very few exceptions, chiefly in the case of traditional deities, the word has only to be divided into its component parts, and its meaning is evident, and there was a constant fabrication of fresh appellations in analogy with the elder ones, and suited to the spirit of the times in which they were bestowed.

But on passing the Gulf of Adria we come upon a nation of mingled blood, and even more mingled language, constantly in a condition of change; their elder history disguised by legends, their ancient songs unintelligible to the very persons who sang them, their very deities and rites confused with those of Greece, till they were not fully understood even by their most cultivated men; and their names, which were not individual but hereditary, belonging to forgotten languages, and often conveying no signification to their owner.

The oldest inhabitants of Italy are thought to have been Pelasgi, which is argued, among other causes, from the structure of the language resembling the Greek, and from the simple homely terms common to both; but while the Pelasgi of the Eastern Peninsula became refined and brought to perfection by the Hellenes, the purest tribe of their own race, those of the Western Peninsula were subjected to the influence of various other nations. In the centre of Italy the Pelasgians appear to have been overrun by a race called Oscans, Priscans, or Cascans, who became fused with them, and called themselves Prisci Latini, and their country Latium or Lavinium. Their tongue was the elder Latin, and the Oscan is believed to have supplied the element which is not Greek, but has something in common both with Kelt and Teuton. These Latins were, there can be no doubt, the direct ancestors of the Romans, whose political constitution, manners, and language, were the same, only in an advanced condition.

Roman legend and poetry brought the fugitive Æneas from Troy to conquer Latium, and found Alba Longa; and after the long line of Alban kings, the twins, Romulus and Remus, founded the City of the Seven Hills, and filled it with Latins, i. e. the mixed Pelasgic and Oscan race of Latium. The first tribe of pure Oscans who came in contact with the Romans were the Sabines, who, after the war begun by the seizure of the Sabine women, made common cause with Rome, and thus contributed a fresh Oscan element to both blood and language. The Oscan race extended to the South, divided into many tribes, and their language was spoken in a pure state by the southern peasantry far on into Roman history. The numerous Greek colonies which caused the South to be termed Magna Græcia, became in time mingled with the Oscans, and gave the whole of Apulia, Bruttium, and Calabria, a very different character from that of central Italy.

Northward of Latium was the powerful and mysterious race calling themselves the Raseni, and known to the Romans as Tusci. They are usually called Etruscans, and their name still survives in that of Tuscany. They are thought by some to have been Keltic, but their tongue is not sufficiently construed to afford proof, and their whole history is lost. Their religion and habits were unlike those of their Roman neighbours, and they were in a far more advanced state of civilization. In the time of Tarquinius Priscus they obtained considerable influence over Rome, many of whose noblest works were Etruscan; and though this power was lost in the time of Tarquinius Superbus, and long wars were waged between Rome and Etruria, the effects of their intercourse lasted, and many institutions were traceable to the Etruscan element. Of the Roman families, some considered themselves descended from different Latin tribes, others from Sabines, others from Etruscans; and their genealogy was carefully observed, as their political position depended upon it.

Their nomenclature was, in fact, the immediate parent of our own.

Every Roman citizen had necessarily two names. The second of these was the important one which marked his hereditary position in the state, and answered to our surname. It was called the nomen, or name, par excellence, and was inherited from his father, belonging also to the entire gens, or tribe, who considered themselves to have a common ancestor, and who, all alike, whether wealthy or otherwise, took the rank of their gens, whether patrician, equitial, or plebeian. The daughters of the gens were called by the feminine of its name, and sometimes took that of the gens of their husband, but this was not always the custom.

Besides these large tribes, there were lesser ones of families. If an ancestor had acquired an additional appellation, whether honourable or ludicrous, it passed to all his male descendants, thus distinguishing them from the rest of their gens, and was called the cognomen. For instance, after Marcus Manlius had saved the capitol, Capitolinus would be the cognomen not merely of himself but of his posterity.

Clients and freedmen took the gentile name of their patron, and when the freedom of Rome was granted to a stranger, he took the gentile name of him from whom it was received, thus infinitely spreading the more distinguished nomina of the later republic and early empire, and in the Romanized countries gradually becoming the modern hereditary surname, the convenience of the family distinction causing it to be gradually adopted by the rest of the world. When the last of a gens adopted the son of another clan to continue his line, the youth received the nomen and one or more cognomina of his new gens, but brought in that of his old one with the augmentative anus. As for instance, Publius Æmilius Paullus being adopted by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, became Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Æmilianus, and his daughter was simply Cornelia. Again, Caius Octavius, as adopted into the Julian gens, became Caius Julius Cæsar Octavius; and the emperors being all adopted, arrived at such a multitude of names that the accumulation was entirely useless, and they were called by a single one.

Added to all these family names, each man had his own individual name, which was bestowed in later times, or more properly registered when, at the age of fourteen, he laid aside the childish tunic and bulla, or golden ball, which he had worn from infancy, put off the toga prætextala, and assumed the toga virilis, or manly gown, white edged with purple, which was the regular official Roman dress. In the latter days, the prænomen was given on the eighth day, with a lustratio or washing of the infant. There was a very small choice of Roman prænomina, not above seventeen; an initial was sufficient to indicate which might be intended, nor did ladies receive their feminines in the earlier times. By which name a man might be called was arbitrary; the gentile name was the distinction of rank, and perhaps the most commonly used by his acquaintance, unless the tribe were very large, when the cognomen would be used; and among brothers the prænomen was brought in first as the Christian name is with us. The great Marcus Tullius Cicero was called Cicero by those who only knew him politically, while to his correspondents he was Tullius; his son, of the same name, was termed Marcus Cicero; his brother, Quintus Cicero; and Caius Julius Cæsar figures in contemporary correspondence as C. Cæsar.

In Christian times, the lustratio at the giving of the prænomen became Holy Baptism, thus making our distinction between baptismal and hereditary names. The strict adherence to the old prænomina had been already broken into, especially in favour of women, who had found the universal gentile name rather confusing, and had added to it feminine prænomina or agnomina, had changed it by diminution or augmentation, or had taken varieties from the other gentes to which they were related. Christianity had given individuality to woman, and she was no longer No. 1, or No. 2, the property of the gens. Significant names, Greek names, or saintly ones were chosen as prænomina, and the true Christian name grew up from the old Roman seventeen. Besides these, the numerous slaves, who formed a large part of the Roman population, had each a single name. Some of these were in their own language, disguised by Latin pronunciation; others were called by Greek or Latin words; others bore their masters' names. Many of these slaves were among the martyrs of the Church, and their names were bestowed on many an infant Christian. Others were afterwards formed from significant Latin words, but far fewer than from Greek words, the rigid hereditary customs of Latin nomencloture long interfering with the vagaries of invention, and most of these later not being far removed from classical Latinity.

It should be observed that the original Latin word, especially if descriptive or adjectival, usually ends in us, representing the Greek ος, and in the oblique cases becoming i and o—in the vocative e. When it was meant to signify one of or belonging to this first, the termination was ius—thus from Tullus comes one belonging to Tullus—Tullius, in the vocative i; and again, one of the gens adopted into another, would become Tullianus,—Tullus, Tullius, Tullianus. The diminutive would be illus, or iolus, and in time became a separate name: Marcus, Marcius, Marcianus, Marcellus. In the adoption of Latin by the barbarous nations, the language was spoken without the least attention to declension; the Italians and Spanish used only the dative termination, making all their words end in o; but the former preserving the nominative plural i, and the latter the accusative plural os, while the French stopped short at the simple elementary word, and while finishing it in writing with an e, discarded all pronunciation of its termination. The vocative was their favourite case in pronunciation, and has passed to us in our usual terminal y. The a of feminine names was retained by Italy and Spain; cut off by France, Germany, and England.[51]

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Footnote 51:

Niebuhr, Rome; Arnold, Rome; Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities; Max Müller.

