PART I.
CHAPTER I.
HEBREW NOMENCLATURE.
Hebrew, the sacred language, and the medium of all our earliest knowledge of the world and of man, furnishes almost all of the first names known to us, which are in general, verbs, substantives, or adjectives from that tongue, suggested either by inspiration or by some of the natural motives observed in the former chapter.
The minute history of the naming of the twelve patriarchs, furnish the best illustrations of the presaging spirit of early nomenclature.
Reuben, “behold a son,” cries the mother in her first pride; Simeon, “He that heareth,” because He had heard her prayer; Levi, a joining, in the trust that her husband would be joined with her; Judah, praise, in praise of Him who had given these four sons, and Judah, “thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise,” is repeated by Jacob; Dan, a judge, is so called by his adoptive mother because her cause is judged, “and Dan shall judge his people” is his father’s blessing; Naphtali commemorates Leah’s wrestling with her sister; Gad is one of the troop round Leah, “and a troop shall overcome him,” saith Jacob; Asher, is blessed, and Moses cries, “let Asher be blessed;” Issachar, is hire; and Zebulon, a dwelling, because Leah hoped her husband would dwell with her, and his promise from his father is that he shall dwell. Rachel cannot name her long-desired first-born without a craving that God would add to her another son, and thus Joseph means an addition, and when that second child was given, and she felt that it was at the cost of her own life, she mourned over him as Benoni, son of my sorrow; but his father with more hopeful augury called him (probably at his circumcision) Benjamin, son of my right hand.
The earlier names were very simple, such as Leah, weary; Adah, ornament. But about the time of the going into Egypt compound words were employed, family names began to grow traditional, and several of Egyptian etymology were acquired.
The Aramaic became the Jewish vernacular, and so continued after the return from Babylon, nor has it ceased to prevail, under the name of Syriac, among a considerable portion of the natives of the East.
Moreover, the Greek invasion of the East, and the establishment of the Macedonian dynasties of Egypt and Syria, rendered the Grecian the language of foreign relations and of literature, and caused it to be understood by all who pretended to polite education, or meddled with politics and commerce. The Septuagint, or Alexandrian version of the Scriptures, was used in private by the Græcised Jews, and was the form in which their sacred books became known to those of foreign nations who took interest in them.
The Roman conquest in like manner brought in a certain amount of influence from the Latin language, though not to the same extent, since all cultivated Romans were by this time instructed in Greek as part of their education, and even those of inferior rank used it as the medium of communication with the people of the East.
Thus, in the time of the Gospel history, the learned alone entered into the full import of the old Hebrew names, nor were new ones invented to suit the occasion, with a very few exceptions, and these few were formed from the vernacular Aramean. The custom was to recur to the old family names belonging to ancestors or kindred, and in the account of the circumcision of St. John the Baptist we see that a deviation from this practice excited wonder. Tradition and change of language had, however, greatly marred these old Hebraisms; Jehoiadah, (j pronounced y,) (known of God,) had after the captivity lost its significance in the form of Jaddua, then was Græcized, as Ἱωδαέ, (Hiodae,) and was Latinized as Jaddeus! These corrupted ancient appellations were the favourites, but imitation and compliment caused some Greek ones and even some Latin ones to be adopted, some persons using their national name at home, and bearing another for their external relations, such as John or Mark, Saul or Paul.
The persons most revered by Christians, and who have had the most influence on nomenclature, thus bore either corrupt Hebrew, or else Aramean, Greek, or Latin names, which all have been handed down to us through the medium of Greek authorship, afterwards translated into Latin, and thence carried by word of mouth into every Christian land, and taking shape from the prevalent pronunciation there.
Eastern Christians have gone directly to the Greek; but the Western Church used nothing but the Vulgate translated from the Septuagint and from the original New Testament. Thus the Old Testament personages, as well as those of the Gospel, were known to mediæval Europe, and are so still to the greater part of the continent in their Greco-Latin shape.
But King James I. caused his translators to go back to the fountainhead, using the original Hebrew and Greek—and only applying to the Septuagint and Vulgate as means of elucidation, not as authorities. In consequence, many of the Old Testament names assumed their original shape, as far as it could be expressed by English letters, but these were mostly those but slightly known to the world, not those of the principal characters, since the translators were instructed not to make needless alterations such as should make the objects of ancient veneration appear in a form beyond recognition. Therefore it is that some English Old Testament names are unlike those of other nations.
Those who were at work on the New Testament, however, left the ancient names, there occurring, as they found them in the Greek, and thus arose the disparity we remark in the title given to the same individual, Noah or Noe, Korah or Core, Uzziah or Ozias.
For the most part Old Testament names, as such, have had little prevalence excepting under the influence of Calvinism. The Roman Catholic Church neglected them because they did not convey patronage, and Lutherism has not greatly adopted them, but they were almost a badge of the Huguenot party in France; and in England, about the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, a passion for the most extraordinary and unusual Scripture names prevailed, for which the genealogist must have carefully searched. William L'Isle, in 1623, complains of some “devising new names with apeish imitation of the Hebrew,” and in effect there are few of these that do not give an impression of sectarianism or Puritanism. In England and America, the more obscure and peculiar ones are chiefly adopted by the lower classes; in Ireland several prevail for another cause, namely, their supposed resemblance to the native Erse appellations that were long proscribed by the conquerors.
Those that were borne by the remnant of faithful Jews, who were the stock on which the Christian Church was grafted, have gone out into all lands, infinitely modified by the changes they have undergone in their transit from one people to another.[[4]]
CHAPTER II.
PATRIARCHAL NAMES.
Section I.—Adam.
The oldest of all proper names comes from a word signifying red, and refers to the red earth (adama) out of which the first man was taken, reminding us that dust we are, and unto dust shall we return.
Some say that it should he translated ‘likeness,’ and that it comes from the same root as ‘adama,’ red earth, because red earth is always alike, wherever found. In this case, the first man would have been called from his likeness to his Creator, but the other explanation is preferable, especially as the same adjective, pronounced with a change in the vowel sound, so as to make it Edom, was the surname of Esau (hairy), on account both of the ruddiness of his complexion and of the red lentile pottage for which he sold his birthright.
No Israelites or Jews appear to have been called after our first father, and the first time Adam comes to light again, is among the Keltic Christians of Ireland and Scotland. It is not improbable that it was first adopted according to a frequent Gaelic fashion, as the ecclesiastical name most resembling the native one of Aedh or fire; but however this may be, there was in the seventh century a distinguished abbot of Iona, called in the dog Latin of the time, Adamnanus or dwarf Adam, and best known as Adamnan. Though not recognized by the Roman calendar, he was regarded as a saint in his own country, but his name has been much corrupted. At Skreen in Ireland, where he founded a church, he is styled St. Awnan, at Raphoe he is patron, as St. Ennan, in Londonderry he is St. Onan; but in Scotland, Adam has become a national Christian name. The family who most affected it were the ‘gay Gordons.’ Edie is the Scottish contraction. The feminine Adamina has been a recent Scottish invention.
In Germany and the neighbouring countries there prevails an idea that Adam is always long-lived, and if the first infant of a family dies, the life of its successor is secured by calling it either Adam or Eve. In consequence it has various contractions and alterations. In Lower Lusatia it is Hadamk in familiar speech; the Swiss abbreviation is Odli; the Esthonian Ado or Oado, the Lettisu was Adums. With its contraction, Ade, it seems to have been very common at Cambrai through the middle ages.
“The mother of all living”—received from the lips of Adam a name signifying life, sounding in the original like Chavva, as it began with a rough aspirate. It was not copied by any of her daughters for a long time, and when first the Alexandrian Jews came on it in their translation, they rendered it by Zoe (life), in order to show the connection of the name with the prophecy; but afterwards in the course of the narrative they merely made it Eva, or in Latin the Heva or Eva, which English has changed into Eve.
The Eva of Ireland and Scotland, and the Aveline or Eveline of the Normans, were probably only imitations of the old Keltic names Aoibhiun and Aoiffe, and will therefore be considered among the Keltic class.
Eve has been seldom used in England, though old parish registers occasionally show a pair of twins christened Adam and Eve.
The same notion of securing a child’s life that has spread the use of Adam in Germany and its vicinity has had the same effect upon his wife, so that Eva is common in both Germany and Scandinavia. Russia has Evva or Jevva, though not often as a name in use; the Letts as Ewe or Ewusche; the Lithuanians as Jewa or Jewele, the first letter of course pronounced like Y; and in Lusatia her namesakes are called Hejba or Hejbka.[[5]]
The murdered son of Adam is called by a Hebrew word meaning breath, vapour, or transitoriness, and as some think may have been so termed in remembrance of his short life. The sound of the original word was more like Hebel, but through the Greek we receive it as Abel.
It is not absolutely a modern Puritan name, for an Abel existed in Essex in the time of Henry III., and Awel is known in Russia; but it is generally given direct from the Bible, as are also Seth (appointed), and Enoch (dedicated).
Adah (ornament), the wife of Lamech, is often supposed to be the origin of our English Ada, but this last is the hereditary Latinized form of Eed (rich), and is the same as the German Ida. Zillah (or shadow), the other wife of Lamech, is a Gypsy name.
Section II.—Abi.
Common to both the Semitic and Indo-European tongues, and traceable through all their branches, is the parental title first uttered by the infant; Abba, Abi, Aba; Atta among the Slavonians, and again among the Goths; Athair among the Irish, the pater of Greece, fondly called at home papa, and apphys the pater of Rome, the German Vater, and our own father—il babbo in Italy, and daddy in English cottages.
In the East a parent is more usually called the father of his son than by his own name. This, however, is probably a late affectation, not applying to the time when the greatest of the patriarchs received his original name of Abram (father of height or elevation), which was changed by Divine appointment into Abraham (father of a multitude), foretelling the numerous and enduring offspring that have descended from him, and even to the present hour revere his name.
No one, however, seems to have presumed to copy it as long as the Israelites dwelt in their own land, and the first resuscitations of it appear to have been among the Christians of the patriarch’s native land, Mesopotamia, towards the end of the fourth century, when a hermit called Abraham, living near Edessa, obtained a place in the Coptic, Greek, and Roman calendars; and about the same time another Abraham was among the martyrs who were put to death by the fire worshipping zeal of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia. Two other Mesopotamian SS. Abraham lived in the next century, and died, one at Constantinople, the other in Auvergne, whither in some unaccountable manner he had been carried between foul winds and man-stealing barbarians when on a journey to visit the solitaries in Egypt.
As one of the patrons of Clermont, this Abraham must have been the means of diffusing namesakes in France, especially on the side towards the Low Countries. Abraham often occurs in the registers of Cambray; and in compliance with the fashion of adapting the name of the father to the daughter, Abra was there formed, though apparently not earlier than 1644. Indeed the Netherlands and Holland are the only countries where this patriarchal name is really national, generally shortened into Abram and Bram; and the Dutch settlers carried it into America, where it is generally called either Bram or Aby.
Many other Scripture names bear this prefix, but it would be contrary to our plan to dwell upon those that have not been in subsequent use or are devoid of peculiar interest.
Abigail (father of joy), strikes us as inappropriate to a woman, till we remember that the eastern nations use this expression for an abstract quality, and that the title would stand for joyfulness. Her ready courtesy to David seems to have recommended her to the earliest readers of the English Bible, for Abigail occurs in registers as early as 1573, and was for many years very frequent. Abigail Masham’s back-stair influence over Queen Anne has been generally supposed to have rendered it a soubriquet for a lady’s maid; but Mr. Bardsley, in his Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, shows it to have been the name of the waiting gentlewoman in Beaumont’s Comedy, The Scornful Ladie, played in 1616. And in a play of Killigrew’s, some thirty years later, the term ‘Abigail’ is used for a waiting-maid, when the back-stair influence and supposed arts of Abigail Masham in the bedchamber of Queen Anne gave it a sudden fall. Abigail turned into a cant term for a lady’s maid, and thenceforth has been seldom heard even in a cottage.
Counter to his name was the course of the “Father of Peace.” He is Abishalom, or Absalom in the narrative of his life, a history that one would have thought entailed eternal discredit on the name; but it seems that in the earlier Christian times of Denmark, as well as in some other countries, a fashion prevailed, especially among the clergy, of supplementing the native name with one of Scriptural or ecclesiastical sound, and thus, about the middle of the twelfth century, Absalom was adopted by a distinguished Danish bishop as the synonym of what Professor Munch conjectures to have been his own name of Aslak (reward of the gods), though Danish tradition has contracted it into Axel. This last is a national Danish name, and it seems as if Absalom had been popularly supposed to be the Latin for Axel; since, in a Latin letter of 1443, Olaf Axelsson is turned into Olaus Absalonis.
Before quitting this prefix Ab, it seems to be the place to remark upon a name coming to us through the Tartar stock of languages, from the same source—Ab. Ata, (father, the source of Atalik, fatherlike[fatherlike] or paternal,) is to the present day a title among the Usbeks of Bokhara. Thence that regent of the Huns, the scourge of God, who spread terror to the gates of Rome, would have been called Attalik among his own people, and thus historians have written his name of terror Attila.
In the tales of the Nibelungen, the great Hun, whom Kriemhild marries after the death of Siegfried, and at whose court the general slaughter takes place, is called Etzel in the German poem, Atli in the Northern saga, and this has generally been regarded as identifying him with Attila and fixing the date of the poem; but the monarch of the Huns is hospitable and civilized, with few features in common with the savage of Roman history; and if Attalik were a permanent regal title among the Huns, the chieftain may have been any other of the royal dynasty. His occurrence in that favourite poem, sung alike by all the Teutonic race, has rendered Atli very common from early times in the North as well as Etzel in Germany. The Lombards took it to Italy, where it turned into Eccelino, and in the person of the fierce mountain-lord, Eccelino di Romagna, became as fearful as Attila had ever been to the Romans.
The verb to fight or to rule furnished both the names of the wife of Abraham; Sarai (quarrelsome) was thus converted into Sarah (the princess). If we may judge from the example of the bride of Tobias, the daughters of Sarah were occasionally called by her name, and Zara has been, with what correctness I know not, used as an eastern name.
Sarah now and then occurs in England, as with Sara Beauchamp, (temp. Ed. I.,) but I suspect that she as well as Sarrota de Multon, who lived in the former reign, were alterations of some of the derivatives of the Teutonic prefix Sig—victory, as the masculine Saher or Serlo certainly came from Sigeheri. Sarah was never commonly used till after the Reformation, when it began to grow very popular, with its contraction Sally; and at the same time it was adopted as the equivalent for no less than three Irish names—Sadhbh (pronounced Soyv), Sorcha (bright), and Saraid (excellent). The two first are still in use; but Highlanders make a still stranger use of Sarah, which they use to translate their native More (great), perhaps in consequence of its meaning.
