“If a man be baptized by the name of Thomas, and after, at his confirmation by the Bishop, he is named John, his name of confirmation shall stand.”
He then quotes the case of Sir Francis Gawdie, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, whose name by baptism was Thomas, Thomas being changed to Francis at confirmation. He holds that Francis shall stand (“Institutes,” 1. iii.). This practice manifestly arose out of Peccham’s rule, but it is strange that wanton instances should be left unchanged, and the orthodox allowed to be altered.
Arising out of the Puritan error of permitting names like Tamar and Dinah to stand, modern eccentricity has gone very far, and it would be satisfactory to see many names in use at present forbidden. I need not quote the Venuses of our directories. Emanuel is of an opposite character, and should be considered blasphemy. We have not adopted Christ yet, as Dr. Doran reminded us they have done in Germany, but my copy of the London Directory shows at least one German, bearing the baptismal name of Christ, at present dwelling in the metropolis. Puritan eccentricity is a trifle to this.
IV. Losses.
(a.) The Destruction of Pet Forms.
But let us now notice some of the more disastrous effects of the great Hebrew invasion. The most important were the partial destruction of the nick forms, and the suppression of diminutives. The English pet names disappeared, never more to return. Desinences in “cock,” “kin,” “elot,” “ot,” “et,” “in,” and “on,” are no more found in current literature, nor in the clerk’s register. Why should this be so? An important reason strikes us at once. The ecclesiastic names on which the enclytics had grown had become unpopular well-nigh throughout England. It was an English, not a Puritan prejudice. With the suppression of the names proper went the desinences attached to them. The tree being felled, the parasite decayed. Another reason was this: the names introduced from the Scriptures did not seem to compound comfortably with these terminatives. The Hebrew name would first have to be turned into a nick form before the diminutive was appended. The English peasantry had added “in,” “ot,” “kin,” and “cock” only to the nickname, never to the baptismal form. It was Wat-kin, not Walterkin; Bat-kin, not Bartholomewkin; Wilcock, not Williamcock; Colin, not Nicholas-in; Philpot, not Philipot. But the popular feeling for a century was against turning the new Scripture names into curt nick forms. As it would have been an absurdity to have appended diminutives to sesquipedalian names, national wit, rather than deliberate plan, prevented it. If it was irreverent, too, to curtail Scripture names, it was equally irreverent to give them the diminutive dress. To prove the absolute truth of my statement, I have only to remind the reader that, saving “Nat-kin,” not one single Bible name introduced by the Reformation and the English Bible has become conjoined with a diminutive.[19]
The immediate consequence was this; the diminutive forms became obsolete. Emmott lingered on till the end of the seventeenth century; nay, got into the eighteenth:
“Emmit, d. of Edward and Ann Buck, died 24 April, 1726, aged 6 years.”—Hawling, Gloucester.
But it was only where it was not known as a form of Emma, and possibly both might exist in the same household. I have already furnished instances of Hamlet. Here is another:
“The Rev. Hamlet Marshall, D.D., died in the Close, Lincoln, in 1652. With him dwelt his nephew, Hamlet Joyce. He bequeaths legacies in his will to Hamlet Pickerin and Hamlet Duncalf, and his executor was his son, Hamlet Marshall.”—Notes and Queries, February 14, 1880.