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II. LATIN PRÆNOMINA

SECTION I.—Aulus, Caius, Cnæus, Cæso.

For the sake of convenient classification, it may be best to begin the Latin names with the original prænomina and their derivatives, few in number as they are, and their origin involved in the dark antiquity of the Roman pre-historic times. The chief light thrown upon them is in a work entitled De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus, compiled by one Marcus Valerius Maximus, in the Augustan age, to which is appended a dissertation on Roman prænomina of doubtful authorship; but whether this be by Valerius himself, or by his abridger and imitator, it is the earliest information we possess as to these home appellations of the stern conquerors of the world.

Caius, or Caiius as the elders spelt it, was one of the most common of all Roman prænomina, and was pronounced Gaius, as it is written in St. Paul’s mention of “Gaius mine host.” Men indicated it by the initial C; women who bore it, used the same C reversed (ↄ) on coins or inscriptions. Valerius, or his imitator, deduces it from gaudium parentum, the parents' joy, but it is more probably from the root-word gai. When a Roman marriage took place with the full ceremonies such as rendered divorce impossible, the names Caius and Caia always stood for those of the married pair in the formulary of prayer uttered over them while they sat on two chairs with the skin of the sheep newly sacrificed spread over their heads; and when the bride was conducted to her husband’s house, spindle and distaff in hand, she was demanded who she was, and replied, “Where thou art Caius, I am Caia;” and having owned herself his feminine, she was carried over his threshold, to prevent the ill omen of touching it with her foot, and set down on a sheepskin within. From this rite all brides were called Caiæ. It is said that it was in honour of Tanaquil, whose Roman name was Caia Cæcilia, and who was supposed to be the model Roman woman, fulfilling the epitome of duties expressed in the pithy saying, Domum mansit, lanam fecit (she staid at home and spun wool), and was therefore worshipped by Roman maids and matrons. The Romans introduced Caius into Britain, and the Sir Kay, seneschal of Arthur’s court, who appears in the romances of the Round Table, was probably taken from a British Caius; but the Highland clan, Mackay, are not sons of Caius, but of Ey.

It was probably from a word of the same source, that the Italian town and promontory of Caieta were so called, though the Romans believed the name to be taken from Caieta, the nurse of Æneas, a dame who only appears among Latin authors. The city has become Gaeta in modern pronunciation, and from it has arisen the present Italian Gaetano. Who first was thus christened does not appear, but the popularity of the name began on the canonization of Gaetano di Thienna, a Vicentine noble and monk, who, in 1524, instituted the Theatine order of monks. He himself had been called after an uncle, a canon of Padua, learned in the law; but I cannot trace Gaetano back any further. It is in right of this saint, however, that it has become a great favourite in Italy. The Portuguese call it Caetano, the Spaniards, Cajetano; the Slavonians (who must have it through Venice), Kajetan or Gajo. It was a family name in Dante’s time, and his contemporary, Pope Boniface VIII., of whom he speaks with some scorn, had been Benedetto Gaëtano.[52]

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Welsh. │ French. │ Italian. │ │Lucy │Lleulu │Lucie │Lucia │ │Luce │ │Luce │Luzia │ │Lucinda │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Hungarian. │ Spanish. │ │Luzija │Lucya │Lucza │Lucia │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

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Footnote 52:

Smith; Diefenbach, Celtica; Butler; Michaelis.

SECTION II.—Lucius.

Lux (light) gave the very favourite prænomen Lucius, one born at daylight, or, as some say, with a fair complexion. Many an L at the opening of a Roman inscription attests the frequency of this name, which seems first to have come into Rome with the semi-mythical Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, and was derived from his family by the first Brutus. The feminine Lucia belonged to a virgin martyr of Syracuse, whose name of light being indicated by early painters by a lamp or by an eye, led to the legend that her beautiful eyes had been put out.

The Sicilian saints were, as has been already said, particularly popular, and Santa Lucia is not only the patroness of the Italian fishermen, and the namesake of their daughters, but she was early adopted by the Normans; and even in the time of Edward the Confessor, the daughter of the Earl of Mercia had been thus baptized, unless indeed her husband, Ivo Taillebois, translated something English into Lucia. The house of Blois were importers of saintly names, and Lucie, a sister of Stephen, was among those lost in the White Ship. The name has ever since flourished, both in England and France, but was most popular in the former during the seventeenth century, when many noble ladies were called Lucy, but poetry chose to celebrate them as Lucinda, or by some other fashionable variety of this sweet and simple word.

The lady has here had the precedence, because of her far greater popularity, but the masculine is also interesting to us. The root luc (light) is common to all the Indo-European languages; and ancient Britain is said to have had a king called Lleurwg ap Coel ap Cyllin, or Llewfer Mawr (the Great Light), who was the first to invite teachers of the Gospel to his country. He is Latinized into Lucius, and this word has again furnished the Welsh Lles. Nothing can be more apocryphal than the whole story, but it probably accounts for the use of Lucius amongst Englishmen just after the Reformation, when there was a strong desire among them to prove the conversion of their country to be anterior to the mission of Augustine. Named at this time, Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, rendered the sound honourable, though it has not become common. Lucio, or Luzio, is hereditary in Italy. The Irish Lucius is the equivalent of the native Lachtna and Loiseach.

The Lucillian gens of the plebeian order was formed from Lucius, and thence arose Lucilla, borne by several Roman empresses, and by a local saint at Florence; and in later times considered as another diminutive of Lucy.

Lucianus, on the other hand, was a derivative, and having belonged to several saints, continued in use in Italy as Luciano or Luziano, whence Lucien the Buonaparte derived the appellation, so plainly marking him, like his brother, as an Italian Frenchified.

Luciana has continued likewise in Italy, and was anciently Lucienne in France. Perhaps the English Lucy Anne may be an imitation of it.

Lucianus contracted into Lucanus as a cognomen, and thus was named the Spanish poet, Marcus Annæus Lucanus, usually called in English Lucan; but it has a far nearer interest to us. Cognomina in anus, contracted into the Greek ας, were frequently bestowed on slaves or freed-men, especially of Greek extraction. These were often highly educated, and were the librarians, secretaries, artists, and physicians of their masters, persons of Jewish birth being especially employed in the last-mentioned capacity. Thus does the third Evangelist, the beloved physician and reputed painter, bear in his name evidence of being a Greek-speaking protégé of a Roman house, Λουκας (Lukas) being the Greek contraction of Lucanus or Lucianus. “His sound hath gone out into all lands,” and each pronounces his name in its own fashion; but he is less popular as a patron than his brethren, though more so in Italy than elsewhere.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ │ │ │ Spanish and │ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ │Luke │Luc │Luca │Lucas │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Russian. │ Wallachian. │ Bohemian. │ │Lukas │Luka │Luka │Lukas │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Slavonic. │ Lusatian. │ Hungarian. │ │ │Lukash │Lukash │Lukacz │ │ │ │Lukaschk │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Lucretius, the name of a noted old gens, is probably from the same source, though some take it from lucrum (gain). “Lucrece, combing the fleece under the midnight lamp,” that fine characteristic Roman tale, furnished Shakespeare with an early poem; and Lucrezia was one of the first classic names revived by the Italians; and though borne by the notorious daughter of the Borgia, has continued fashionable with them and with the French, who make it Lucrèce; while we have now and then a Lucretia, learnt probably from the fanciful designations of the taste of the eighteenth century.[53]

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Footnote 53:

Smith; Butler; Kitto; Jameson.