Elsewhere the name is occasionally used without the h that our biblical translators gave it. It is not, however, very popular, though the French have used it enough to make it Sarotte; in Illyria its diminutive is Sarica; in Lithuania it is Zore.[[6]]
When the first glad tidings of the Child of Promise were announced, Sarah laughed for very joy and wonder, and Laughter (Yizchak) became the name of her son; known in Greek as Ἰσαὰκ, in Latin and to the European world as Isaac.
It was not revived among the early Jews; but, like Abraham, it was used by the eastern Christians, and St. Isaac, bishop of Beth Seleucia, was put to death with other Christian martyrs by Sapor II. of Persia. Another eastern Isaac was a hermit at Spoleto, in the sixth century, and Isaak has always been a favourite name in the Greek Church. Several of the family of Comnenus, both at Constantinople and Trebizond, rendered Isaak a royal name; and Isaak or Eisaak, whose feast falls on the 30th of May, is the patron of the cathedral at Petersburg. The name is frequently used in Russia and the other Greco-Slavonic countries, though not much varied.
It had not much favour in the West, though it appears once in Domesday Book, and occurs in the Cambray registers. Mr. Bardsley thinks that it, with some other Patriarchal names, became familiar through Mystery plays. But its chief popularity was after the Reformation, when it is continually to be found among the Huguenots, and it seems to have passed from them to other French families, since it is sometimes found in pedigrees, and the noted de Sacy, a grandson of the Arnauld family, was thus christened long after his forefathers had conformed to the Roman Catholic Church.
With us Izaak, as our ancestors spelt it, is just so prevalent among us as to have a recognized contraction, Ike or Ikey.
Isaac’s wife was called from rabak (to bind). The word Ribkâ meant a cord with a noose, and probably was given as conveying the firmness of the marriage bond. The Septuagint and Latin gave Rebecca; the authorized version Rebekah; and both spellings are adopted by those bearing the name, who are generally called Becky.
Here too should be mentioned the faithful nurse of Rebekah, who was so lamented that the tree beneath which she was buried was known as the oak of weeping. Her name of Deborah came from a verb meaning to hum or buzz, and signified a bee, or, in after times, eloquent.
Deborah found no favour as a name except among English Puritans, and has acquired a certain amount of absurdity from various literary associations, which prevent ‘Deb.’ from being used except by the peasantry.
Of Rebekah’s two daughters-in-law[daughters-in-law], Rachel signified a ewe.
Dante made l’antica Rachele, with her beautiful eyes, the type of heavenly contemplation, ever gazing at the mirror that reflected heavenly glory; but her name was not popular, although the Manx princess, otherwise called Affrica, assumed it upon her marriage with Somerled, Lord of the Isles, somewhere about the eleventh century.
But Puritan days loved the sound of the word, and “that sweet saint who sat by Russell’s side” has given it a place in many an English family. Polish Jews call it Rahel; in which form it was borne by the metaphysical lady who became the wife of Varnhagen von Ense.
| English. | German. | Bavarian. |
| Matthias | Matthæus | Mathies |
| Mathies | Matthew | Mahe |
| Mat | Matthes | Hies |
| Matthis | Hiesel | |
| Mathe | ||
| Swiss. | Swedish. | Danish. |
| Mathias | Mathias | Mathias |
| Thies | Mats | Mads |
| Thiesli | ||
| Friesland. | French. | Italian. |
| Matthies | Matthieu | Matteo |
| Hise | Macé | Maffeo |
| Hisse | Feo | |
| Mattia | ||
| Spanish. | Russian. | Polish. |
| Mateo | Matfei | Mateusz |
| Matvej | Maciei | |
| Maciek | ||
| Matyas | ||
| Hungarian. | Slovak. | Esthonian. |
| Matyas | Matevz | Maddis |
| Mate | Tevz | Mats |
| Mattija |
Rachel’s less beloved and less favoured sister had a name that came from lawah (hanging upon, dependence, or, as in her case it is explained, weariness)—Leah, in French Lea, in Italian Lia, under which title Dante makes her the emblem of active and fruitful, as is her sister of meditative, love. It was from the same word that she named her third son Levi, when she hoped that her husband would be more closely united or dependent on her. Levi’s name was carried on into the Gospel times, and belonged to the publican who was called from the receipt of custom to become an Apostle and an Evangelist. His Aramean name was, however, that by which he calls himself in his own narrative, or more correctly speaking, by its Græcized form. The old Hebrew Mattaniah (gift of the Lord) was probably the origin of both the names that we have in the Greek Testament as Ματθαῖος and Ματθίας, Matthæus and Matthias as the Latin renders them. Some, however, make the first mean a faithful man; but it is not possible to distinguish between the various forms that have risen out of the two among persons who, probably, had no idea that the Apostle who supplied the place of Judas was a different person from the Evangelist. The Emperor Charles V. was born on St. Matthias' day, and the text “The lot fell on Matthias” was regarded as a good augury, whence Matthias came into favour in Austria and its dependencies. The name has been more popular in Germany and its dependencies. Matteo heads the Milanese Visconti, who were mostly named after the Evangelists.
Apostolic names are particularly common in Bavaria, probably from the once frequent representations of the Mystery of the Passion. In Germany, SS. Matthew and Matthias have produced the surnames Matthies, Matys, Thiess, and Thiessen, Latinized after a queer scholarly fashion into Thysius.
Section III.—Jacob.
The twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah were called from the circumstances of their birth, Esau, the hairy, and Ja’akob, the latter word being derived from âkêb, the heel, because in the words of the Prophet “he took his brother by the heel in the womb.” This, the action of tripping up, confirmed the mother’s faith in the previous prediction that “the elder should serve the younger,” and thus that the younger should supplant the elder. “Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted, me these two times,” was accordingly the cry of Esau.
By the time of the return from Babylon we find two if not three persons mentioned as bearing the name of Akkub, and that this was meant for Jacob, is shown by its etymology; as it likewise means the supplanter, by its likeness in sound to Yacoub, the form still current among the Arabs, and by the fact that the Akkub, who in the book of Nehemiah stands up with Ezra to read the law to the people, is in the book of Esdras, written originally in Greek, called Ἰάκοβος (Jakobos).
So frequent was this Jakobos among the returned Jews that it occurs in the royal genealogy in St. Matthew’s Gospel, and was borne by two of the twelve apostles, by him called the Great, who was the first to be martyred, and by him termed the Less, who ruled the Church at Jerusalem.
It is the Great Apostle, the son of Zebedee, who is the saint, in whose honour most of those bearing this name in Europe have been christened. A belief arose that he had preached the Gospel in Spain before his martyrdom at Jerusalem; and though there was no doubt that the Holy City was the place of his death, yet it was declared that his relics were brought to Galicia in a marble ship without oar or sail, which arrived at the port of Aria Flava, since called Patron. A little farther inland arose what was at first termed in Latin the shrine of Sanctus Jacobus Apostolus. Men’s tongues quickly turned this into Sancto Jacobo Apostolo, and thence, confounding the title with the place, arrived at Santo Jaco de Compostella, or Santiago de Compostella.
A further legend arose that in the battle of Clavijo with the Moors, the spirits of the Christian Spaniards were revived by the sight of Santiago mounted on a white steed, waving a white banner, and leading them on to victory. Thenceforth Santiago became their war-cry, and the saint was installed as a champion of Christendom. Subsequently no less than three Spanish orders of knighthood were instituted in his honour, and his shrine became one of the most universal places of pilgrimage in Europe, more especially as the most marvellous fables of miracles were forged thereat. His saintly title had become so incorporated with his name that his votaries were in some perplexity where to separate them, and in Castille his votaries were christened Tiago or Diego. Even as early as the tenth century the Cid’s father was Don Diego de Bivar, and he himself Don Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, Diaz being the patronymic.
In 1207, Maria, Queen of Aragon, considering her infant son and heir to have been granted at the especial intercession of the twelve apostles, resolved to baptize him after one of their number, and impartially to decide between them by naming twelve tapers after the apostles, and calling the child after him whose candle burnt longest. Southey has comically described the Queen’s agitations until the victorious candle proved to be that of the great Saint of Galicia, whom Aragonese tongues called Jayme. The child thus christened became the glory of his kingdom, and was known as El Conquestador, leaving Jayme to be honourably borne by Kings of Aragon, Majorca, and Sicily as long as his family remained distinct. Giacopo Apostolo was the Italian version of the name, whence they made their various Giacopo, Jacopo, Giacomo, Como, Iachimo, and Iago according to their various dialects. Germany recurred to the original Jakob; but the French coming home with their own variety talked of Jiac Apostol, and named their children Jacques, or fondled them as Jacquot and Jacqueminot. The great church of St. Jacques, at Liège, spread the love of the name in Flanders as is testified by Jacob von Arteveldt, the Brewer of Ghent; and so universal throughout France was it, that Jacques Bonhomme became the nickname of the peasantry, and was fearfully commemorated in the Jacquerie, the insurrection of which English chroniclers supposed James Goodman to have been the leader. It must have been when English and French were mingled together in the camps of the Black Prince and Henry V. that Jack and Jock became confounded together. Henry V. called the wild Jacqueline of Hainault, Dame Jack. She, like his other Flemish sister-in-law, Jacquette of Luxemburg, must have been named in honour of the saint of Liège. Edward VI.’s nurse, whom Holbein drew by the soubriquet of Mother Jack, was perhaps a Jacquette; Iacolyn and Jacomyn are also found in old registers, but this feminine never took root anywhere but in France, where Jacobée also occurs. James had found its way to Scotland ere the birth of the Black Douglas, and was already a national name before it was given to the second son of Robert III., in accordance with a vow of the queen. This James was brought to the throne by the murder of his brother David, Duke of Rothsay; and thus was the first of the royal Stuarts, by whom it was invariably borne till the sixth of the line hoped to avert the destiny of his race by choosing for his sons more auspicious names. James and Jamie thus became great favourites in Scotland, and came to England with the Stuarts. The name had indeed been previously used, as by the brave Lord James Audley under Edward III., but not so frequently, and the old English form was actually Jeames. Norden dedicates his Survey of Cornwall to James I. as Jeames; and Archbishop Laud so spells the word in his correspondence. In fact, Jemmy and Jim are the natural offsprings of Jeames, as the word was pronounced in the best society till the end of the last century. Then the gentry spoke according to the spelling; Jeames held his ground among the lower classes, and finally—thanks to Jeames’s Diary—has become one of the stock terms of conventional wit; and in modern times Jacobina and Jamesina were coined for female wear.
The Highlanders call the name Hamish; the Irish, Seumuis. In fact, its variations are almost beyond enumeration. In Italy the full name has the three varieties, Giacomo, Jacopo, Giacobbe, so no wonder the abbreviations are Coppo and Lapo.
Due honour is paid in the Greek and Slavonic Church to both the veritable apostles, but not to the mythical Santiago de Compostella, whom we have traced as the root of all the Jameses of the West.
The great Jakobos, who appeared at the Council of Nicea, and gloriously defended the city of Nisibis, handed on the apostolic name in the East; and it has almost as many Greek and Slavonian variations as Latin and Teutonic ones.
| English. | Scotch. | Erse. | Gaelic. | Dutch. |
| Jacob | James | Seumuis | Hamish | Jacob |
| James | Jamie | Jaap | ||
| Jem | ||||
| Jemmy | ||||
| French. | German. | Swiss. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Jacob | Jakob | Jakob | Jacopo | Jacobo |
| Jacques | Jackel | Bopp | Iachimo | Santiago |
| Jacquot | Jockel Gaugl}Bav. | Jock | Giakobbe | Diego |
| Jacqueminot | Jogg | Coppo | Yago | |
| Jagli | Lapo | Jago | ||
| Jacobello | Jayme | |||
| Portuguese. | Russian. | Polish. | Lett. | |
| Jayme | Jakov | Jakob | Jekups | |
| Jascha | Kuba | Jeka | ||
| Jaschenka | Kub | Jezis | ||
| Kubischu |
The Russian nameday is the 30th of April, either for the sake of St. James the Less, whose eve it is, or for that of a namesake who perished in Numidia in the time of Valerian, and whose feast falls on that day. Jakov gets called Jascha and Jaschenka, and his feminine Jacovina and Zakelina. The Illyrians twist the masculine into Jakovica, and the Lithuanians into Jeka or Kubinsch.[[7]]
[4]. Books consulted:—Max Müller’s Lectures on Language; Proper Names of Scripture; Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible.
[5]. Smith’s Dictionary; Michaelis, Personen Namen.
[6]. Books consulted:—Proper Names of the Bible; Le Beau’s Histoire du Bas Empire; O'Donovan on Irish Proper Names; Michaelis, Personen Namen.
[7]. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Southey’s Poems; Jamieson’s Sacred and Legendary Art; Butler; Michaelis; Pott; Brand’s Popular Antiquities.
Section IV.—Simeon.
Of the twelve sons of Jacob, four only have names of sufficient interest to deserve individual notice, and among these, the first requiring notice is Simeon, from schama, to hear.
Simeon’s name passed on to numerous Jews, and was very common in the Gospel times, no less than five personages being so called, namely, the aged man in the Temple, the son of Jonas, the other apostle called the Zealot or the Canaanite, and the leper, besides the tanner of Joppa, and the magician whose attempt to purchase spiritual gifts has given the title of simony to sins of the same nature.
By this time, however, the Hebrew Simeon had been confounded with the Greek Σῖμων (Simon), snub-nosed. St. James, in his discourse at Jerusalem, called St. Peter ‘Simeon,’ and it would thus seem likely that this was used as their true national name, and that Simon was a Græcism used in intercourse with strangers, or in writing.
The anchorite who took that strangest freak of fanaticism, the perching himself for life upon a column, is called both Simeon and Simon Stylites, but the latter form has generally been the prevalent one, and has belonged to numerous saints in both the Eastern and Western Church. The Greek Church has both St. Seeméön on the 3rd of February, and St. Ssimon on the 10th of May, and the Russian contractions are Ssemen and Ssenka. The West, too, had sundry Simons of its own, besides those common to all Christendom. We had a monastic St. Simon Stock, and though the Christian name is now uncommon, it has left us many varieties of surnames, as Simmonds, Simkins, Simpson, Simcoe, Sykes, etc., the spelling but slightly varied. It was more used among the French peasantry, and acquired the feminine Simonette. The Italian Simone was not unfrequent, and has made the surname Simoncelli; the Portuguese had Sima; the Spaniards, Ximon; and the Slavonians have the odd varieties of the Polish Szymon, the Illyrian Simej, the Lusatian Schymanz.
It is the same word Schama that named the first of the prophets of Israel. “Asked of God” is the import of Samuel, a name so endeared by the beautiful history of the call to the child in the temple, that it could not be quite forgotten. A Samuel, native of Palestine, who perished in the persecution of Maximian, obtained a martyr’s place in the calendar, and his name has been a favourite in the Eastern Church, as Samuil, Samoilo, in Russia; Schombel in Lusatia; Zomelis in Lithuania. The reading of the Holy Scriptures was, however, no doubt, the cause of its use here and in Switzerland, since we scarcely find it before the Reformation, though now Samuel is common in Switzerland, and Sam here.[[8]]
[8]. Proper Names of the Bible; Butler; Lower’s English Surnames; Michaelis; Piot.