SECTION III.—Marcus.

The origin of Marcus, represented by the M, so often a Roman initial, is involved in great doubt. It has been deduced from the Greek μαλακὸς (soft or tender), a very uncongenial epithet for one of the race of iron. Others derive it from mas (a male), as implying manly qualities; and others, from Mars, or more correctly, Mavers or Mamers, one of the chief of the old Latin deities. Diefenbach thinks also that it may be connected with the Keltic Marc (a horse), and with the verb to march.

It extended into all the provinces, and was that by which John, sister’s son to Barnabas, was known to the Romans. Tradition identifies him with the Evangelist, who, under St. Peter’s direction, wrote the Gospel especially intended for “strangers of Rome,” and who afterwards founded the Church of Alexandria, and gave it a liturgy. In consequence, Markos has ever since been a favourite Greek name, especially among those connected with the Alexandrian patriarchate. In the days, however, when relic-hunting had become a passion, some adventurous Venetians stole the remains of the Evangelist from the pillar in the Alexandrian church, in which they had been built up, and transferred them to Venice.

Popular imagination does not seem to have supposed the saints to have been one whit displeased at any sacrilegious robberies, for San Marco immediately was constituted the prime patron of the city; and, having been supposed to give his almost visible protection in perils by fire and flood, the Republic itself and its territory were known as his property, and the special emblem of the state was that shape among the Cherubim which had been appropriated as the token suited to his Gospel, namely, the lion with eagle’s wings, the Marzocco, as the populace termed it, and another such Marzocco figures at Florence.

Marco was the name of every fifth man at Venice, and the winged lion being the stamp on the coinage of the great merchant city, which was banker to half the world, a marc became the universal title of the piece of money which, though long disused in England, has left traces of its value in the legal fee of six-and-eightpence.

The chief popularity of the Evangelist’s name is in Italy, especially Lombardy; though the Greek Church, as in duty bound, has many a Markos, and no country has ceased to make use of it. Some, such as Niebuhr for his Roman-born son, and a few classically inclined English, have revived the ancient Marcus; but, in general, the word follows the national pronunciation.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish and │ │ │ │ │ Portuguese. │ │Mark │Marc │Marco │Marcos │ │Marcus │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Esthonian and │ Polish and │ Lusatian. │ Hungarian. │ │ Russian │ Bohemian │ │ │ │Mark │Marek │Markusch │Markus │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

From Marcus sprang the nomen Martius, or, as it was later written, Marcius, belonging to a very noble gens of Sabine origin, which gave a king to Rome, and afterwards was famous in the high-spirited and gentle-hearted Cnæus Marcius Coriolanus.

The daughters of this gens were called Marcia, and this as Marzia, Marcie, Marcia, has since been used as the feminine of Mark. From Martius again came Martinus, the name of the Roman soldier who divided his cloak with the beggar, and afterwards became Bishop of Tours, and completed the conversion of the Gauls. He might well be one of the favourite saints of France, and St. Martin of Tours rivalled St. Denys in the allegiance of the French, when kings and counts esteemed it an honour to belong to his chapter; and yet Martin occurs less frequently in French history than might have been expected, though it is to be found a good deal among the peasants, and is a surname. Dante speaks of Ser Martino as typical of the male gossips of Florence; and from the great prevalence of the surname of Martin in England, it would seem to have been more often given as a baptismal name. Martin was a notable king of Aragon; but zealous Romanist countries have perhaps disused Martin for the very reason that Germans love it, namely, that it belonged to “Dr. Martinus Luther,” as the learned would call the Augustinian monk, whose preachings opened the eyes of his countrymen.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian and │ Portuguese. │ │ │ │ Spanish. │ │ │Martyn │Martin │Martino │Martin │ │ │Mertin │ │Martinho │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Swiss. │ Dutch. │ Lett. │ │Martin │Märti │Martijn │Martschis │ │Mertil │Martili │Marten │ ————————— │ │ │ │ ————————— │ Hungarian. │ │ │ │ Swedish. │Martoni │ │ │ │Marten │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Martina was one of the young Roman girls who endured the fiery trial of martyrdom under the Emperor Decius. Her plant is the maidenhair fern, so great an ornament to the Roman fountains; and her name, whether in her honour, or as the feminine of Martin, is occasionally found in Italy, France, and England.

Marcianus was an augmentative of Marcus, whence Marciano or Marcian were formed. Marcellus is the diminutive, and became the cognomen of the great Claudian gens. Marcus Claudius Marcellus was the conqueror of Syracuse, and the last of his direct descendants is that son of Octavia and nephew of Augustus, the prediction of whose untimely death is placed by Virgil in the mouth of his forefather, Anchises, in the Elysian Fields. St. Marcellus was a young Roman soldier who figures among the warrior saints of Venice, and now and then has a French namesake called Marcel.

Marcella was a pious widow, whose name becoming known through her friendship with St. Jerome, took the fancy of the French; and Marcelle has never been uncommon among them, nor Marcella in Ireland.

Marcellianus, another derivative from Marcellus, was the name of an early pope, whence Marcellin is common in France.

From Mars again came Marius, the fierce old warrior of terrible memory; but who, in the form of Mario, is supposed by the Italians to be the masculine of Maria, and used accordingly.[54]

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Footnote 54:

Smith; Diefenbach; Roscoe, History of Venice; Grimm; Transactions of Philological Society.

SECTION IV.—Posthumus, &c.

Posthumus is generally explained as meaning a posthumous son, from post (after) and humus (ground); born after his father was underground; but there is reason to think that it is, in fact, Postumus, a superlative adjective, formed from post, and merely signifying latest; so that it originally belonged to the son of old age, the last born of the family. It became a frequent prænomen by imitation, and in several Roman families was taken as a cognomen.

The pseudo Valerius Maximus derives Titus from the Sabine Titurius; others make it come from the Greek τίω (to honour), others from tutus (safe), the participle of tueor (to defend). It was one of the most common prænomina from the earliest times, and belonged to both father and son of the two emperors connected with the fall of Jerusalem. Both were Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, but the elder is known to us by his cognomen, the younger by his prænomen. Titus should have been a more usual Christian name in honour of the first Bishop of Crete, but it has hardly survived, except in an occasional Italian Tito; and here Dr. Titus Oates gave it an unenviable celebrity. Tita is also sometimes used in Italy. The historian, Titus Livius, has been famous enough to have his name much maltreated, we calling him Livy, the French Tite Live.

SECTION V.—Numeral Names.

Thus far and no farther went Latin invention for at least seven hundred years in the way of individual domestic names. Beyond these ten, the Romans had, with a very few exceptions, peculiar to certain families, nothing but numerals for their sons; some of which became names of note from various circumstances. The words, though not often the names, have descended into almost all our modern tongues.

Primus, the superlative of præ (before), præ, prior, primus, was only used as a slave’s name, or to distinguish some person of an elder race.

Sequor (to follow) gave Secundus; the feminine of which fell sometimes to the share of daughter No. 2, to distinguish her from the elder sister, who was called by the family name. Men only had it as a cognomen, and that only in the later times. It has passed into our own tongue as well as into the more direct progeny of Latin, but Germany holds out against it. Rome likewise used Secundus in the sense of favourable, much as we speak of seconding in parliamentary language. St. Secundinus was a companion of St. Patrick, called by the Irish St. Seachnall. His disciples were christened Maol Seachlain, pupils of St. Secundinus, a name since turned into Malachi. King Malachi with the collar of gold, is truly the shaveling of the lesser follower.

Tertius barely occurs as a Roman name; but Tertia was rather more common than Secunda, and by way of endearment was called Tertulla. From this diminutive arose Tertullus and Tertullianus.

The next number is identical in all the tongues, though a most curious instance of varied pronunciation. The quadra, or four equal-sided Quartus, only occurs once in St. Paul’s writings, and so far as we know, nowhere else. Quadratus and Quartinus were late nomina.

Why Quintus should have been so much more prevalent with the Romans than the earlier numerals does not appear, but it was one of the commonest prænomina, and was always indicated by the initial Q; while the Greeks called it Κοίντος. Thence came the Quintian, or Quinctian, gens, an Alban family removed by Tullus Hostilius to Rome, so plain and stern in manners that even their women wore no gold, and principally illustrious in the person of Cæso Quinctius Cincinnatus. An obscure family named Quintianus sprung again from this gens, and in time gave its name to one of the missionary martyrs of Gaul, who, in 287, was put to death at Augusta Veromanduorum on the Somme. His corpse being discovered in 641, the great goldsmith bishop of Noyon, St. Eloi, made for it a magnificent shrine, and built over it a church, whence the town took the name of St. Quentin, and Quentin became prevalent in the neighbourhood. It was also popular in Scotland and Ireland, but it is there intended to represent Cu-mhaighe (hound of the plain), pronounced Cooey. From the diminutive of the Quinctian gens came Quintilius, and thence again Quintilianus, the most noted Roman rhetorician. Pontius is thought to be the Samnite or Oscan word for fifth, related to the Greek pente, and Keltic pump, five. It was an old nomen among those fierce Italians, and belonged to the sage who gave the wise advice against either sparing or injuring by halves, the Romans at the Caudine Forks. Pontius Pilatus should, it would seem, have brought it into universal hatred, but it probably had previously become hereditary in Spain as Ponce, whence sprang the noble family of Ponce de Leon; the French had Pons; and the Italians, Ponzio, and our Punch is by some said to be another form. It may, perhaps, come from pons (a bridge).

Sextus was the prænomen of the hateful son of Tarquinius Superbus, but after him it was disused, although thence arose the Sextian, Sestian, and Sextilian gentes. In later times it came again into use, and a bishop of Rome, martyred under Valerian, was named Sixtus, whence this has grown to be one of the papal adopted names, and is called by the Italians Sisto, whence the Sistine chapel takes its name, and the Dresden Madonna of Raffaelle is called di San Sisto, from the introduction of one of the three sainted popes so termed. The French used to call these saints Xiste.

The Latin septem gave Septimus, a name exceptionally used among them, as it is among us, for a seventh son.

Some unknown Octavus (the eighth) probably founded the Octavian gens, which had only been of note in Rome for 200 years before Caius Octavius Rufus married Julia, the sister of Cæsar, and their son Caius, being adopted as heir of the Julian line, became C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus, though he afterwards merged this unwieldy title in that of Augustus. Octavius gained a certain renown through him, and Ottavio has passed on in Italy, while eighth sons are perhaps most usually named Octavius. The gentle Octavia, his sister, the most loveable of matrons, has made Ottavia an Italian name, and Octavie is one adopted by modern French taste. October is the eighth month in all modern tongues.

Nonnus, from nonus, the ninth, is not known as a name till very late, when Latin and Greek names were intermixed. Then it belonged to a poet, at first heathen, afterwards Christian. Nonna was the name to that female slave who wrought the conversion of Georgia to Christianity, and (we believe) has there been continued; and in Rome Nonnius and Nonianus occur in later times as gentile appellations. Nona has been bestowed in England upon that rare personage a ninth daughter. November again bears traces of its having been the ninth month of the Romans, as does December of the tenth.

Decimus was a prænomen in the family of Junius Brutus, inherited mayhap from a tenth son, and it was at Decimus Brutus that Cæsar’s dying reproach, Et tu Brute, is thought to have been levelled. Decimus and Decima are now and then to be found among us in unusually large families of one sex. Decius was the name of a great plebeian gens, one of the oldest in Rome, and illustrated by the self-devotion of Decius Mus.[55]

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Footnote 55:

Clark, Handbook of Comparative Grammar; Liddell and Scott; Facciolati; Junius; Smith; Publications of the Irish Society; Butler.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. NOMINA

SECTION I.—Attius.

The Latin nomina were those that came by inheritance, and denoted the position of the gens in the state, its antiquity, and sometimes its origin. Their derivation is often, however, more difficult to trace than that of any other names, being lost in the darkness of the Oscan and Latin dialects; and in the latter times they were very wide-spread, being adopted by wholesale by persons who received the franchise, as Roman citizens, from the individual who conferred it; and after the time of Caracalla, A.D. 212, when all the free inhabitants of the empire became alike Roman citizens, any person might adopt whatever name he chose, or even change his own if he disliked it. The feminine of this gentile name, as it was called, was the inheritance of the daughters; and on marriage, the feminine of the husband’s nomen was sometimes, though not uniformly, assumed.

These names are here placed in alphabetical order, as there seems to be nothing else to determine their position, and it is in accordance with the rigid Roman fashion of regularity.

Thus we begin with the Accian, Attian, or Actian gens; one of no great rank, but interesting as having been fixed on by tradition as the ancestry of the great mountain lords of Este, who were the parents of the house of Ferarra in Italy, and of the house of Brunswick, which has given six sovereigns to Britain. Accius is probably derived from Acca, the mother of the Lares, an old Italian goddess, afterwards turned into the nurse of Romulus. Valerius, however, deduces both it and Appius from a forgotten Sabine prænomen Attus. The Appian gens was not a creditable one; but Appia was sometimes the name of mediæval Roman dames.

The genealogists of the house of Este say that Marcus Actius married Julia, sister of the great Cæsar, and trace their line downwards till modernized pronunciation had made the sound Azzo.

Him whom they count as Azo I. of Este was born in 450, and from him and his descendants Azzo and Azzolino were long common in Italy, though now discarded.

SECTION II.—Æmilius.

Almost inextricable confusion attends the development of the title of one of the oldest and most respectable of the plebeian gentes, namely the Æmilian, anciently written Aimilian. The family was Sabine, and the word is, therefore, probably Oscan; but the bearers were by no means agreed upon its origin, some declaring that it was αἵμυλος (flattering or witty), and called it a surname of their founder, Mamercus, whom some called the son of Pythagoras, others of Numa. The later Æmilii, again, claimed to descend from Aemylos, a son of Ascanius; and others of them, less aspiring, contented themselves with Amulius, the granduncle of Romulus. Can this most intangible Amulius be, after all, a remnant of the Teutonic element in the Roman race, and be the same with the mythical Amal, whence the Gothic Amaler traced their descent? It is curious that maal or âmal means work in Hebrew, while aml is work, likewise, in old Norse, as our moil is in English, though in Sanscrit amala is spotless. Altogether, it seems most probable that the word mal (a spot or stroke) may underlie all these forms, just as it does the German mal (time); that Amal was, in truth, the dimly remembered forefather; and that thus the proud Æmilii of Rome, and the wild Amaler of the forests, bore in their designations the tokens of a common stock.