Section V.—Judah.
In her exultation at having borne so many promising sons, Leah called her fourth Jehudah (he will be praised); meaning brought forward by her husband Jacob when, in his death-bed blessing of his sons, he exclaimed, “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise.”
Thus, too, it has been with the individual name of Judah. Unused before the captivity, it was revived again after it, and carried to the highest fame and popularity by the brave Maccabee, who newly founded Judea and restored it, for a time, to freedom and honour. His surname is by some derived from a word meaning the Hammerer, by others from Makkabi, formed by initial letters of the motto on his standard, “Who among the gods is like unto Thee, O Lord?” Judas Maccabeus, early as was his death, and imperfect as was the deliverance of his country when he was slain, was one of the chief heroes of the world, and occupied a far larger space in the imagination of our mediæval ancestors than he does in ours. Not only were the books of Maccabees considered as of equal authority with the canonical Scriptures, but, before 1240, a French metrical romance had recounted his exploits, and by Chaucer’s time Judas Maccabeus was ranked among the nine worthies—the subject of many a ballad and chap-book.
But his name has never occurred! Frequent, indeed, it was among his own countrymen after his time, but of them was that man who rendered it for ever accursed.
Another apostle bore the same name, but this did not suffice to redeem it, though altered into Jude to mark the distinction. The Saint had, however, two Aramean names, Lebbæus, supposed to mean hearty, or else from the town of Lebba, and Thaddæus, which is satisfactorily explained as an Aramean form of the same word Praise, Græcized and Latinized of course before it came to us.
It is not, however, popular. Italy has indeed used it a good deal as Taddeo, and Spain knows it as Tadeo; but though Ireland swarms with Thadys, who write themselves Thaddeus, this is only as a supposed English version of their ancient Erse, Tadhg (a poet). The Slavonic nations use it more than the West; it is a favourite Polish name, and the Russians call it Phaddéi; and the Illyrians, Tadia. No name has been so altered as Judah; it is Hodaiah after the captivity, and Abiud, or rather Ab-jud, in St. Luke’s genealogy.
The feminine form of the name, Jehudith, or Judith, belonged primarily to the Hittite wife of Esau, who was a grief of heart to Rebekah, but its fame is owing to the heroine of Bethulia, whose name is, however, said rather to mean a Jewess than to be exactly the feminine of Judah. Indeed some commentators, bewildered by the difficulties of chronology, have supposed the history to be a mere allegory in which she represents the Jewish nation. However, on the uncritical mind of the eighth or ninth century, her story made a deep impression, and a poem was in circulation in Europe recording her adventurous deed, and mentioning among the treasures of Holofernes' tent a mosquito net, whence the learned argue that the narrative must have been derived from some eastern source independent of the Apocryphal book.
At any rate, hers was the first name not belonging to their own language that was borne by Teutonic ladies, and long preceded that of any saint. Perhaps it was supposed to be the equivalent of the German Juthe from Ganthe, war; at any rate Juditha, Jutha, or Jutta was in high favour at the court of the Karling Kaisers, and came to England with the step-mother, who gave the first impulse to our great Alfred’s love of learning. Her subsequent marriage took it to Flanders, and we had it back again with the niece of William the Conqueror, the wicked wife of Waltheof, and afterwards of Simon de St. Lis. Her uncle cites her as a witness to a charter by the familiar abbreviation of Jugge, which was long used as the regular contraction, though Judy has since become more usual, and is exceedingly common in Ireland.
Even French families gave their daughters the name of Judith, which belonged to the gentle Comtesse de Bonneval. The Breton form is Juzeth; and the Swiss ruthlessly turn it into Dith, but across the Alps it comes forth more gracefully as Giuditta; and the Poles make it Jitka; the Hungarians, Juczi or Jutka.
On the authority of Eusebius we venture to add a third to those who bore the name of Judah in the apostolic college, namely, him whom we know by the Aramaic and Greek epithets Thomas and Didymus, both meaning a twin. Tradition declares that his fellow-twin was a sister called Lysia. India is believed to have been the region of his labours and of his death; the Christians there were called after him; and when, in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese attained their object of reaching India by sea, they thought they discovered his tomb at Meliapore, transported the relics to Goa, and created San Tomàs or Tomè into their patron saint. Long ere this, however, in every part of Europe had Thomas been revived with other apostolic names, but its great prominence was derived from the murdered Archbishop Becket, or St. Thomas of Canterbury. His shrine at Canterbury was the English Compostella, visited by foreign as well as native pilgrims, and the greater proportion of churches so termed were under the invocation of the archbishop instead of the apostle, although it is only by charter or by wake-day that the dedication can be traced, since Henry VIII. did his utmost to de-canonize and destroy all memorials of the bold prelate whom he would most certainly have beheaded instead of assassinating. In Italy a martyr for ecclesiastical prerogatives was certain to be in high repute; carvings, glass, paintings, and even needlework still bear his history and figure, always denoted by the clean cutting off of his scalp above the tonsure, and Tomasso flourishes greatly as a Christian name, the Italians, as usual, abbreviating by the omission of the first syllable instead of the last, so that where we say Tom, they say Maso, and thence Masuccio, as we call one of their earliest great painters. Tomasso Agnello was the true name which, contracted into Masaniello, was the wonder of the day at Naples, and made the Spanish power there totter on its throne.
The feminine Thomassine, Tamzine, and Tammie, are comparatively recent inventions. They were frequent in the 17th century, and then went out of fashion.
| English. | Scotch. | French. | ||
| Thomas | Thomas | Thomas | ||
| Tom | Tam | Thumas | ||
| Fem.{ | Thomassine Tamzine | Tamlane | ||
| Spanish. | Italian. | Russian. | ||
| Tomas | Tomaso | Foma | ||
| Tome | Maso | Fem.— | Fomaida | |
| Fem.— | Tomasa | Masuccio | ||
| Masaccio | ||||
| German. | Polish. | Lower Lusatian. | ||
| Thoma | Tomasz | Domas | ||
| Fem.— | Thomasia | Domask | ||
| Lithuanian. | Hungarian. | Finland. | ||
| Tamkus | Tamas | Tuomas | ||
| Tamoszus | ||||
| Dummas | ||||
Thomas is the accepted equivalent for the Irish Tomalhaid, Tomaltach, and Toirdelvach, tall as a tower.
Section VI.—Joseph.
When, after long waiting and hoping, a son was at length granted to Rachel, she called him Joseph from a word signifying an addition, because she hoped that yet another child would be added to her family.
Joseph, beloved and honoured as he was for his own beautiful character and eventful history, has perhaps at the present day the greater number of direct namesakes among the Arabs, who still are frequently called Yussuf.
Only two Josephs occur again in the Scripture before the captivity in Babylon, but afterwards they were exceedingly numerous, and in the Gospel history two remarkable characters are so named, as well as three others whom we know by the Græcized form of the name as Joses, i. e. a fourth brother of the royal family of James, Simon, and Jude; he who was usually called by his surname of Barnabas, and he who was also called Barsabas, whose lot was cast with that of Matthias. The Latinized form we know as the name of the historian Flavius Josephus. Legend loved to narrate that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Gospel to England, and that his staff was the Christmas-flowering thorn of Glastonbury; nay, that he carried thither the Sanegreal and the holy lance, the mystic objects of the adventures of the Round Table.
Yet, in spite of the reputation of this holy man, and of the universal reverence for ‘the just man’ of Nazareth, Joseph was scarcely used as a name in Europe till in 1621 a festival day was fixed by the pope in honour of St. Joseph, the husband of the Blessed Virgin.
Therewith an enthusiasm broke forth in Roman Catholic Europe for the name. All the world in Italy began to call itself Giuseppe or Gioseffo; or for short, Peppo and Beppo have swarmed ever since in every village.
Spain delighted in Josef or Jose, and the more devout in Jose Maria, with Pepe or Pepito for the contraction; Pepita for the Josefa, who, of course, arose at the same time, these becoming the most common of all Peninsular names.
Not to be behindhand in devotion, the Emperor Leopold christened his son Joseph, and thus recommended it to all his subjects; and, perhaps, the Tyrol is the greatest of all the strongholds of the Josephs, the name being there called by its last syllable in all endearing varieties, Sepp, Sepperl, &c.; while the Swiss, on the other side, have Sipp and Sippli. Maria Josepha was a daughter of Maria Theresa, and these two are seldom separated in Germany, Italy, or France; but as Maria forms part of the name of every Roman Catholic woman, and of most men, the second name is the one for use. Marie Josephe Rose was the Christian name of her whom we know and pity as the Empress Josephine, and to whom it is owing that France was once full of young ladies usually called Fifine or Finette; while the rougher damsels of Lucerne are content to be Boppi in familiar life.
The Slavonians use the varieties Josko and Joska; the Letts turn the name into Jaschis or Jeps. It is in fact broken into as many odd contractions as it can possibly undergo. It is Joseef or Oseep in Russia.
England having freed herself from Roman Catholic influence before this mighty crop of Josephs sprang up, merely regarded the name as one of the Scripture names chiefly used by Puritans, although Joseph Addison has given it distinction in literature; and there Joe is of uncertain origin, as it is as often the contraction of Josiah or Joshua as of Joseph. In some parts of England, Joseph and Mary are considered appropriate to twins. Josephine is with us a mere introduction from the French.
Joseph, or Joses, as he was called since, coming from Cyprus—he was one of the Hellenistic Jews—is best known to us under his surname of Barnabas, which St. Luke explains from the Aramaic as υἱος παρακλησέος (uios parakleseos), the son of comfort, a word which bears different interpretations, since comfort may be either exhortation or consolation; and it is in the latter sense that St. Chrysostom and our translators have understood the word, though there are many who prefer the other meaning.
Barnabas has not been a very common name, though, with an apostle for its origin, it could not fail to be everywhere known; but it was never royal; and the only historical character so called, Bernabo Visconti, was enough to give any name an evil odour. We make it Barnaby when we do use it, the Irish call it Barney and confuse it with Brian, and the Russians call it Varnava. One Barnabas Hutchinson, proctor of the chapter of Durham, who died in 1633, is thus commemorated in his epitaph:—
“Under this thorne tree
Lies honest Barnabee.”[[9]]
Joseph had named his two sons Manasseh (forgetting), because he said, “God hath made me forget all my toil,” and Ephraim (twofold increase). The first was early adopted by the Israelites; we find it belonging to the son of Hezekiah, and to the father of Judith, and, to our amazement, to a mediæval knight, whose friends may perhaps have brought it from the Crusades. Two early bishops of Cambrai bore the name of Manassès, and there is one among the under-tenants in Domesday Book. In Ireland, the name of Manus, a corruption of Magnus, derived from the Northmen who invented it, is turned into Manasses.
Ephraim, like other patriarchal names, lived on in Mesopotamia; and St. Ephrem of Edessa, who lived in the beginning of the fourth century, is esteemed as a doctor of the Church, and is the name-saint of numerous Russians, who keep his day on the 28th of January, though the Roman Church marks it in July.[[10]]
[9]. Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopædia; Trollope’s Greek Testament; Michaelis.
[10]. Proper Names of the Bible; Michaelis; O'Donovan’s Irish Names.
Section VII.—Benjamin.
When the long-desired ‘addition,’ the second son, was given to Rachel, and in the words of Jacob she “died by him when there was but a little way to come to Ephrath,” she called the infant who had cost her life Ben-oni (son of my sorrow); but this was changed by his father into Ben-Yamin (son of my right hand, i. e. prosperous).
In spite of Rare Ben Jonson, Benjamin is an essentially Puritan and Jewish name; such a feminine as Benjamina has even been perpetrated. Oddly enough the Bretons call Benjamin Benoni.
Benoni, “the child of sorrow,” and Ichabod, “the glory is departed,” were so frequent among the Puritans of the time of James I. that Mr. Bardsley thinks that they could not have been so much allusions to family distress as to the afflictions of the Puritan sect. Benoni occurs in the rate of six to one compared with Benjamin in the registers of the period.
Afterwards the place of Ben was taken by the Syriac Bar, the earliest instance being that of old Barzillai, the Gileadite, whose name signified the son of iron. It seems as though under the Herodean kingdom the custom was coming in that forms the first surnames, that of calling the son by his patronymic almost in preference to his own individual appellation, and thus arose some of the double titles that confuse us as to the identity of the earlier saints. Thus, the “Israelite without guile,” is first introduced as Nathanael, the same as the ancient Nethaneel, captain of the tribe of Issachar, and meaning the gift of God, being compounded of the Divine Word and nathan (a gift). Nathan was the name of the prophet who rebuked David, and of the son whose descendants seem to have taken the place of the royal line. Elnathan occurs as father to the wife of one of the kings, and Jonathan has exactly the same meaning, the gift of God. In the list of apostles, Nathanael is called by his patronymic Bartholomaios, as it stands in the Greek, and Tholomaios is referred to Talmai (furrows), which occurs in the list of the sons of Anak, and also as belonging to the King of Geshur, Absalom’s grandfather.
In the uncertainty whether it was really the apostle, Nathanael was left unused until those English took it up, by whom it was made into Nat.
The other form, though not popular, is of all nations, and from its unwieldy length has endless contractions, perhaps the larger number being German, since it is most common in that central Teutonic land.
| English. | German. | Dutch. | Swiss. |
| Bartholomew | Bartholomaus | Bartelmês | Bartleme |
| Bart | Bertel | Bartli | |
| Bartley | Barthol | ||
| Bat | Mewes | ||
| Bartold | |||
| Bavarian. | French. | Danish. | Spanish. |
| Bartlmê | Bartholomieu | Bartholomeuis | Bartolome |
| Bartl | Bartolomée | Bartel | Bartolo |
| Wawel | Tolomieu | Bardo | |
| Wabel | |||
| Wabm | |||
| Portuguese. | Italian. | Russian. | Polish. |
| Bartolomeu | Bartolomeo | Varfolomei | Bartlomiej |
| Bartolomeo | Bortolo | Bartek | |
| Bortolo | |||
| Meo | |||
| Illyrian. | Lusatian | Esthonian | Lithuanian |
| Bartuo | Bartolik | Partel | Baltras |
| Barteo | Barto | Pert | Baltramejus |
| Jernij | Batram | ||
| Vratolomije |
Section VIII.—Job.
We must not quit the patriarchal names without mentioning that of Job. This mysterious person is stated in the margin of the Alexandrian version to have originally borne the name of Jobab, which means shouting; and a tradition of the Jews, adopted by some of the Christian fathers, makes him the same as the Jobab, prince of Edom, mentioned in the genealogy in the 33rd chapter of Genesis, a supposition according with his evident position as a great desert sheik, as well as with the early date of his history.