Several obscure saints bore the name of Æmilius or Æmilianus; and Emilij has always been a prevailing masculine name in Russia. In Spain, a hermit, Saint Æmilianus, is always known as St. Milhan. Emilio was of old-standing in Italy; but the great prevalence in France of Émile, of late, was owing to Rousseau’s educational work, the hero of which had numerous namesakes among the children born in the years preceding the Revolution.

The feminine had been forgotten until Boccaccio wrote his Teseide, and called the heroine Emilia. It was at once translated or imitated in all languages, and became mixed up with the Amalie already existing in Germany. Amalie of Mansfeld lived in 1493; Amalie of Wurtemburg, in 1550; and thence the name spread throughout Germany, whence the daughter of George II. brought it to England, and though she wrote herself Amelia, was called Princess Emily. Both forms are recognized in most European countries, though often confounded together, and still worse, with Amy and Emma.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Slovak. │ Lusatian. │ │Emily │Émilie │Emilia │Emilija │Mila │ │Emilia │ │ │Milica │Milka │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

SECTION III.—Antonius.

Two gentes were called Antonius, a word that is not easy to trace. Some explain it as inestimable, but the Triumvir himself chose to deduce it from Antius, a son of Hercules. One of these clans was patrician, with the cognomen Merenda; the other plebeian, without any third name, and it was to the latter that the avenger of Cæsar and lover of Cleopatra belonged—Mark Anthony, Marc Antoine, or Marcantonio, as modern tongues have clipped his Marcus Antonius. The clipping had, however, been already performed before the resuscitation of his evil fame in the fifteenth century, for both his names had become separately saintly, and therefore mutilated; Mark in the person of the Evangelist, Antonius in that of the great hermit of the fourth century—the first to practise the asceticism which resulted in the monastic system. Of Egyptian birth, his devotions, his privations, and his conflicts with Satan, were equally admired in the Eastern and Western Churches, and Antonios has been as common among the Greeks as Antonius among the Latin Christians.

St. Antony was already very popular when St. Antonio of Padua further increased the Italian devotion to the name, and Antonio has ever since been exceedingly common in Italy and Spain. Classical pedantry made Antonio Paleario turn it into Aonio in honour of the Aonian choir; but whatever he chose to call himself he made glorious by his life and death.

The Dutch seem to have needlessly added the silent h, and we probably learnt it from them. The popularity of Antony has much diminished since the Reformation in England, where perhaps it is less used than in any other country.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Provençal. │ Italian. │ │Antony │Antoine │Antoni │Antonio │ │Anthony │ │ │Tonio │ │Tony │ │ │Tonetto │ │Antholin │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Frisian. │ Dutch. │ Swiss. │ │Antonius │Tönnes │Anthonius │Antoni │ │Tenton │Tonjes │Theunis │Toni │ │Tony │ │Toontje │ │ │ │ │Tool │ │ │ │ │Antoonije │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Slovak. │ Servian. │ │Antonij │Antoni │Anton │Antun │ │Anton │Antek │Tone │Antonija │ │ │Antos │Tonek │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Esthonian. │ Hungarian. │ │Anto │Antons │Tönnis │Antal │ │Hanto │Tennis │Tonnio │ │ │Tonisch │Tanne │ │ │ │Tonk │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The feminine form, Antonia, is very common in Italy and Spain. The Germans have it as Antonie, and this was the original name of Maria Antonia, whom we have learnt to regard with pitying reverence as Marie Antoinette, whence Toinette is a common French contraction.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ French. │ Italian. │ Swedish. │ Swiss. │Lithuanian. │ │Antoinette │Antonia │Antonia │Tonneli │Ande │ │Toinette │Antonietta │Antonetta │ │ │ │Toinon │Antonica │ │ │ │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

The Aurelian gens was an old Sabine one, and probably derived its name from aurum (gold), the oro of Italy and or of France, though others tried to take it from Helios (the sun).

The old name, Aurelia, for a chrysalis was, like it, taken from the glistening golden spots on the cases of some of the butterfly pupæ. The Aurelian gens was old and noble, and an Aurelia was the mother of Julius Cæsar.

SECTION IV.—Cæcilius.

The most obvious origin of the nomen of the great Cæcilian gens would be cæcus (blind); in fact Cæcilia means a slow-worm, as that reptile was supposed to be blind; but the Cæcilii would by no means condescend to the blind or small-eyed ancestor; and while some of them declared that they were the sons of Cæcas, a companion of Æneas, others traced their source to the founder of Præneste, the son of Vulcan, Cæculus, who was found beside a hearth, and called from caleo (to heat), the same with καίω (to burn). There was a large gens of this name, famous and honourable, though plebeian; but rather remarkably, the feminine form has always been of more note than the masculine. As has been before said, Caia Cæcilia is said to have been the real name of Tanaquil, the model Roman matron, patroness of all other married dames; and who has not heard of the tomb of Cæcilia Metella? But the love and honour of the Roman ladies has passed on to another Cæcilia, a Christian of the days of Alexander Severus, a wife, though vowed to virginity, and a martyr singing hymns to the last. Her corpse was disinterred in a perfect state two hundred years after, when it was enshrined in a church built over her own house, which gives a title to a cardinal. A thousand years subsequently, in 1599, her sarcophagus was again opened, and a statue made exactly imitating the lovely, easy, and graceful position in which the limbs remained.

This second visit to her remains was not, however, needed to establish her popularity. She is as favourite a saint with the Roman matrons as is St. Agnes with their daughters; and the fact of her having sung till her last breath, established her connection with music. An instrument became her distinguishing mark; and as this was generally a small organ, she got the credit of having invented it, and became the patroness of music and poetry, as St. Katharine of eloquence and literature, and St. Barbara of architecture and art. Her day was celebrated by especial musical performances; even in the eighteenth century an ode on St. Cecilia’s day was a special occasion for the laudation of music; and Dryden and Pope have fixed it in our minds, by their praises, not so much of Cecilia, as of Timotheus and Orpheus. Already, in the eleventh century, the musical saint had been given as a patroness; and the contemporaries, Philip I. of France, and William I. of England, had each a daughter Cécile.

From that time, Cécile in France was only less popular than the English Cicely was with all ranks before the Reformation. Cicely Neville, the Rose of Raby, afterwards Duchess of York, called “Proud Cis,” gave it the chief note in England; but her princess grandchild, Cicely Plantagenet, was a nun, and thus did not transmit it to any noble family. After the Reformation, Cicely sank to the level of “stammel waistcoat,” and was the milkmaid’s generic name. And so the gentlewomen who had inherited Cicely from their grandmothers, were ashamed of it; and it became Cecilia, until the present reaction against fine names setting in, brought them back to Cecil and Cecily. In Ireland, the Norman settlers introduced it, and it became Sighile.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │ │Cecilia │Cécile │Cecilia │Cacilia │ │Cecily │ │ │ │ │Cicely │ │ │ │ │Cecil │ │ │ │ │Sisley │ │ │ │ │Sis │ │ │ │ │Sissot │ │ │ │ │Cis │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Hamburg. │ Russian. │ Polish. │ Illyrian. │ │Cile │Zezilija │Cecylia │Cecilia │ │ │ │ │Cecilija │ │ │ │ │Cila │ │ │ │ │Cilika │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Sessylt, the British form of the masculine, lasted on long in Wales; and the Italians kept up Cecilio. The English masculine Cecil is, however, the surname of the families of Salisbury and Exeter, adopted as a Christian name.

Moreover, Cæcilianus is supposed to be the origin of Kilian, one of the many Keltic missionaries who spread the light of the Gospel on the Continent, in the seventh century. St. Kilian is said to have been of Irish birth. He preached in Germany, and was martyred at Wurtzburg; and his name has never quite ceased to be used in the adjacent lands.[56]

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Footnote 56:

Facciolati; Smith; Valerius Maximus; Butler; Jameson; Michaelis; Pott.

SECTION V.—Cœlius.

Cœles Vivenna, an Etruscan general, named the Cœlian hill, and the Cœlian gens, whence the Italians have continued Celio and Celia. In Venice the latter becomes Zilia and Ziliola, and is often to be found belonging to noble ladies and the wives of doges. At Naples it was Liliola, and it seems to be the true origin of Lilian and Lilias. The Irish, too, have adopted it as Sile, or Sheelah, and Célie and Celia have been occasionally adopted by both French and English, under some misty notion of a connection with cœlum (heaven). The prevalence of Celia among the lower classes in English towns is partly owing to the Irish Sheelah, partly to some confusion with Cecilia.

Cœlina was a virgin of Meaux, converted to a holy life by St. Geneviève. She is the origin of the French Céline, who probably suggested the English Selina, though, as we spell this last, we refer it to the Greek Selene (the moon).

SECTION VI.—Claudius.

Another personal defect, namely lameness, probably was the source of the appellation of the Claudian gens, although by some the adjective claudus is rejected in favour of the old verb clueo, from the same root as the Greek kleo, I hear, and kluo, I am called, or I am famous, meaning to be called, i. e., famed. The Claudii were a family of evil fame, with all the darker characteristics of the Roman, and they figure in most of the tragedies of the city. They were especially proud and stern, and never adopted any one into their family till the Emperor Claudius adopted Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who did not improve the fame of the Claudian surname of Nero. But the reign of the Emperor Claudius and the number of his freedmen, and new citizens, gave his gentile name an extensive vogue, and from his conquests in Britain was there much adopted. Besides, the Claudia who sends her greeting to St. Timothy in St. Paul’s Epistle, is believed to have been the daughter of a British prince and wife of Pudens, whose name is preserved in inscriptions at Colchester.

The epigrams of Martial speak of a British lady of the same name, and thus Claudia is marked by the concurrence of two very dissimilar authorities as one of the first British Christians, while the hereditary Welsh name of Gladys, the Cornish Gladuse, corroborate the Christian reverence for Claudia. The masculine form, Gladus, is likewise used, and in Scotland Glaud, recently softened into Claud, is not uncommon. Claudie is very common in Provence. Louis XII., who gave both his daughters male names, called the eldest Claude, and when she was the wife of François I., la Reine Claude plums were so termed in her honour. Her daughter carried Claude into the House of Lorraine, where it again became masculine, and was frequent in the family of Guise. The painter Gelée assumed the name of Claude de Lorraine in honour of his patrons, and thus arose all the picturesque associations conveyed by the word Claude.

Claudine is a favourite female Swiss form.[57]

┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Slovak. │ │Claud │Glaud │Claude │Claudio │Klavdij │Klavdi │ │ │ │Godon │ │ —————— │ │ │ │ │ │ │Illyrian. │ │ │ │ │ │ │Klavdij │ │ ├──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤ │ French. │ Welsh. │ Italian. │ │Claude │Gladys │Claudia │ │Claudine │ │ │ │Claudie │ │ │ └─────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘

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Footnote 57:

Facciolati; Smith; Rees, Welsh Saints.

SECTION VII.—Cornelius, &c.

The far more honourably distinguished clan of Cornelius has no traceable origin, unless from cornu belli (a war horn), but this is a suggestion of the least well-informed etymologists, and deserves no attention. Scipio and Sylla were the most noted families of this gens, both memorable for very dissimilar qualities; and Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, inherited her name from her father, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus I. The centurion of the Italian band was probably a hereditary Roman Cornelius; but earliest gentile Christian though he were, he was not canonized, and the saint of the Western Church is a martyred Pope Cornelius of the third century, whose relics were brought to Compiègne by Charles the Bald, and placed in the Abbey of St. Corneille, whence again a portion was carried to the Chapter of Rosnay, in Flanders. This translation accounts for the popularity of both the masculine and feminine forms in the Low Countries, in both kingdoms of which they constantly are found, and where Cornelius gets shortened into Kees, Knelis, Nöll, or Nelle, and Cornelia into Keetje, or Kee. As an attempt to translate the native Keltic names beginning with cu, or con, Cornelius, or Corney, is one of the most frequent Irish designations. Nelleson is the Dutch surname, and Nelson is as likely to be thus derived as from the northern Nielson. The Dantzic contraction is Knelz, and the Illyrians call the feminine Drenka!

The great Fabian gens was old Latin, and was said by Pliny to be so called from their having been the first to cultivate the bean, faba, while others say the true form was fodius, or fovius, from their having invented the digging of pits, foveæ, for wolves, a proceeding rather in character with the wary patient disposition displayed by the greatest man of the race, Quintus Fabius Maximus, whose agnomen of Cunctator so well describes the policy that wasted away the forces of the Carthaginian invader. Fabio has been occasionally a modern Italian name; Fabiola is the diminutive of Fabia; Fabianus the adoptive augmentation, whence the occasional French Fabien, and, more strange to record, the Lithuanian Pobjus.

Fabricius is probably from Faber (a workman), but there was no person of note of the family except Caius Fabricius Luscinus, whose interview with Pyrrhus and his elephant has caused him to be for ever remembered. Fabrizio Colonna, however, seems to be his only namesake.

Flavus and Fulvus both mean shades of yellow, and there were both a Flavian and a Fulvian gens, no doubt from the complexion of an early ancestor, Flavius being probably a yellow-haired mountaineer with northern blood; Fulvius a tawny Italian. It is in favour of this supposition that Constantius, who brought the Flavian gens to the imperial throne, had the agnomen Chlorus, also expressing a light complexion. Out of compliment to his family the derivatives of Flavius became common, as Flavianus, Flavia, and Flavilla. Flavio is now and then found in modern Italy, and Flavia figured in the poetry and essays of the last century. Fulvia, “the married woman,” as her rival Cleopatra calls her, was the wife of Antony, and gave her name an evil fame by her usage of the head of the murdered Cicero.[58]

The Herminian gens is believed to be of Sabine origin, and its first syllable, that lordly herr, which we traced in the Greek Hera and Hercules, and shall find again in the German Herman. There is little doubt that the Roman Herminius and the brave Cheruscan chief, whom he called Arminius, were in the same relationship as were the Emilii and Amaler.

Herminius is the word that left to Italy the graceful legacy of Erminia, which was in vogue, by inheritance, among Italian ladies when Tasso bestowed it upon the Saracen damsel who was captured by Tancred, and fascinated by the graces of her captor. Thence the French adopted it as Hermine, and it has since been incorrectly supposed to be the Italian for Hermione; indeed, Scott indiscriminately calls the mysterious lady in George Heriot’s house Erminia or Hermione. The Welsh have obtained it likewise, by inheritance, in the form of Ermin, which, however, they now murder by translating it into Emma.

Hortensius (a gardener), from hortus, a garden, belonged to an honourable old plebeian gens, and has been continued in Italy, both in the masculine Ortensio, and feminine Ortensia, whence the French obtained their Hortense, probably from Ortensia Mancini, the niece of Mazarin.