Job, however, as he is called throughout his book, is explained by some to mean persecuted; by others a penitent; and it is evident from a passage in the Koran that this was the way that Mahommed understood it. The tradition of his sufferings lived on among the Arabs, who have many stories about Eyub, or Ayoub, as they pronounce the name still common among them, and their nickname for the patient camel is Abi Ayub, father of Job.
Jöv, probably from their eastern connections, is a name used by the Russians, and has belonged to one of their patriarchs. Otherwise it is a very infrequent name even in England.
Job’s three daughters, Jemima, Kezia, and Kerenhappuch, are explained to mean a dove, cassia, and a horn of stibium. This latter is the paint with which eastern ladies were wont to enhance the beauty of their eyelashes, and it is curious to find this little artifice so ancient and so highly esteemed as to give the very name to the fair daughter of the restored patriarch, perhaps because her eyes were too lovely to need any such adornment. Hers has never been a popular name, only being given sometimes to follow up those of her sisters; Kezia is a good deal used in England, and belonged to a sister of Wesley, who was called Kissy; but Jemima is by far the most general of the three.
The Hebrew interpretation of Jemima makes it a day, but the Arabic word for a dove resembles it more closely, and critics, therefore, prefer to consider it as the Arab feminine version of that which the Israelites had among them as Jonah (a dove). This belonged to the prophet of Nineveh. It is not usual in Europe, but strangely enough the Lithuanians use it as Jonsazus, and the Lapps as Jonka.
What strange fancy can have made Mehetabel, the wife of one of the princes of Edom, leave her four syllables to be popular in England? Many village registers all over the country show it. Was it a remnant of the East in Cornwall, or did Puritans choose it for its meaning, God is beneficent? It was at Jarrow as early as 1578.
Tamar, a palm tree, it may here be mentioned, has continued common among eastern Christians, especially since a distinguished Armenian queen was so called. Now and then very great lovers of biblical names in England give it, and likewise Dinah (judgment).[[11]]
[11]. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Kitto’s Biblical Cycloædia; Proper Names of the Bible.
CHAPTER III.
ISRAELITE NAMES.
Section I.—Moses and Aaron.
At the time of the Exodus, the Israelites had become a nation, and their names, though still formed from a living language, were becoming more hereditary and conventional than those of the patriarchal times.
That of Moses himself, interpreted by the Scripture as meaning drawn out of the water, belongs rather to the Egyptian than to the Hebrew language. It probably came from the Coptic mo, water, and usha, saved; though the Hebrew, mâshâh, also presents a ready derivation: the great Law-giver. It has never been forgotten in the East, where the Arabs in the desert point out Gebel Mousa, the rock of Moses, whence they say the water flowed, and Wady Mousa, the vale of Moses. Mousa is a frequent name among the Arabs to this day, and among the gallant Moors of Granada, none stands so prominently forward in the noble rivalry of Abencerrages and Zegris as does the champion Muza.
Moses was unused by the Jews while they continued a nation, but has been very common in their dispersion, and in Poland has come to be pronounced Mojzesz. The frequent Jewish surname Moss is taken from one of these continental corruptions of the name of the great Law-giver. In Ireland the name Magsheesh has been adopted by the inhabitants as an imitation of Moses; but no form of Moses is used elsewhere[elsewhere], except as a direct Scripture name.
The name of Thermuthis has been found on a tombstone, given apparently in honour of Pharaoh’s daughter, whom Josephus thus denominates.
Aaron’s name is in like manner considered to be Egyptian, and the meaning is very doubtful, though it is commonly explained as a high mountain.
Aaron seems to have been assumed as a name by some of our old British Christians, or else it was accepted as an equivalent for something Keltic, for Aaron and Julius were among our very few British martyrs under Diocletian’s persecution, and a later Aaron was an abbot in Brittany; but it has never been a name in use.[[12]]
The sister of Moses and Aaron, who led the songs of the Israelites when they saw their enemies dead upon the sea-shore, was the first owner of that name which was to be the most highly honoured among those of women.
Yet it is a name respecting which there is great contention. Gesenius derives it from Merî (stubbornness), with the addition of the third person plural, so as to make it mean their rebellion. Other commentators refer it to the word Marah (bitterness), and thence the bitter gum, myrrh, the same term that was applied to the brackish springs in the desert, and to which the desolate widow of Bethlehem declared her right, when she cried, “Call me not Naomi (pleasant), call me Marah (bitter).” This is on the whole the most satisfactory derivation, but in the middle ages it was explained as Myrrh of the Sea, Lady of the Sea, or Star of the Sea, the likeness to the Latin, Keltic, and Teutonic mar being probably the guide. Star of the Sea is the favourite explanation among Roman Catholics, as the loftiest and most poetical, and it is referred to in many of their hymns and other devotional compositions.
Miriam does not seem to have been repeated until after the captivity, when it took the Greek forms of Mariam and Mariamne, and became very frequent among Jewish women, probably in the expectation of the new deliverance from the bondage that galled them like that of Egypt of old. It was the name of the Asmonean princess in whom the brave Maccabean line was extinguished by Herod the Great; it belonged to three if not to four of the women of the Gospel; and we find it again marking the miserable being who is cited as having fulfilled the most terrible of all the woes denounced by Moses upon the daughters of Jerusalem.
The name of Mariam continued in the East, but was very slow in creeping into the Western Church, though not only the Blessed Virgin herself had borne it, but two very popular saints, namely, the Magdalen, and the Penitent of Egypt, whose legends were both current at a very early period.
The first Maria whom I can find of undoubted western birth was a Spanish maiden, who was martyred by the Moors at Cordova in 851. Michaelis tells us that the old Spanish name of Urraca is the same as Maria, but this can hardly be true.
It seems to have been the devotion of the Crusaders that first brought Maria into Europe, for we find the first instances about the middle of the twelfth century all at once; Maria of Antioch, a Crusader’s daughter, who married the Emperor Manuel Comnenus; her daughter, Maria Comnena, married to the Marquis of Montferrat; Marie, the daughter of Louis VII. of France, and our Eleanor of Guienne, named probably during their Crusader’s fervour; then Marie, the translator of the Breton legends for Henry III.; Marie, the nun daughter of Edward I., and at the same time Marie all over the western world.
Probably the addition of the German diminutive chen, in French on, formed the name of
“A bonny fine maid of noble degree,
Maid Marion called by name.”
Very soon had her fame travelled abroad, for in 1332 the play of Robin et Marion was performed by the students of Angers, one of them appearing as a fillette déguisée. The origin of Marionettes, puppets disguised to play the part of Maid Marion, is thus explained. They may, however, have received their name from the habit of calling small images of the Blessed Virgin Mariettes, or Marionettes. Several streets of old Paris, in which were such images, were called Rue des Mariettes, or later, Rue des Marionettes. All puppets there came to be called Mariettes and Marmousets; and two streets of Paris were down to the last century called Rue des Marmousets. Henri Etienne says: “Never did the Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has been wreaked in our days on those who had mutilated some Marmouset or Marionette.” Even the bauble of a licensed fool was a Marotte, from the little head at its point, and the supernatural dolls of sorcerers, in the form of toads or apes, were described as Marionettes in an account of a trial for witchcraft in 1600. The term Marmoset passed to the daintiest and most elegant of the monkey tribe, by which it is now monopolized. Marion became a common name in France, and contracted into Manon, and expanded into Marionette, as in a poem of the 13th century where Marion is thus addressed; and in Scotland, where “Maid Marion, fair as ivory bone,” likewise figured in rustic pageantry, she took a stronger hold than anywhere else, is in common life yclept Menie, and has escaped her usual fate of confusion with Marianne. With us, the Blessed Virgin’s name, having come through the French, was spelt in their fashion till the translation of the Bible made our national Mary familiar. Mary II. was the first of our queens who dropped the ie. The chief contractions and endearments are as follows:—
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Maria | Marie | Maria | Marïa |
| Mary | Marion | Marietta | Marinha |
| Marion | Manon | Mariuccia | Mariquinhas |
| Moll | Maion | Mariquita | |
| Molly | Mariette | Maritornes | |
| Polly | Maillard | ||
| Malkin | (Cambrai) | ||
| Mawkes | |||
| Mawkin | |||
| May[[13]] | |||
| Keltic. | Swedish. | Bavarian. | Swiss. |
| Mair (W.) | Maria | Marie | Marie |
| Moissey (Manx) | Maria | Mariel | Mareili |
| Mari (Ir.) | Mariedel | Maga | |
| Marei | Maieli | ||
| Mareiel | Mija | ||
| Marl | Mieli | ||
| Medal | |||
| Miel | |||
| Dutch. | Russian. | Polish. | Illyrian. |
| Maria | Marija | Mary | Maria |
| Marieke | Maika | Marysia | Marica |
| Mike | Mascha | Marynia | Millica |
| Mashinka | |||
| Lusatian. | Esthonian. | Lapland. | Hungarian. |
| Mara | Marri | Marja | Maria |
| Maruscha | Mai | Mari | |
| Maie | Marka |
Our Latin Maria is a late introduction, brought in by that taste which in the last century made everything feminine end with an a.
It is only during the last three centuries that Maria has reigned supreme in Roman Catholic countries, marking the exaggerated devotion paid to the original. Indeed, the Italian proverb, answering to the needle in a bottle of hay, is “Cercar Maria in Ravenna,” so numerous are the Marias there. Even in Ireland there were few Marys till comparatively recent times; but now the Môr that in some parts of the island was translated by Sarah, is changed into Mary.
Since Marys have been thus multiplied, the attributes of the first Mary have been adopted into the Christian name, and used to distinguish their bearer. The earliest and best of these was the Italian Maria Annunciata, or Annunziata, contracted into Nunziata; and followed up in Spain by Maria Anonciada; and in France, by Marie Annonciade. Soon there followed Maria Assunta, in honour of her supposed assumption bodily into glory, but this never flourished beyond Italy, Spain, and her colonies.
France has Marie des Anges, at least as a conventual appellation; as in Spain the votaress of the merciful interceding patroness is called Maria de Mercedes; and she whose parents were mindful of the Seven Sorrows supposed to have pierced the heart of the Holy Mother, would choose for their child Maria de Dolores. There was a legend that Santiago had seen a vision of the Blessed Virgin standing on a pillar of jasper and bidding him found at Zaragoza the church thence called Nuestra[Nuestra] Señora del Pilar, whence, in Spain at least, Pilar has become a female name, as Guadalupe has likewise in honour of a miraculous image of St. Mary, preserved in the church of the mountain once covered with hermitages. Moreover, a district in Mexico, formerly called Tlaltelolco, contained a temple to a favourite goddess of the Aztec race. After the Spanish conquest, the same site became the scene of a vision of Nuestra[Nuestra] Señora, who appeared to a Christian Indian, and intimated that a church was there to be built in her honour. As a token of the reality of the vision, roses burst forth on the bare rock of the Tepeyac, and it further appeared impressed with a miraculous painting, which has been the great subject of adoration from the Mexicans ever since. Guadalupe, a free translation into Spanish of the native name of Tlaltelolco, has been ever since a favourite name with the damsels of Mexico, and is even adopted by such of the other sex as regard the shrine with special veneration. Maria del Incarnaçion is also Spanish. An English gipsy woman lately said ‘Carnation’ was her daughter’s name, and had been her grandmother’s. Was it from this source?
As queen of heaven, Maria has votaries, called in Italy Regina or Reina. The latter was frequent in early times at Florence. In France we find Reine and Reinette, and Regina is a favourite in some parts of Germany, where it has been confused with the derivatives of the old Teutonic Ragin, Council.
Since the promulgation of the new dogma, young ladies in Spain have been called Maria de la Concepcion; in Italy, Concetta. Surely the superstition of these races is recorded in their names. The custom of adding Maria to a man’s name seems to have begun in Italy about 1360, and now most individuals in Italy, and probably likewise in Spain, as well as in the more devout French families, bear the name of Maria; and the old Latin Marius and Virginius, though entirely unconnected except by the sound, have been pressed into the service, and made to do duty as Mario and Virginio in her honour.
Perhaps the Jews had in some degree adopted the Roman fashion of similar names in a family, since the sister of the Blessed Virgin bears the same as her own, and there is a great similarity between those of the sisters of Bethany, which both probably come from mara (bitter), although some deduce Martha from the Aramean mar (a lord), which we often hear as the title of Syrian bishops, as Mar Elias, &c.
Even the earliest writers on the Gospels were at a loss whether to identify the meek contemplative Mary of Bethany, by the woman that was a sinner, who is recorded as performing the same act of devotion, and with Mary Magdalen, once possessed by seven devils and afterwards first witness of the Resurrection. While inquiry was cautious, legend was bold, and threw the three into one without the slightest doubt, going on undoubtingly to narrate the vain and sinful career of Mary Magdalen, describing her luxury, her robes, and in especial her embroidered gloves and flowing hair, and all the efforts of Martha to convert her, until her final repentance. The story proceeded to relate how the whole family set out on a mission to Provence, where Martha, by holding up the cross, demolished a terrific dragon; and Mary, after having aided in converting the country, retired to a frightful desert with a skull for her only companion.
It is this legendary Magdalen, whom painters loved to portray in all her dishevelled grief.
The word itself is believed to be a mere adjective of place, meaning that she came from Magdala, which, in its turn, means a tower or castle, and is represented by the little village of Mejdel, on the lake of Tiberias, so that her proper designation would be Mary of Magdala, i. e. of the tower, probably to distinguish her from Mary of Bethany with whom she is confounded.
It is curious to observe how infinitely more popular her name has been than her sister’s, i. e. accepting the mediæval belief that they were sisters. The Marfa of Russia is of course like the English Martha, Matty, Patty, the true housewifely Martha, independent of the legend of the dragon, and has there been a royal name occurring frequently among the daughters of the earlier Tzars; and the Martha used in Ireland is only as an equivalent for the native Erse Meabhdh, Meave, or Mab, once a great Irish princess, who has since become the queen of the fairies. Martha used also to be used for Mor. But the Marthe and Marthon of the south of France, and the rarer Marta of Italy and Spain, were all from the Provençal dragon-slayer, and as to the popularity of Magdalen, the contractions in the following table will best prove it:
| English. | German. | Swiss. | Danish. |
| Magdalene | Magdalene | Magdalene | Magdelene |
| Maudlin | Madlen | Malin | |
| Maun | Lene | Leli | Magli |
| Madeline | Lenchen | Mali | |
| Italian. | French. | Polish. | Servian. |
| Maddalena | Magdelaine | Magdelina | Mandelina |
| Spanish. | Mazaline—old | Magdusia | Manda |
| Magdalena | Madeleine | Magdosia | |
| Madelena | Madelon | Madde | |
| Lusatian. | Esthonian. | Ung. | Lettish. |
| Madlena | Madli | Magdalena | Madlene |
| Marlena | Mai | Magdolna | Maddalene |
| Marlenka | Male | Madde | |
| Madlenka |
The penitent Mary of Egypt has had her special votaresses. Maria Egyptiaca was a princess of Oettingen in 1666.[[14]]
[12]. Proper Names of the Bible; Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon; Butler’s Lives of the Saints; Dean Stanley.
[13]. Marriott occurs in a Cornish register as a feminine in 1666.
[14]. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Michaelis; Jameson’s Legends of the Madonna; Sacred and Legendary Art; Romancero del Cid; Warton’s History of Poetry; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie; O'Donovan, On Irish Names; Festivals and their Household Words; Christian Remembrancer; Mme. Calderon de la Borca, Mexico.
Section II.—Elisheba, &c.
The names of the wife and son of Aaron bring us to a style of nomenclature that was very frequent among the Israelites at the period of the Exodus, and had begun even earlier. This was the habit of making the name contain a dedication to the Deity, by beginning or ending it with a word of Divine signification.
The Divine title known to man before the special revelation to Moses in the burning bush, was the Hebrew word El, in the plural Elohim, which corresponds to our term Deity or God-head. It was by a derivative from this word that Jacob called the spot where he beheld the angels, Beth El (the House of God), and again the place where he built an altar, El Elohe Israel (the God of Israel), as indeed his own name of Israel meant prevailing with God.
This termination is to be found in the names of several of his grandsons; but we will only in the present section review the class of names where it serves as a prefix.
The first of all of these is Eliezer (God of help), the name of Abraham’s steward who went to bring home Rebecca, and again of the second son of Moses. A very slight change, indicated in our version by the change of the vowels, made it Eleazar, or God will help, the name of Aaron’s eldest surviving son, the second high priest. Both continued frequent among the Jews before the captivity, and after it the distinction between them was not observed, though Eleazar was in high repute as having belonged to the venerable martyr in the Antiochian persecution, as well as to the brave Maccabee, who perished under the weight of the elephant he had stabbed.
In the Gospels, Eleazar has become Lazarus, and in this form is bestowed upon the beggar of the parable, as well as on him who was raised from the dead. It is curious to observe the countries where it has been in use. The true old form once comes to light in the earlier middle age as St. Elzéar, the Comte de St. Sabran, who became a devotee of St. Francis, and has had a scanty supply of local namesakes. The beggar’s name has been frequently adopted in Spain as Lazaro or Lazarillo; Italy has many a Lazzaro; Poland, shows Lazarz; Russia, Lasar; Illyria, Lazo and Laze.
Aaron’s wife was Elischeba, meaning God hath sworn, i. e. an appeal to his covenant. It recurred again in the priestly family in the Gospel period, and had become, in its Greek form, Ελισαβετ; in Latin, Elisabeth.
The mother of the Baptist was not canonized in the West, though, I believe, she was so in the East, for there arose her first historical namesake, the Muscovite princess Elisavetta, the daughter of Jaroslav, and the object of the romantic love of that splendid poet and sea-king, Harald Hardràda, of Norway, who sung nineteen songs of his own composition in her praise on his way to her from Constantinople, and won her hand by feats of prowess. Although she soon died, her name remained in the northern peninsula, and figures in many a popular tale and Danish ballad, as Elsebin, Lisbet, or Helsa. It was the Slavonic nations, however, who first brought it into use, and from them it crept into Germany, and thence to the Low Countries.
Elisabeth of Hainault, on her marriage with Philippe Auguste, seems to have been the first to suffer the transmutation into Isabelle, the French being the nation of all others who delighted to bring everything into conformity with their own pronunciation. The royal name thus introduced became popular among the crown vassals, and Isabelle of Angoulême, betrothed to Hugues de Lusignan, but married to King John, brought Isabel to England, whence her daughter, the wife of Friedrich II., conveyed Isabella to Germany and Sicily. Meantime the lovely character of Elisabeth of Hungary—or Erzsebet as she is called in her native country—earned saintly honours, and caused the genuine form to be extremely popular in all parts of Germany. Her namesake great-niece was, however, in Aragon turned into Isabel, and when married into Portugal, received the surname of De la Paz, because of her gentle, peace-making nature. She was canonized; and Isabel, or Ysabel, as it is now the fashion to spell it in Spain, has ever since been the chief feminine royal name in the Peninsula, and was rendered especially glorious and beloved by Isabel the Catholic.
In the French royal family it was much used during the middle ages, and sent us no fewer than two specimens, namely, the ‘She-Wolf of France,’ and the child-queen of Richard II.; but though used by the Plantagenets and their nobility, it took no hold of the English taste; and it was only across the Scottish border that Isobel or Isbel, probably learned from French allies, became popular, insomuch that its contraction, Tibbie, has been from time immemorial one of the commonest of all peasant names in the Lowlands. The wicked and selfish wife of Charles VI. of France was always called Isabeau, probably from some forgotten Bavarian contraction; but she brought her appellation into disrepute, and it has since her time become much more infrequent in France.
The fine old English ballad that makes ‘pretty Bessee’ the granddaughter of Simon de Montfort is premature in its nomenclature; for the first Bess on record is Elizabeth Woodville, whose mother, Jacquetta of Luxemburg, no doubt imported it from Flanders. Shakespeare always makes Edward IV. call her Bess; and her daughter Elizabeth of York is the lady Bessee of the curious verses recording the political courtship of Henry of Richmond. Thence came the name of Good Queen Bess, the most popular and homely of all borne by English women, so that, while in the last century a third at least of the court damsels were addressed as ‘Lady Betty,’ it so abounded in villages that the old riddle arose out of the contractions.
During the anti-Spanish alliance between England and France, Edward VI. was sponsor to a child of Henri II., who received the Tudor name of Elisabeth, but could not become the wife of Philip II., without turning into Isabel; indeed, the Italian Elisabetta Farnese—a determined personage—was the only lady who seems to have avoided this transformation.
Poetry did not improve our Queen Elizabeth by making her into Eliza, a form which, however, became so prevalent in England during the early part of the present century, that Eliza and Elizabeth are sometimes to be found in the same family. No name has so many varieties of contraction, as will be seen by the ensuing list, where, in deference to modern usage, Elizabeth is placed separately from Isabella.
| English. | Scotch. | German. | Bavarian. | Swiss. |
| Elizabeth | Elizabeth | Elisabeth | Lisi | Elsbeth |
| Eliza | Elspeth | Elise | Liserl | Betha |
| Bessy | Elspie | Lise | Bebba | |
| Betsey | Bessie | Lischen | Bebbeli | |
| Betty | Lizzie | Elsabet | ||
| Lizzy | Elsbet | |||
| Libby | Bettine | |||
| Lisa | Bette | |||
| Ilse | ||||
| Danish. | French. | Italian. | Russian. | Polish. |
| Elisabeth | Elisabeth | Elisabetta | Jelissaveta | Elzbieta |
| Elsebin | Elise | Elisa | Lisa | Elzbietka |
| Helsa | Babet | Betta | Lisenka | |
| Babette | Bettina | |||
| Babichon | Lisettina | |||
| Servian. | Slovak. | Esthonian. | Hungarian. | Lusatian. |
| Jelisavcta | Lizbeta | Ello | Erzebet | Hilzbeta |
| Jelisavka | Liza | Elts | Erzsi | Hilza |
| Liza | Lizika | Liso | Erszok | Hilzizka |
| Orse | Lisa | |||
| Orsike | Liska | |||
| Beta | ||||
Lise and Lisette are sometimes taken as contractions of Elisabeth, but they properly belong to Louise.
| English. | Scotch. | French. | Spanish. | Portuguese. |
| Isabella | Isabel | Isabeau | Ysabel | Isabel |
| Isabel | Isbel | Isabelle | Bela | Isabelhina |
| Belle | Tibbie | |||
| Nib | ||||
| Ibbot | ||||
| Ib |
Scotland and Spain are the countries of Isabel; England and Germany of Elizabeth.
The noblest prophet of the kingdom of Israel was called by two Hebrew words, meaning God the Lord, a sound most like what is represented by the letters Eliyahu, the same in effect as that of the young man who reproved Job and his friends, though, in his case, the Hebrew points have led to his being called in our Bible Elihu, while we know the prophet as Elijah, the translators probably intending us to pronounce the j like an i. The Greek translators had long before formed Ἠλιας, the Elias of the New Testament.
When the Empress Helena visited Palestine, she built a church on Mount Carmel, around which arose a cluster of hermitages, and thus the great prophet and his miracles became known both to East and West.
When the Crusaders visited the Mount of Carmel frowning above Acre, and beheld the church and the hermits around it, marked the spot where the great prophet had prayed, and the brook where he slew the idolaters, no wonder they became devoted to his name, and Helie became very frequent, especially among the Normans. Helie de la Flèche was the protector of Duke Robert’s young son, William Clito; and Helie and Elie were long in use in France, as Ellis must once have been in England, to judge by the surnames it has left. Elias is still very common in the Netherlands.
The order of Carmelites claimed to have been founded by the prophet himself; but when the Latins inundated Palestine, it first came into notice, and became known all over the West. It was placed under the invocation of St. Mary, who was thus called in Italy the Madonna di Carmela or di Carmine, and, in consequence, the two names of Carmela and Carmine took root among the Italian ladies, by whom they are still used. The meaning of Carmel, as applied to the mountain, is vineyard or fruitful field.
Elisha’s name meant God of Salvation. It becomes Eliseus in the New Testament, but has been very seldom repeated; though it is possible that the frequent Ellis of the middle ages may spring from it.
Here, too, it may be best to mention the prophetic name by which the Humanity of the Messiah was revealed to Isaiah—Immanuel (God with us), Imm meaning with; an being the pronoun.
The Greeks appear to have been the first to take up this as a Christian name, and Manuel Komnenos made it known in Europe. The Italians probably caught it from them as Manovello; and the Spaniards and Portuguese were much addicted to giving it, especially after the reign of Dom Manoel, one of the best kings of the noble house of Avis. Manuelita is a feminine in use in the Peninsula. When used as a masculine, as it is occasionally in England and France, the first letter is generally changed to E.[[15]]
[15]. Proper Names of the Bible; Michaelis; Grimm, Deutsche[Deutsche] Mythologie.
Section IV.—Joshua, &c.
A still more sacred personal Divine Name was revealed to Moses upon Mount Horeb—the name that proclaimed the eternal self-existence of Him who gave the mission to the oppressed Israelites.
The meaning of that Name we know, in its simple and ineffable majesty; the pronunciation we do not know, for the most learned doubt whether that the usual substitute for it may not be a mistake. The Jews themselves feared to pronounce it commonly in reading their scriptures, and substituted for it Adonai, that which is indicated by the ‘LORD,’ in capital letters in our Bibles, while the French try to give something of the original import by using the word l'Éternel, and thus the tradition of the true sound has been hidden from man, and all that is known is that the three consonants employed in it were J, or rather Y V H.
Yet, though this holy name was only indicated in reading, it was very frequent in combination in the names of the Israelites, being the commencement of almost all those that with us begin with je or jo, the termination of all those with iah. Nay, the use of the name in this manner has received the highest sanction, since it was by inspiration that Moses added to Hoshea, salvation—the syllable that made it Jehoshea or Joshua, “the Lord my salvation,” fitly marking out the warrior, who, by Divine assistance, should save Israel, and place them safely in the promised land.
That name of the captain of the salvation of Israel seems to have been untouched again till the return from the captivity, when probably some unconscious inspiration directed it to be given to the restorer of the Jews, that typical personage, the high priest, in whom we find it altered into Jeshua; and the Greek soon made it into the form in which it appears as belonging to the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus, and which, when owned by the apostate high priest, under Antiochus Epiphanes, was made by him from Jesus into Jason, to suit the taste of the Greek rulers. It had become common among the Jews; it was the current name for the ancient Joshua, when it was assumed by Him Who alone had a right to it.
A feast in honour of that Name “to which every knee shall bow,” has been marked by the Western Church, and it is probably in consequence of this that the Spanish Americans actually have adopted this as one of their Christian names—a profanation whence all the rest of Christendom has shrunk. There too a and ita are added to it to make it feminine.
In the unfortunate son and grandson of the good Josiah (yielded to the Lord), we see some curious changes of name. The son was called both Eliakim and Jehoiakim, in which the verb meant “will establish or judge;” the only difference was in the Divine Name that preceded it. This miserable prince died during the first siege of Jerusalem, and his son Jehoiachin (appointed of the Lord), reigned for three months till the city was taken, and he was carried away to Babylon. The above-mentioned seems to have been his proper name, but he was commonly called Jeconiah, and Jeremiah denounces his punishment without the prefix, as “this man Coniah.”
After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Jehoiachin was brought out of prison, and lived in some degree of ease and favour at Babylon; and by Greek authors a sort of compromise was made between his name and his father’s, and he becomes sometimes Jeconias, and sometimes Joacim.
There was an early tradition that Joachim had been the name of the father of the Blessed Virgin, but her private history did not assume any great prominence till about 1500, and in consequence the names of her parents are far less often used before than after that era. Her mother’s name, as we shall see, had a history of its own; and was earlier in general use than that of her father, which scarcely came into England at all, and was better known to us when Murat ascended the throne of Naples than at any other time. Being however found in the apocryphal Gospels, it was in use in the Greek Church, and is therefore to be found in Russia. Its forms are,
| German. | Bavarian. | Frisjan. | Swiss. |
| Joachim | Jochum | Hime | Jocheli |
| Jochim | Jochem | ||
| Achim | |||
| Chim | |||
| Spanish. | French. | Italian. | Danish. |
| Joaquim | Joachim | Gioachimo | Joachim |
| Joquim | Gioachino | Johum | |
| Joa | Giovachino | ||
| Russian. | Polish. | Lett. | Illyrian. |
| Joachim | Jachym | Juzziz | Accim |
| Akim | Jukkums | Jacim |
The Germans, French, and Portuguese have the feminine Joachime, Joaquima; or, in Illyrian, Acima.[[16]]
The Book of Judges has not furnished many names to collective Europe. Caleb, the faithful spy, who alone finally accompanied Joshua into the Land of Promise out of all the 600,000 who had come out of Egypt, had a name meaning a dog, seldom copied except by the Puritan taste, and only meeting in one language a personal name of similar signification, namely, the Irish cu (gen.) con.
Caleb’s daughter, Achsah, probably from the shortness and pretty sound of her name, which means a tinkling ornament for the ancle, has a good many namesakes in remote village schools, where it is apt to be spelt Axah. Tirzah (pleasantness) was one of those five daughters of Zelophehad, whose heiresship occupies two chapters of the Book of Numbers. She probably was the origin of Thirza, the name of Abel’s wife in Gessner’s idyll of the Death of Abel, a great favourite among the lower classes in England, whence Thyrza has become rather a favourite in English cottages.
Gideon (a feller or destroyer) seems by his martial exploits to have obtained some admirers among the Huguenots of the civil wars of France, for Gédéon was in some small use among them.
The name of the mighty Nazarene, whose strength was in his hair, is not clearly explained. Schimschon seems best to represent the Hebrew sound, but the Greek had made it Σαμψσων; and our translation, Samson. Some translate it splendid son, others as the diminutive of sun.