The Horatian gens was a very old and noble one, memorable for the battle of the Horatii, in the mythic times of early Rome. Some explain their nomen by hora (an hour), and make it mean the punctual, but this is a triviality suggested by the sound, and the family themselves derived it from the hero ancestor, Horatus, to whom an oak wood was dedicated. The poet Horace bore it as an adoptive name, being of a freedman’s family. Except for Orazio, in Italy, the name of Titian’s son, it slept till Corneille’s tragedy of Les Horaces brought it forward, and the influence of Orazio made it Horatio in England. Thus the brother and son of Sir Robert Walpole bore it, and the literary note of the younger Horace Walpole made it fashionable. Then came our naval hero to give it full glory, and that last mention of his daughter Horatia seems to have brought the feminine forward of late years. The name is not popular elsewhere, but is called by the Russians, Goratij, by the Slovaks, Orac.[59]

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Footnote 58:

Smith; Butler; Facciolati; Irish Society.

SECTION VIII.—Julius.

“At puer Ascanius, cui nunc cognomen Iulo, Additur Ilus erat dum res stetit Ilia regno.”

“The boy Ascanius, now Iulus named— Ilus he was while Ilium’s realm still stood,”

quoth Jupiter, in the first book of the Æneid, whence Virgil’s commentators aver that Ascanius was at first called after Ilus, the river that gave Troy the additional title of Ilium; but that during the conquest of Italy he was termed Iulus, from ιουλος (the first down on the chin), because he was still beardless when he killed Mezentius. The father of gods and men continues:

“Nascetur pulchrâ Trojanus origine Cæsar, (Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,) Julius, a magno nomen Iulo.”

“A Trojan, by high lineage shall arise— Cæsar (whose conquering fame the sea and stars shall bound), Called Julius, from Iulus, mighty name.”

The Julian gens certainly exceeded Rome in antiquity, and one of their distinguished families bore the cognomen of Iulus; but in spite of Jupiter and Virgil, Livy makes Iulus, or Ascanius, not the Trojan son of Æneas and the deserted Creusa, but the Latin son of Æneas and Lavinia, and modern etymologists hazard the conjecture that Julus may be only a diminutive of dius (divine), since the derivation of Jupiter from Deus pater (father of gods) proves that such is the tendency of the language.

The family resided at Alba Longa till the destruction of the city by Tullus Hostilius, and then came to Rome, where, though of very high rank, they did not become distinguished till, once for all, their star culminated in the great Caius Julius Cæsar, after whom the Julii were only adoptive, though Julia was the favourite name of the emperors' daughters, and their freedmen and newly-made citizens multiplied Julius and Julianus throughout the empire.

Julius was hereditary throughout the empire, and lingered on long in Wales, Wallachia, and Italy. It is the most obvious source for the French Gilles; though, as has been already said, that word claims to be the Greek Aigidios, and is like both the Keltic Giolla and Teutonic Gil. The modern French Jules and English Julius were the produce of the revived classical taste. The latter belonged to a knight whose family name was Cæsar; and Clarendon tells a story of a serious alarm being excited in a statesman by finding a note in his pocket with the ominous words “Remember Julius Cæsar,” which left him in dread of the ides of March, until he recollected that it was a friendly reminder of the humble petition of Sir Julius Cæsar.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │English. │Welsh. │Breton. │French. │ │Julius │Iolo │Sulio │Jules │ │ │ │Iola │Julot │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Italian. │ Spanish and │ German. │ Wallachian. │ │ │ Portuguese. │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Giulio │Julio │Julius │Julie │ │ │ │ │ —————————— │ │ │ │ │ Slavonic. │ │ │ │ │Julij │

The feminine shared the same fate, being hereditary in Italy, and adopted as ornamental when classical names came into fashion in other countries. The heroine of Rousseau’s Nouvelle Heloïse made Julie very common in France.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English, │ French and │ Italian. │ Russian. │ │ Spanish and │ German. │ │ │ │ Portuguese. │ │ │ │ │Julia │Julie │Giulia │Julija │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Polish. │ Lett. │ Hungarian. │ Slovak. │ │Julia │Jule │Juli │Iliska │ │Julka │ │Julis │ —————————— │ │ │ │Juliska │ Breton. │ │ │ │ │Sulia │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

As every family that in turn mounted the imperial throne was supposed to be adopted into the Julian gens, all bore its appellation; and thus it was that out of the huge stock of nomina that had accumulated in the family of Constantius, the apostate bore by way of distinction the adoptive form of Julianus.

As the adoptive form this was more widely diffused than Julius itself in the Latinized provinces, and thus came to the Conde Julian, execrated by Spain as the betrayer of his country into the hands of the Moors.

To redeem the name of Julian from the unpopularity to which two apostates would seem to have condemned it, it belonged to no less than ten saints, one of whom was the nucleus of a legend afloat in the world. He was said to have been told by a hunted stag that he would be the murderer of his own parents; and though he fled into another country to avoid the possibility, he unconsciously fulfilled his destiny, by slaying them in a fit of jealousy before he had recognized them when they travelled after him. In penance, he spent the rest of his life in ferrying distressed wayfarers over a river, and lodging them in his dwelling; and he thus became the patron of travellers and a saint of extreme popularity.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scotch. │ Welsh. │ Breton. │ │Julian │Jellon │Julion │Sulien │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ French. │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ Italian. │ │Julien │Julian │Juliao │Giuliano │ │ │ │ │ —————————— │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Julian │

The feminine was already abroad in the Roman empire in the days of martyrdom, when St. Juliana was beheaded at Nicomedia under Galerius; and in the days of Gregory the Great, her relics were supposed to be at Rome, but were afterwards divided between Brussels and Sablon. She is said to have been especially honoured in the Low Countries, and must likewise have been in high favour in Normandy, perhaps through the Flemish Duchess Matilda. Julienne was in vogue among the Norman families, and belonged to that illegitimate daughter of Henry I. whose children he so terribly maltreated in revenge for their father’s rebellion; and it long prevailed in England as Julyan: witness the heraldic and hunting prioress, Dame Julyan Berners; and, indeed, it became so common as Gillian, that Jill was the regular companion of Jack, as still appears in nursery rhyme; though now this good old form has almost entirely disappeared, except in the occasional un-English form of Juliana. In Brittany, it has lasted on as Suliana, the proper name of the nun-sister of Du Guesclin, who assisted his brave wife to disconcert the night assault of their late prisoner.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Breton. │ Italian. │ │Julyan │Julienne │Suliana │Giuliana │ │Juliana │ │ │ │ │Gillian │ │ │ │ │Gill │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Spanish, │ German. │ Slavonic. │ Hungarian. │ │ Portuguese, │ │ │ │ │and Wallachian.│ │ │ │ │Juliana │Juliana │Julijana │Julianja │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Another feminine diminutive, Julitta, was current in the empire in the time of persecution, and belongs in the calendar to a martyr at Cæsarea in Cappadocia, as well as to her who has been already mentioned as the mother of the infant St. Kyriakos, or Cyr, a babe of three years old. She was undergoing torture herself when she beheld his brains dashed out on the steps of the tribunal, and till her own death, she gave thanks for his safety and constancy. Together the mother and child were commemorated throughout the Church; and the church of St. Gillet records her in Cornwall, as does that of Llanulid in Wales. Her name, however, when there borne by her namesakes was corrupted into Elidan. Jolitte was used among the French peasantry, and Giulietta in Italy, whence Giulietta Capellet appears to have been a veritable lady, whose mournful story told in Da Porta’s novel, was adopted by Shakespeare, and rendered her name so much the property of poetry and romance, that subsequently Juliet, Juliette, and Giulietta, have been far more often christened in memory of the impassioned girl, than of the resolute Christian mother.[60]

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Footnote 59:

Butler; Michaelis.