The Greek Church and her British daughter did not forget the mighty man of valour, and Samson was an early Welsh Bishop and saint, from whom this became a monastic appellation, as in the instance of Mr. Carlyle’s favourite Abbot Samson. The French still call it Simson, which is perhaps more like the original; and our Simpson and Simkins may thus be derived from it, when they do not come from Simon, which was much more frequent.
The name of the gentle and faithful Ruth has never been satisfactorily explained. Some make it mean trembling; others derive it from a word meaning to join together; and others from Reûth (beauty), which is perhaps the best account of it. In spite of the touching sweetness of her history, Ruth’s name has never been in vogue, except under the influence of our English version of the Bible.
Perhaps this may be the fittest place to mention the prevalence of names taken from the river Jordan during the period of pilgrimages. The Jordan itself is named from Jared (to descend), and perhaps no river does descend more rapidly throughout its entire course than does this most noted stream, from its rise in the range of Libanus to its fall in the Dead Sea, the lowest water in the world. To bathe in the Jordan was one of the objects of pilgrims, and flasks of its water were brought home to be used at baptisms—as was done for the present family of Royal children. It was probably this custom that led to the adoption of Jordan as a baptismal name, and it is to be supposed that it was a fashion of the Normans, since it certainly prevailed in countries that they had occupied. In Calabria, Count Giordano Lancia was the friend of the unfortunate Manfred of Sicily, and recognized his corpse. Jourdain was used in France, though in what districts I do not know, and Jordan was at one time recognized in England. Jordan de Thornhill died in 1200; Jordan de Dalden was at the battle of Lewes in 1264, and two namesakes of his are mentioned[mentioned] in the pedigree of his family. Jordan de Exeter was the founder of a family in Connaught, who became so thoroughly Hibernicized, that, after a few generations, they adopted the surname of, Mac Jordan. Galileo dei Gailïlei probably took both his names from Galilee, which comes from Galil, a circle.
Bethlem Gabor will seem to the mind as an instance of Bethlehem (the place of bread), having furnished Christian names for the sake of its associations, and Nazarene has also been used in Germany.
[16]. Dr. Pusey’s Commentary on the Prophets; Kitto’s Biblical Dictionary; Jameson’s Legends of the Madonna; Michaelis.
Section V.—Names from Chaanach.
Perhaps no word has given rise to a more curious class of derivatives than this from the Hebrew Chaanach, with the aspirate at each end, signifying favour, or mercy, or grace.
To us it first becomes known in the form of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, and it was also used with the Divine syllable in the masculine, as Hananeel, Hanani, Hananiah, or Jehohanan, shortened into Johanan.
Exactly the same names were current among the Phœœœœœœnicians, only we have received them through a Greek or Latin medium. Anna, the companion sister of Dido, was no doubt Hannah, and becoming known to the Romans through the worship paid to her and Elisa by the Carthaginians, was, from similarity of sound, confused by them with their Italian goddess, Anna Perenna, the presiding deity of the circling year (Annus). Virgil, by-and-by, wove the traditions of the foundation of Carthage, and the death of Dido, into the adventures of Æneas; and a further fancy arose among the Romans that after the self-destruction of Dido, Anna had actually pursued the faithless Trojan to Italy, and there drowned herself in the river Numicius, where she became a presiding nymph as Anna Perenna! A fine instance of the Romans' habit of spoiling their own mythology and that of every one else! Oddly enough, an Anna has arisen in Ireland by somewhat the same process. The river Liffey is there said to owe its name to Lifé, the daughter of the chief of the Firbolg race being there drowned. In Erse, the word for river was Amhain, the same as our Avon; but on English tongues Amhain Lifé became Anna Liffey, and was supposed to be the lady’s name; another version declared that it was Lifé, the horse of Heremon the Milesian, who there perished.
Hanno, so often occurring in the Punic wars, was another version of the Hebrew Hanan, and the far-famed Hannibal himself answered exactly to the Hananiah or Johanan of the Holy Land, saying that it was the grace of Baal that unhappily he besought by his very appellation. The Greeks called him Annibas, and the Romans wavered between Annibal and Hannibal as the designation of their great enemy. In the latter times of Rome, when the hereditary prænomina were discarded, Annibal and Annibalianus were given among the grand sounds that mocked their feeble wearers, and Annibale lingered on in Italy, so as to be known to us in the person of Annibale Caracci.
It is a more curious fact, however, that Hannibal has always been a favourite with the peasantry of Cornwall. From the first dawn of parish registers Hannyball is of constant occurrence, much too early, even in that intelligent county, to be a mere gleaning from books; and the west country surname of Honeyball must surely be from the same source. A few other eastern names, though none of them as frequent or as clearly traced as the present, have remained in use in this remote county, and ought to be allowed due weight in favour of the supposed influence of the Phœnician traders over the races that supplied them with tin and lead.
The usual changes were at work upon the Jewish names Hannah and Hananiah. Greek had made the first 'Anna, the second Ananias, or Annas. Indeed Hannah is only known, as such, to the readers of the English version of the Bible, from whom the Irish have taken it to represent their native Ainè (joy). All the rest of Europe calls her, as well as the aged prophetess in the temple, Anne.
The apocryphal Gospels which gave an account of the childhood of the Blessed Virgin, called her mother Anna, though from what tradition is not known. St. Anna was a favourite with the Byzantines from very early times; the Emperor Justinian built a church to her in 550, and in 710 her relics were there enshrined. From that time forward Greek damsels, and all those of the adjoining nations who looked to Constantinople as their head, were apt to be christened Anna. In 988, a daughter of the Emperor Basil married and converted Vladimir, Grand Prince of Muscovy, whence date all the numerous Russian Annas, with their pretty changes of endearment. The grand-daughter of this lady, Anne of Muscovy, sister of Harald Hardrada’s Elisif, carried her name to France, where it grew and flourished.
St. Anne became the patron saint of Prague, where a prodigious festival is yearly holden in her honour, and great are the rejoicings of all the females who hear her name, and who are not a few. It was from Prague that the Bohemian princess, Anne of Luxemburg, brought it to England, and gave it to her name-child, Anne Mortimer, by whom it was carried to the house of York, then to the Howards, from them to Anne Boleyn, and thereby became an almost party word in England.
Abroad it had a fresh access of popularity from a supposed appearance of the saint to two children at Auray, in Brittany, and not only was the Bretonne heiress, twice Queen of France, so named, but she transferred the name to her god-sons, among whom the most notable was the fierce Constable, Anne de Montmorency. Her Italian god-daughter, Anna d'Este, brought it back to the House of Guise, and shortly after a decree from Rome, in 1584, made the name more popular still by rendering the feast obligatory, and thenceforth arose the fashion of giving the names of the Blessed Virgin and her mother in combination, as Anne Marie, or Marianne. This is usually the source of the Marianne, Mariana, or Manna, so often found on the continent; in England, Marianne is generally only a corruption of Marion, and Anna Maria is in imitation of the Italian.
Hardly susceptible of abbreviation, no name has undergone more varieties of endearment, some forms almost being treated like independent names, such as the Annot of Scotland, an imitation of the French Annette, showing the old connection between France and Scotland; and in the present day, there has arisen a fashion of christening Annie, probably from some confusion as to the spelling of Ann or Anne.
All these Annes can distinctly be traced from the Byzantine devotion to the mother of the Blessed Virgin spreading westwards, and at Rome magnified by Mariolatry. There are however what seem like forms of Anne in the West before the adoption of the name from Russia and Bohemia. Welsh Angharawd (far from shame), which is treated as Anne’s equivalent. The Scottish Annaple and Annabella are likewise too early to come from St. Anne, and are probably either from Ainè (joy), a favourite name in early Gaelic times, or from the Teutonic Arnhilda—Eagle heroine.
Annabella by no means is to be explained to mean fair Anna, as is generally supposed. Bellus did, indeed, signify handsome in Latin, and became the beau and belle of French, but the habit of putting it at the end of a name, by way of ornament, was not invented till the late period of seven-leagued names of literature. Annys, or Anisia, is a separate name with a saint in the Greek calendar, and was used in England from the Norman Conquest down at least to 1690. Mr. Bardsley thinks, however, that this was really Agnes; and certainly the unfortunate Scotchwoman, who was supposed to have raised the tempest before the wedding of James VI., is called indifferently Agnes or Annis Simpson.
| English. | Scotch. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Hannah | Hannah | Anne | Ana | Anna |
| Anna | Anne | Annette | Anita | Annica |
| Anne | Nannie | Nanette | Nanna | |
| Nan | Annot | Nanon | Ninetta | |
| Nancy | Ninon | |||
| Nanny | Ninette | |||
| Nichon | ||||
| Nillon | ||||
| German. | Dutch. | Danish. | Swiss. | Bavarian. |
| Anne | Anna | Anna | Anne | Anne |
| Annchen | Antje | Annika | Annali | Annerl |
| Naatje | Nann | Nannerl | ||
| Annechet | Nanneli | |||
| Bohemian. | Russian. | Servian. | Lusatian. | Lett. |
| Ana | Anna | Anna | Anna | Anne |
| Ancika | Anninka | Anuschka | Hanna | Annusche |
| Anca | Anjuska | Aneta | Hanzyzka | |
| Anjutka | Anica | Hancicka | ||
| Annuschka | Anicsika | |||
| Anka | ||||
| Lithuanian. | Hungarian. | Polish. | ||
| Ane | Annze | Anna | Panni | Anna |
| Anikke | Nani | Panna | Anusia | |
Ἰώαννα, or Ἰαννης, for the masculine, Ἰώαννα for the feminine, were already frequent among the natives of Judea, though they appear not to have been used in the family of Zacharias when he was commanded so to call his son.
The Evangelist who was surnamed Mark, and Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward, both had received their names independently, and thus Joannes became a most universal baptismal name, given from the first in the East and at Rome. There were many noted bishops so called in the fourth century, the earliest time when men began to be baptized in memory of departed saints, rather than by the old Roman names. The first whose name is preserved is Joannes of Egypt, one of the hermits of the Thebaïd; the next is the great deacon of Antioch, and patron of Constantinople, Joannes Chrysostomos (John of the golden mouth), whose Greek surname, given him for his eloquence, has caused him to be best known as St. Chrysostom, and has perpetuated in Italy, Grisostomo; in Spain, Crisostomo; whilst the Slavonian nations translate the name and make it Zlatoust.
At Constantinople, the patriarch[patriarch] St. Joannes the Silent, at Rome, the martyr Pope St. Johannes I., at Alexandria, the beneficent patriarch St. Joannes the Almoner, all renewed the popularity of their name. The last mentioned was originally the patron of the order of Hospitallers, though when these Franks were living at enmity to the Greek Church, they discarded him in favour of the Baptist. Each of the two Scriptural saints had two holidays,—the Baptist on the day of his nativity, and of his decollation; the Evangelist, on the 27th of December, as well as on the 6th of May, in remembrance of his confession in the cauldron of boiling oil.
Thus the festivals were so numerous that children had an extra chance of the name, which the Italians called Giovanni, or for short, Vanni; and the French, Jehan.
It was still so infrequent at the time of the Norman Conquest, that among the under-tenants in Domesday Book, to 68 Williams, 48 Roberts, and 28 Walters, there are only 10 Johns, but it was flourishing in the Eastern Church, where one of the Komneni was called, some say from his beauty, others from the reverse, Kaloioannes, or handsome John, a form which was adopted bodily by his descendants, the Komneni of Trebizond.
It had come into Ireland at first as Maol-Eoin (shaveling, or disciple of John), the Baptist sharing with St. Patrick the patronage of the island; but Shawn or Seoin soon prevailed in Ireland, as did Ian in Scotland; but not till the Crusades did French or English adopt it to any great extent, or the English begin to Anglicize it in general by contracting the word and writing it John.
The misfortunes of the English Lackland and of the French captive of Poictiers caused a superstition that theirs was an ill-omened royal name, and when John Stuart came to the Scottish throne, he termed himself Robert III., without, however, averting the doom of his still more unhappy surname. It did not fare amiss with any Castilian Juan or Portuguese Joâo; and in Bohemia a new saint arose called Johanko von Nepomuk, the Empress’s confessor, who was thrown from the bridge of Prague by the insane Emperor Wenzel for refusing to betray her secrets.
As St. Nepomucene, he had a few local namesakes, who get called Mukki or Mukkel. The original word is said to mean helpless.
Double names, perhaps, originated in the desire to indicate the individual patron, where there were many saints of similar name, and thus the votaries of the Baptist were christened Gian Battista, or Jean Baptiste, but only called by the second Greek title—most common in Italy—least so in England.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. | Swiss. | Polish. |
| Baptist | Baptiste | Bautista | Battista | Bisch | Baptysta |
| Batiste | Bischli | ||||
The Illyrians, using the word for christianizing instead of that for baptizing, make the namesakes of the Baptist Kerstiteli.
It was probably in honour of St. John the Evangelist’s guardianship of the Blessed Virgin that her name became commonly joined with his. Giovanni Maria Visconti of Milan, appears in the fifth century, and Juan Maria and Jean Marie soon followed in Spain and France.
Johann was the correct German form, usually contracted into Hans; and it was the same in Sweden, where Johann I., in 1483, was known as King Hans; and in Norway, Hans and Jens, though both abbreviations of Johan, are used as distinct names, and have formed the patronymics, Hanson and Jensen, the first of which has become an English surname. Ivan the Terrible, Tzar of Muscovy, was the first prince there so called, though the name is frequent among all ranks, and the sons and daughters are called Ivanovitch and Ivanovna.
Rare as patronymic surnames are in France, this universal name has there produced Johannot, while the contraction is Jeannot, answering to the Spanish Juanito and the patronymic Juanez. Jan is very frequent in Brittany, where the diminutive is Jannik.
Jock is the recognized Scottish abbreviation, and it would seem to have been the older English one according to the warning to Jockey of Norfolk, at Bosworth. Jack sounds much as if the French Jacques had been his true parent; but “sweet Jack Falstaff, old Jack Falstaff” has made it alienable from John.
Though Joanna was a holy woman of the Gospel, her name did not come into favour so early as the male form, and it is likely that it was adopted rather in honour of one of the St. Johns than of herself, since she is not canonized; and to the thirty feasts of the St. Johns, in the Roman calendar, there are only two in honour of Joannas, and these very late ones, when the name was rather slipping out of fashion. Its use seems to have begun all at once, in the twelfth century, in the south of France and Navarre, whence ladies called Juana in Spanish, Jehanne or Jeanne in France, came forth, and married into all the royal families of the time. Our first princess so called was daughter to Henry II., and married into Sicily; and almost every king had a daughter Joan, or Jhone, as they preferred spelling it. Joan Makepeace was the name given to the daughter of Edward II., when the long war with the Bruces was partly pacified by her marriage; and Joan Beaufort was the maiden romantically beloved by the captive James I. The Scots, however, usually called the name Jean, and adopted Janet from the French Jeanette, like Annot from Annette.
The various forms and contractions are infinite:—
| English. | Scotch. | Welsh. | Breton. | Gaelic. |
| John | John | Jan | Jan | Ian |
| Johnny | Johnnie | Jenkin | Jannik | |
| Jack | Jock | |||
| Jenkin | ||||
| Erse. | German. | Danish. | Dutch. | Belgian. |
| Shawn | Johannes | Johan | Jan | Jehan |
| Eoin | Hans | Janne | Jantje | Jan |
| Hanschen | Jens | Hannes | ||
| Hans | Hanneken | |||
| Jantje | Hanka | |||
| Bavarian. | Swiss. | French. | Spanish. | Portuguese. |
| Johan | Johan | Jean | Juan | Joao |
| Hansl | Han | Jeanno | Juanito | Joaninho |
| Hansli | Jehan—old | Joanico | ||
| Hasli | Joaozinho | |||
| Italian. | Modern Greek | Russian. | Polish. | Bohemian. |
| Giovanni | Ιωαννης | Ivan | Jan | Jan |
| Gianni | Jannes | Vanja | Janek | |
| Gian | Giannes | Vanka | ||
| Giovanoli | Giankos | Ivanjuschka | ||
| Giannino | Giannakes | Vanjuschka | ||
| Vanni | Joannoulos | Vanjucha | ||
| Nanni | Nannos | |||
| Gianozzo | ||||
| Slavonic. | Illyrian. | Lett. | Lithuanian. | Esthonian. |
| Jovan | Jovan | Janis | Jonas | Johan |
| Ivan | Jovica | Janke | Ancas | Hannus |
| Janez | Jvo | Ans | Jonkus | Ants |
| Jveica | Ansis | Jonkutti | ||
| Jvic | Enseliss | |||
| Enskis | ||||
| Hungarian. | Lapp. | |||
| Janos | Jofan | |||
| Jani | Jofa | |||
Jessie, though now a separate name, is said to be short for Janet. Queen Joans have been more uniformly unfortunate than their male counterparts. Twice did a Giovanna reign in Naples in disgrace and misery; and the royalty of poor Juana la Loca in Castille was but one long melancholy madness. There have, however, been two heroines, so called, Jeanne of Flanders, or Jannedik la Flamm, as the Bretons call her, the heroine of Henbonne, and the much more noble Jeanne la Pucelle of Orleans. The two saints were Jeanne de Valois, daughter of Louis XI., and discarded wife of Louis XII., and foundress of the Annonciades, and Jeanne Françoise de Chantel, the disciple of St. François de Sales.
Johanna is a favourite with the German peasantry, and is contracted into Hanne. It was not till the Tudor period, as Camden states, that Jane came into use; when Jane Seymour at once rendered it so fashionable that it became the courtly title; and Joan had already in Shakespeare’s time descended to the cottage and kitchen.
| English. | Scotch. | German. | Dutch. | French. |
| Johanna | Joanna | Johanna | Jantina | Jeanne |
| Joanna | Jean | Hanne | Janotje | Jehanne |
| Joan | Jeanie | Jantje | Jeannette | |
| Jane | Jenny | Jeannetton | ||
| Jone | Janet | |||
| Jenny | Jessie (Gael.) | |||
| Janet | ||||
| Janetta | Seonaid | |||
| Spanish. | Portuguese. | Italian. | Russian. | Polish. |
| Juana | Jovanna | Giovanna | Ivanna | Joanna |
| Juanita | Johannina | Giovannina | Zaneta | Hanusia |
| Anniuscka | Anusia | |||
| Slovak. | Illyrian. | Bulgarian. | Lusatian. | |
| Jovana | Ivana | Ivanku | Hanka | |
| Janesika | Jovana | |||
| Ivancica | Jovka | |||
| Ivka |
Section VI.—David.
“The man after God’s own heart” was well named from the verb to love, David, still called Daood in the East. It was Δαυὶδ in the Septuagint; Δαβὶδ and Δαυεὶδ in the New Testament; and the Vulgate made it the name well known to us.
The Eastern Church, in which the ancient Scriptural names were in greater honour than in the West, seems to have adopted David among her names long before it was revived among the Jews, who never seem to have used it since the days of their dispersion. It has always been common among the Armenians and Georgians. Daveed is frequent in Russia, in honour of a saint, who has his feast on the 29th of July; and in Slavonic it is shortened into Dako; in Esthonia it is Taved; in Lusatia, Dabko.
The influence of eastern Christianity is traceable in the adoption of David in the Keltic Church. Early in the 6th century, a Welshman of princely birth (like almost all Welsh saints), by name David, or Dawfydd, lived in such sanctity at his bishopric of Menevia, that it has ever since been known as St. David’s, the principal Welsh see having been there transplanted from Caerleon in his time. Dewi was the vernacular alteration of his name, and the Church of Llan Dewi Brevi commemorates a synod held by him against the Pelagians. Dafod, or Devi, thus grew popular in Wales, and when ap Devi ceased to be the distinction of the sons of David—Davy, Davis, and Davies became the surname, Taffy the contraction, and Tafline or Vida the feminine. The Keltic bishop was revered likewise in Scotland, and his name was conferred upon the third son of Malcolm Ceanmohr, the best sovereign whom Scotland ever possessed, and whom she deservedly canonized, although his Protestant descendant James VI. called him “a sore saint to the crown,” because of his large donations of land to the clergy—at that time the only orderly subjects in the country. Affection and honour for the royal saint filled the Lowlands with Davids, and this has continued a distinctively Scottish name.
The Anglicizing Irish took David as the synonym of Dathi (far darting); and Diarmaid (a freeman); and the Danes made it serve for Dagfinn (day white).[[17]]
[17]. Proper Names of the Bible; Rees, Welsh Saints; Jones, Welsh Sketches; O'Donovan, Irish Names; Seven Champions of Christendom.
Section VII.—Salem.
It is remarkable to observe how the longing for peace is expressed in the names of almost every nation. The warlike Roman may be an exception, but the Greek had his Eireneos; the German, his Friedrich; the Kelt, his Simaith; the Slave, his Lubomirski; testifying that even in the midst of war, there was a longing after peace and rest! And, above all, would this be the case with the Hebrew, to whom sitting safely and at peace, beneath his own vine and his own fig-tree, was the summit of earthly content.
Schalem (peace)! By the Prophet-King it was bestowed upon the two sons to whom he looked for the continuance of his throne, and the continuance of the promises of ‘peace,’—Absalom (father of peace), and afterwards with a truer presage, Salomo, or Solomon, (the peaceful)!
Long before his time, however, Welsh and Breton saints had been called Solomon, as well as one early Armorican prince; and likewise an idiot boy, who lived under a tree at Auray, only quitting it when in want of food, to wander through the villages muttering “Salaum hungry”—the only words, except Ave Maria, that he could pronounce. When he died, the neighbours, thinking him as soulless as a dog, buried him under his tree; but, according to the legend, their contempt was rebuked by a beauteous lily springing from his grave, and bearing on every leaf the words Ave Maria. Certain it is that an exquisite church was there erected, containing the shrine of Salaun the Simple, who thus became a popular saint of Brittany, ensuring tender reverence for those who, if mindless, were likewise sinless, and obtaining a few namesakes.
Salomon and Salomone are the French and Italian forms; and Solomon is so frequent among the Jews as to have become a surname.
Russia and Poland both use it, and have given it the feminines, Ssolominija and Salomea; but Schalem had already formed a true feminine name of its own, well known in Arabic literature as Suleima, Selma, or Selima.
But returning to the high associations whence the names of Christians should take their source, we find Salome honoured indeed as one of the women first at the sepulchre; and it is surprising that thus recommended, her name should not have been more frequent. It sometimes does occur in England, and Salomée is known in France; but it is nowhere really popular except in Switzerland, where, oddly enough, Salomeli is the form for the unmarried, and Salome is restricted to the wife.
In Denmark, similarity of sound led Solomon to be chosen as the ecclesiastical name, so to speak, of persons whose genuine appellation was Solmund, or sun’s protection. Perhaps it was in consequence that the Lord Mayor of London, of 1216, obtained the name of Solomon de Basing. The county of Cornwall much later shows a Soloma.[[18]] It is a question whether Lemuel be another name for Solomon. It means “to God,” or “dedicated to God,” and was a favourite at one time with Puritan mothers. Swift made it famous; but Lemuel Gulliver was by no means an improbable north country name, and Lemuel is not wholly disused even now.
[18]. Proper Names of the Bible; Souvestre, Derniers Bretons.
Section VIII.—Later Israelite Names.
By the time the kingdom was established most of the Israelite names were becoming repetitions of former ones, and comparatively few fresh ones come to light, though there are a few sufficiently used to be worth cursorily noting down.
Hezekiah meant strength of the Lord, and in the Greek became Ezekias. Ezekiel is like it, meaning God will strengthen. The great prophet who was the chief glory of Hezekiah’s reign was Isaiah (the salvation of the Lord), made by Greek translators into Esaias, and thence called by old French and English, Esaie, or Esay. The Russians, who have all the old prophetic names, have Eesaia; but it is not easy to account for the choice of Ysaie le Triste as the name of the child of Tristram and Yseulte in the romance that carried on their history to another generation, unless we suppose that Ysaie was supposed to be the masculine of Yseulte! the one being Hebrew, and meaning as above, the other Keltic, and meaning a sight.
Contemporary with Hezekiah, and persecuted by the Assyrian monarch when he returned to Nineveh after the miraculous destruction of his host, was the blind Israelite of the captivity whose name is explained to have been probably Tobijah (the goodness of the Lord), a name occurring again in the prophet Zechariah, and belonging afterwards to one of the Samaritan persecutors. Probably, in Greek, came the variation of the names of the father and son; perhaps the latter was once meant for Tobides, the son of Tobias.
The marvellous element in the book of Tobit gained for it much popularity; scenes from it appeared in art. Thus Tobias had a diffusion in the later middle ages much greater than the names of his contemporaries of far more certain history, and in Ireland Toby has enjoyed the honour, together with Thaddeus and Timothy, of figuring as an equivalent for Tadgh, a poet.
| English. | French. | Swiss. | Hamburg. | Italian. | Russian. |
| Tobias | Tobie | Tobies | Tewes | Tobia | Tobija |
| Tobit | Tebes | Tobej | |||
| Toby | Tebos | ||||
| Beiali |
Hephzibah (my delight is in her), was the wife of Hezekiah, and it may have been in allusion to her that Isaiah spoke of the land being called Hephsibah. It has been rather a favourite name in America, where it gets turned into Hepsy.
As Judah sinned more and more and her fate drew on, Jeremiah stood forth as her leading prophet. His name meant exalted of the Lord, and became Jeremias in the Greek, Jeremy in vernacular English. As the name of some of the early eastern saints it has had a partial irregular sort of use in the West, and is adopted direct from the prophet in the Greco-Slavonic Churches. The French, struck by the mournful strain of the prophet, use Jeremiade to express a lamentation; and the English are rather too ready to follow their example. Jeremy is considered as another variety of equivalent for the Gaelic Diarmaid, and this has led to the frequency of Jerry among families of Irish connection. In Switzerland, Jeremias is contracted into Meies or Mies; in Russia it is Jeremija; but nowhere has it been so illustrious in modern times as in the person of our own Jeremy Taylor. The king whom Jeremiah saw led into captivity was Zedekiah (justice of the Lord).
The prophet of the captivity, Daniel, bore in his name an amplification of that of Dan (a judge). The termination signified God the judge, and the alias Belteshazzar, imposed upon him by the Chaldean monarch, is considered to translate and heathenize the name, making Bel the judge. It is observable that Daniel never calls himself thus, though he gives these heathen titles to his three companions.
Daniel has always flourished as a name in the East. Daniel and Verda (a rose), were martyred by Shapoor in 344; another Daniel was crazy enough to succeed Simeon Stylites on his pillar; and thus the Armenian, Montenegrin, and Slavonian races are all much attached to Daniela, or Daniil, as they call it in Russia; or in Esthonia, Taniel or Tanni. The Welsh adopted it as Deiniol, the name of the saint who founded the monastery of Bangor, the High Choir, in the sixth century, and it was thus known to the Bretons; and in Ireland it was adopted as the equivalent to Domnall, Donacha, and other names from Don (or brown-haired), thus causing Dan to be one of the most frequent of Irish contractions.
St. Jerome “transfixed with a dagger”—with his pen—the additional chapters of the Book of Daniel relating to the story of Susanna, to show that he did not regard it as genuine, but, like the story of Judith, it was greatly more popular than the narratives in the canonical books, and was commemorated in ballad, mystery, tapestry, and painting. The name was properly Schuschannah (a lily), though we know it as Susannah. It belonged to one of the holy women at the sepulchre, and it was likewise in the calendar, for two virgin martyrs, named Susanna, had suffered in the times of persecution, and though not commemorated in the Western Church, Queen Susanna, the “Lily of Tiflis,” had died for the truth in the hands of Mahometans. The name has been chiefly popular in France and Switzerland, as in England. The Swiss contraction, Züsí-Ketti, for Susanne-Catherine, is quaint.[[19]]
| English. | German. | Bavarian |
| Susannah | Susanne | Susanne |
| Susan | Suschen | Sanrl |
| Susie | Suse | Sandrl |
| Sukey | ||
| Sue | ||
| Swiss. | French. | Lithuanian. |
| Susanne | Susanne | Zuzane |
| Zosa | Suzette | |
| Zosel | Suzon | |
| Zösel |
This may be the best place to mention the Aramean Tabitha, explained by St. Luke as the same as Dorcas (a roe or gazelle), the Greek word being from its full dark eye. Tabitha and Dorcas both have associations unsuited to the “dear gazelle.” As the charitable disciple raised by St. Peter, her names were endeared to the Puritans.
Of the minor prophets, the names have been little employed. Joel meant strong-willed; Amos, a burthen; Obadiah, servant of the Lord, has been slightly more popular, perhaps, in honour of him who hid the prophets in a cave, with whom the mediæval imagination confounded the prophet, so that loaves of bread are the emblem of Obadiah in ancient pictures of the twelve prophets. Even the Abbacuc, as the Apocrypha calls him, who, in the story of Bel and the Dragon is carried off by the hair to feed Daniel in the den of lions, seems to have been likewise supposed to be the same person in the strange notions of Scripture history that once floated among our forefathers. The name of Abacuck, or Habbakkuk, was conferred upon a child by one of the last persons one would have suspected of such a choice, namely, Mary, Queen of Scots. On her way to mass, she was waylaid by one of her caterers, who acquainted her that he had a child to be baptized, and desired her to give the name. “She said she would open the Bible in the chapel, and whatever name she cast up, that should be given to the child;” and for the child’s misfortune it proved to be ‘Abacuck!’ The name comes from the verb to clasp, and means embracing.