Footnote 60:

Smith; Facciolati; Michaelis; Pott; Butler; Arrowsmith, Geography; Rees; Jameson; Gesta Romanorum.

SECTION IX.—Lælius, &c.

Lælius, an unexplained gentile name, left to the Italians, Lelio, which was borne by one of the heresiarchs Socini; also Lelia, in French Lélie, and sometimes confused with the names from Cœlius.

It was said that the city of Pompeii was so called from pompa, the splendour or pomp with which Hercules founded it. However this might be, it is likely that from it came the nomen of the Pompeian gens, which did not appear in Rome till a late period, and which its enemies declared was founded by Aulus Pompeius, a flute-player. The gallant Cnæus Pompeius won for himself the surname of Magnus, and made sufficient impression on the world to have his name adapted to modern pronunciation by the Pompée of the French, and the English Pompey. When a little negro boy was the favourite appendage of fine ladies of the early seventeenth century, the habit of calling slaves by classical titles, made Pompey the usual designation of these poor little fellows; from whom it descended to little dogs, and though now out of fashion, even for them, it has obtained a set of associations that is likely to prevent that fine old Roman Pompey, surnamed the big, from obtaining any future namesakes, except in Italy, where Pompeio has always flourished, probably from hereditary associations.

On Roman authority, the Porcii were the breeders of porcus (a pig), according to the homely, rural, and agricultural designations of old Latinity, which to modern ears have so dignified a sound. It was the clan of the two Catones, but the masculine has not prevailed; though that “woman well reputed, Cato’s daughter” Porcia, or, as the Italians spelt it, Porzia, caused her name to be handed on in her native land, where Shakespeare took it, not only for her, but for his other heroine—

“Nothing undervalued To Cato’s daughter, Brutus' Portia;”

from whom Portia, as after his example we make it, has become an exceptional fancy name. The Romans thought no scorn of the title of the unclean beast, and three families in other clans likewise bore its name, Verres, Scrofa, and Aper; the last, it is just possible, being the origin of the Sir Bors of the Round Table; in Welsh, Baez.

The origin of Sulpicius is not known. It may possibly be connected with the obsolete word that named Sulla, from a red spotted visage; but this is uncertain. There were three saints of the name: Severus Sulpicius, a friend of St. Martin; Sulpicius (called the severe), Bishop of Bourges, in the sixth century; and Sulpicius (called the gentle), also Bishop of Bourges, in the seventh. It is an arm of this last of the three that has led to the consecration of the celebrated church at Paris, in the name of St. Sulpice. In Germany, it is Sulpiz.

Terenus (soft or tender) was the origin given by the Romans to the Terentian gens, which produced Terentia, wife of Cicero, called in affection Terentilla, and likewise gave birth to the comic poet, Publius Terentius Afer, known to us as Terence, and to the Germans as Terenz. As a supposed rendering of Turlough, Terence is a very favourite name in Ireland, and is there called Terry, but it prevails nowhere else.

The meaning of the name of Sergius is not known, but the Sergian gens was very ancient, and believed itself to spring from the Trojans. From them Cataline descended, and from another branch the deputy Sergius Paullus, from whom some suppose St. Paul to have taken his name.

One saint called Sergius was martyred at the city of Rasapha, in Syria; and was honoured by the change of the name of the place to Sergiopolis, in Justinian’s time. His relics are at Rome and at Prague; but a far greater favourite as a namesake is the Russian Ssergie, who founded a monastery near Moscow, and died there in 1292, in the highest esteem for sanctity, so that his monastery is a place of devotional pilgrimage, and Ssergij or Sserezka are favourite names in Russia.[61]

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Footnote 61:

Butler; Michaelis; Smith; Facciolati; Courson, Peuples Bretons; Pott; Valerius Maximus.

SECTION X.—Valerius.

Deep among the roots of Indo-European tongues lies the source of our adverb well, the German wohl, Saxon wel, Gothic waila, an evidently close connection of the Latin verb valeo (to be well); and which the Keltic gwall links again with the Greek καλός (well, or beautiful), related to the Sanscrit kalya (healthy, able, or well).

Valeo was both to be sound and to be worth, and to the old Roman a sound man was necessarily valiant, worth something in the battle; and valor, which to them and the Italians is still value, is to the chivalrous French and English valour.

This word of well-being named the old Sabine Valerian gens, one of the most noble and oldest in Rome, who had a little throne to themselves in the Circus, and were allowed to bury their dead within the walls of the city. The simple masculine form of the name had but two saints, and they were too obscure to be much followed, though Valère and Valerot as surnames have risen from it in France. The feminine of it was in honour at Rome for the sake of Valeria, the public-spirited lady who took the lead in persuading the mother of Coriolanus to intercede with her son to lay his vengeance aside and spare his mother-city; Valérie is a favourite French name, but the compounds of this word have had far greater note. Valerianus, the adoptive name, was borne by Publius Sicinius Valerianus, that unhappy persecuting emperor who ended his career as a stepping-stone to Shahpoor. Saint Valerianus was Bishop of Auxerre, and though properly Valérien in French, Valerian in English, was probably the patron of the Waleran, or Galeran, occurring in the middle ages, chiefly among the Luxembourgs, Counts of St. Pol.

Valentinianus has been continued by the Welsh in the form of Balawn.

Valentinus was a Roman priest, who is said to have endeavoured to give a Christian signification to the old custom of drawing lots in honour of Juno Februata, and thus fixed his own name and festival to the curious fashion prevailing all over England and France, of either the choice of a “true Valentine,” or of receiving as such the first person of the opposite sex encountered on that morning.

These customs increased the popularity of Valentine and Valentina, the latter being more probably used as the feminine of the former, than as the name of an obscure martyr who died under Diocletian.

Valentina Visconti was the wife of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, and as one of the bright lights in a corrupt court, merited that her name should have become more permanent than it has been.

The Slavonic contractions of the masculine are curious. Lower Lusatia makes it Batyn, Tyno, Bal, and Balk; Lithuanian, Wallinsch; and Hungary, Balint.[62]

It is not easy to separate the idea of Virginia from virgo (a virgin), especially since Sir Walter Raleigh gave that name to his American colony in honour of the Virgin Queen, and it was probably under this impression that Virginie was made by Bernardin de St. Pierre, the heroine of his tropical Arcadian romance, which reigned supreme over French, English, and German imaginations of a certain calibre, and rendered Virginie triumphant in France, and a name of sentiment in England. Nay, had the true Virginia lived and died a couple of centuries earlier, her story would have passed for a myth expressed in her appellation; but the fact is, that she derived it from a good old plebeian gens, who formerly spelt themselves Verginius, thus connecting themselves with ver (the spring), Persian behar, Eolic Βεαρ, the old Greek Γέαρ, and with all its kindred of virga (a rod, or green bough), vireo (to flourish), viridis (green); and again with the more remote descendants of these words in modern Europe—vert, verdure, il vero, &c. Virginio was a name in the Orsini family, but otherwise it has not been kept up.

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Footnote 62:

Liddell and Scott; Pott; Facciolati; Smith; Arnold; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Brand, Popular Antiquities; Michaelis.

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