Micah is a contraction of Micaiah, and means “Who is like unto the Lord.” Nahum—to us connected with “Tate and Brady”—was consolation; Nehemiah expanded it, adding the Divine termination; Zephaniah is, protected of the Lord; Haggai (festival of the Lord), called Aggae, when brought through a Greek medium, is rather a favourite in Russia.
Zachariah (remembrance of the Lord), has been more in favour. After belonging to a king of Israel and to the priest murdered by King Jehoash, it came forth after the captivity as Zechariah with the prophet; and in the New Testament, as Zacharias, names the father of the Baptist; and the mysterious martyr who was to fill up the measure of the iniquity of the Jews; and again appears as Zaccheus, the publican of Jericho. It was rather frequent among Eastern Christians, and belonged to the pope who first invited the Franks into Italy to protect him from the Lombards; nor has it ever quite died away in the West, although nowhere popular.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Danish. |
| Zacharias | Zacharie | Zaccaria | Sakerl |
| Zachary | |||
| Zach | |||
| Bavarian. | Russian. | Slavonic. | Illyrian. |
| Zachereis | Sacharija | Sakarie | |
| Zacherl | Sachar | Charija | Zaro |
| Zacher | Zako | ||
| Zaches | |||
| Zach |
Of those to whom these later prophets were sent, Ezra’s name is thought to be the same as that of Zerah, son of Judah, the rising of light, from whom likewise Heman, the writer of the 88th Psalm, is termed the Ezrahite. The name of Ezra is hardly to be recognized in that of Esdras, as the Greek translators rendered it.[[20]] The house of Aphrah, mentioned in the Prophet Micah, means the house of dust, or ashes, and the Puritans, with their love of piteous names, adopted Aphra as a name. As well it appears as ‘Dust’ and ‘Ashes’ in actual English.[[21]]
[19]. Proper Names of the Bible; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Michaelis; O'Donovan; Butler.
[20]. Proper Names of the Bible; Michaelis; Chambers, Records of Scotland.
[21]. Bardsley, Puritan Nomenclature.
Section IX.—Angelic Names.
We have thrown these together, because, though our common term for those spiritual messengers is Greek, yet all the other words for them, as well as the three individual angelic designations that have come into use as baptismal names, are derived from the Hebrew.
Moreover, the first of these belonged to the last of the prophets, Malach-jah, the angel or messenger of God. It has even been thought by some commentators that this title of the prophet was the quotation of his own words, “Behold, I send my messenger (or Malachi) before my face.”
Malachi would never have been a modern name, but for the Irish fancy that made it the equivalent of Maelseachlain, the disciple of St. Sechnall, or Secundus, a companion of St. Patrick; and as the era of him who is now called King Malachi with the collar of gold, was particularly prosperous, the name has come into some amount of popularity.
The Septuagint always translated Malach by Ἀγγελος, even in that first sentence of the prophet, which in our version bears his name. Angelos had simply meant a messenger in Greek, as it still does; but it acquired the especial signification of a heavenly messenger, both in its own tongue, and in the Latin, whither Angelus was transplanted with this and no other sense.
Angelos first became a name in the Byzantine Empire. It probably began as an epithet, since it comes to light in the person of Konstantinos Angelos, a young man of a noble family of Philadelphia, whose personal beauty caused him, about the year 1100, to become the choice of the Princess Theodora Komnena. It is thus highly probable that Angelos was first bestowed as a surname, on account of the beauty of the family. They were on the throne in 1185, and Angelos continued imperial till the miserable end of the unhappy Isaac, and his son, Alexios, during the misdirected crusade of the Venetians. Angelos thus became known among the Greeks; and somewhere about 1217, there came a monastic saint, so called, to Sicily, who preached at Palermo, and was murdered by a wicked count, whose evil doings he had rebuked. The Carmelites claimed St. Angelo as a saint of their order, and his name, both masculine and feminine, took hold of the fancy of Italy, varied by the Neapolitan dialect into Agnolo or Aniello—e. g., the wonderful fisherman, Masaniello, was, in fact, Tomasso Angelo; by the Venetian into Anziolo, Anzioleto, Anzioleta; and by the Florentine, into Angiolo, Angioletto, and thence into the ever-renowned contraction Giotto, unless indeed this be from Gotofredo. It passed to other nations, but was of more rare occurrence there, except in the feminine. The fashion of complimenting women as angels, left the masculine Ange to be scantily used in France, and Angel now and then in England; but in Italy alone did Angiolo, and its derivative Angelico, thrive. All the other countries adopted the feminine, either in the simple form or the diminutive, or most commonly, the derivative, Angelica (angelical), noted in romance as the faithless lady, for whose sake Orlando lost his heart, and his senses. She was a gratuitous invention of Boiardo and Ariosto; whose character for surpassing beauty made her name popular, and thus Angelica and Angelique have always been favourites.
| English. | German. | French. |
| Angela | Engel | Angele |
| Angelot | Engelchen | Angeline |
| Angelina | Angelina | Angelique |
| Angelica | Angelica | |
| Italian. | Polish. | Bohemian. |
| Angiola | Ancela | Anjela |
| Angioletta | Anjelina | |
| Angelica | Anjelika | |
| Agnola | ||
| Anzioleta |
Angel was most often a man’s name in England. We find it at Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1591, and sometimes likewise in Cornwall.
Archangel has even been used as an English name.
The mysterious creatures that are first mentioned as “keeping the way of the tree of life,” then were represented in the tabernacle overshadowing the ark, and afterwards were revealed in vision to the Prophet Ezekiel and to the Apostle St. John, combined in their forms the symbols of all that was wisest, bravest, strongest, and loftiest in creation—the man, the lion, the ox, and eagle.
In the lands where Art made the Cherub a mere head with wings, Cherubino arose as a Christian name, for it is hardly ever to be met with out of Spain and Italy.
Equally misused is Seraph—now a lady’s name, as Seraphine in France; Serafina, in Spain and Italy. The word seraph, or saraph, signifies burning, or fiery, and would apply to that intensity of glory that Ezekiel struggles to express in the cherubim by comparisons to amber and to glowing embers, or to their intense fervour of love.
Three individual angels have been revealed to us by name as of the seven that stand in the presence of God, and foremost of these is Michael (who is like unto God), he who was made known to Daniel as the protector of the Jewish people; to Zechariah, as defending them from Satan; to St. Jude, as disputing with Satan for the body of Moses; and to St. John, as leading the hosts of Heaven to battle with the adversary and prevailing over him.
His name would have seemed in itself fit only for an archangel, yet before apparently he had been made known, it had been borne by the father of one of David’s captains, and by a son of Jehoshaphat, and it was almost the same as Micaiah, the name of him who foretold the destruction of Ahab.
Constantine the Great dedicated a church in his new city in honour of St. Michael, the archangel, and thenceforth Mickaelion, or Mikael, have been favourites with all branches of the Eastern Church.
An appearance of the archangel in Colosse led the way to another legend of his descent upon Monte Galgano in Apulia, somewhere about 493. Then came a more notable vision, seen by Gregory the Great himself, of the angel standing with outstretched sword on the tomb of Adrian, which has ever since been called the castle of St. Angelo. In 706, St. Michael was again seen to take his stand upon the isolated rock on the Norman coast, so noted as the fortress and convent of Mont St. Michel. Moreover tradition placed him upon the Cornish rock,—
“When the great vision of the guarded mount
Looked towards Namancos and Bayona’s hold.”
He was above all others the patron of the Christian warrior; his armour-clad effigy was seen in almost every church; the young knight was dubbed in his name, as well as that of the national saint; and since the prevalence of saintly names, his name has been frequently bestowed. It is, perhaps, most common in the Greek and Slavonic countries; but Ireland makes great use of it; and Italy has united it with the epithet angel, in the one distinguished instance of Michelangelo Buonarotti.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Michael | Michel | Miguel | Michele |
| Mick | Michon | ||
| Mike | Michau | ||
| German. | Dutch. | Swedish. | Russian. |
| Michael | Michiel | Mikael | Michail |
| Micha | Micheltje | Mikel | Michaila |
| Micha | Mikas | Misha | |
| Mischenka | |||
| Slavonic. | Servian. | Lett. | Hungarian. |
| Miha | Miljo | Mikkelis | Mihaly |
| Mihal | Miho | Mihal | |
| Mihaljo | Misa | Miska | |
| Mijailo |
There is some confusion in the German mind between it and the old michel (mickle, large), which, as a name, it has quite absorbed. It has the rare feminines,
| French. | Russian. | Portuguese. |
| Michelle | Micheline | Miguella |
| Michée | Mikelina |
Legend has been far less busy with Gabriel, “the hero of God;” the angel who strengthened Daniel, and who brought the promise to Zacharias and to the Blessed Virgin. His name is chiefly used by the Slavonians; and in Hungary we find it in combination with Bethlehem, belonging to that noted chieftain, Bethlem Gabor.
It was known and used everywhere, however; and the Swedish house of Oxenstjerna considered it to have been the saving of their line from extinction, all their sons having died in the cradle, owing, it was thought, to Satan’s strangling them; till at length one was named Gabriel; and having thus obtained the protection of the guardian angel, survived to be the ancestor of the minister of the great Gustavus. The feminine, Gabrielle, has been a favourite in France ever since la belle Gabrielle gave it a reputation for beauty.
| English. | German. | Bavarian. | Swiss. | Italian. |
| Gabriel | Gabriel | Gabe | Gabëler | Gabriello |
| Gab | Gaberl | |||
| Russian. | Polish. | Illyrian | Lett. | Hungarian. |
| Gavrül | Gabryel | Gabriel | Gaberjels | Gabriel |
| Gavrila | Gavrilo | Gabris | Gabor | |
| Gavril | ||||
| Gavro | ||||
| FEMININE. | ||||
| French. | German. | Slavonic. | ||
| Gabrielle | Gabriele | Gavrila | ||
| Gavra | ||||
Raphael (the medicine of God), is the angel who guided Tobias and healed his father. Italy and Spain are the countries where his name is most used, and well it may, in the first named, after the fame of him who has made it the highest proverb in art. It hardly varies, except by the double ff Italian, and the single one of Spain, to supply its Greek φ. I have heard of a girl at Mentone called Ravelina, probably Raffaellina.[[22]]
[22]. Smith, Dictionary of the Bible; Proper Names of the Bible; Williams, Commentary on the Gospels; Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art; Ruskin, Modern Painters; Marryat, Sweden.
PART II.
NAMES PROM THE PERSIAN.
Section I.—The Persian Language.
Scanty as are the Christian names derived from the Persian race, they are very curious and interesting, partly on account of the changes that they have undergone, and still more because the language whence they are derived belongs to the same group as our own, and testifies in many of its words to the common origin.
To begin with the sovereign to whom all alike look up; him who is “called by name in the book of Isaiah,” as the shepherd who should restore Judah after the Captivity. Kuru is a name said to be older than the Sanscrit and of unknown signification; although some derive it from Khur, one name for the sun. Kureish was the original form; Koreish to the Hebrews; Kyros to the Greeks, whence the Romans took the Cyrus by which he is known to Europe. His only namesake in his own line was he who invited the 10,000 from Greece and perished at Cunaxa, and of whom is told the story of his willing acceptance of the water of the river Kur or Cyrus, whose name sounded like his own. When the Sassanids revived the old Achæmenid names they pronounced the royal word as Khoosroo, and the Byzantines recorded it as Chosröes, when Chosröes Nushirvan, or the magnanimous, almost rivalled the glory of his ancestor—Kai Khoosroo, as the Shahnameh called him.
Not only had the fire-worshippers revived the name, but it had been borne by various Christians in the East, one of whom, a physician of Alexandria, suffered in one of the persecutions, having been detected in visiting a Christian prisoner. He was buried at Canope, in Egypt, and was called in the Coptic calendar Abba Cher, or Father Cyrus; in the Greek, Abba Cyrus. His relics were afterwards transported to Rome, where the Church built over them was called, by the Italians, Saint Appassara. Like a fixed star, the original Cyrus had shone through adjacent darkness, evident by his lustre, but his lineaments lost in distance, and thus Ferdosi makes him a mere mythical hero. Herodotus copied some distorted tradition; Xenophon pourtrayed imaginary perfection in his Cyropædia; and moderns have taken even greater liberties with him. Artaban, ou le grand Cyrus, the ponderous romance of Mlle. de Scudery, was a stately French tale of love and war, containing a long amorous correspondence between Cyrus and his beloved, the model and admiration of the précieuses in their glory, and absolutely not without effect upon nomenclature. In one village in Picardy there still exist living specimens of Oriane, Philoxène, Célamire, Arsinoe, Calvandre, all derived from vassals named by their enthusiastic seigneurs in honour of the heroines of the fashionable romances, and still inherited by their posterity long after the seigneurs and the heroines are alike forgotten.
Either from his being mentioned in the Bible, or from the Cyropædia, Cyrus has had some currency as an English baptismal name.[[23]]
Section II.—Esther.
Khshayarsha, from Kshaya (a king), and arsha (venerable), was the word that was converted in Hebrew into Achashverosh, and in our Bible into Ahasuerus, while the Greeks called it Xerxes. In Illyria people are christened from him Kserksas, and called Sersa, and a few seekers of Scripture names, chiefly in America, have called their sons Ahasuerus, in common life Hazzy.
The reigning wife of Xerxes is known to have been Amestris, the daughter of an Achæmenian noble, and she might well have been Vashti, set aside only for a time when the address of the nobles gained a victory over her. The fair daughter of the tribe of Benjamin, whose royalty ensured her people’s safety, was in her own tongue Hadassah, or the Myrtle; some say, Atossa; but the Persian epithet by which we know her may have been taken from satarah, a word showing the ancient union of the languages, since Aster is Arab and Greek; and from thence and the Latin stella have sprung the modern étoile, estrella, star, stern, stjorna, which the Septuagint gave as Ἑστὴρ, the Romans as Esthera and Hestera; whence the occasional variations in English of Esther or Essie, and Hester or Hetty.
Not till the days of Racine was Esther much in vogue. The tragedian, being requested to write a sacred drama to be acted by the young ladies of St. Cyr, chose this subject in compliment to Madame de Maintenon, as the faultless Esther preferred before the discarded Vashti, namely, Madame de Montespan! Esther thereupon became a favourite lady’s name in France, and vied in popularity with the cumbrous splendours taken from the Scudery cycle of romance. At the same time it was borne by the two ladies who had the misfortune to be the object of Dean Swift’s affection, Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh, whom he called, one by the Latin name Stella; the other, by the generic title of our finest English butterflies, Vanessa. Estrella was the heroine of a Spanish pastoral, whence the Abbé Florian borrowed his theatrical shepherdess Estelle, which thus became a French name, though chiefly on the stage, and both Estelle and Stella are sometimes used as Epiphany names for girls.
Roschana, as it is now pronounced, is still common in Persia, and means the dawn of day. Roxane and Statire, as rival heroines of Racine, became proverbs in France for the stately or the languishing form of tragedy dame. Roxana, or Roxy, is one of the favourite American grandiloquent style of names.