Valentinus was a Roman priest, who is said to have endeavoured to give a Christian signification to the old custom of drawing lots in honour of Juno Februata, and thus fixed his own name and festival to the curious fashion prevailing all over England and France, of either the choice of a “true Valentine,” or of receiving as such the first person of the opposite sex encountered on that morning.
These customs increased the popularity of Valentine and Valentina, the latter being more probably used as the feminine of the former, than as the name of an obscure martyr who died under Diocletian.
Valentina Visconti was the wife of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, and as one of the bright lights in a corrupt court, merited that her name should have become more permanent than it has been.
The Slavonic contractions of the masculine are curious. Lower Lusatia makes it Batyn, Tyno, Bal, and Balk; Lithuanian, Wallinsch; and Hungary, Balint.[[62]]
It is not easy to separate the idea of Virginia from virgo (a virgin), especially since Sir Walter Raleigh gave that name to his American colony in honour of the Virgin Queen, and it was probably under this impression that Virginie was made by Bernardin de St. Pierre, the heroine of his tropical Arcadian romance, which reigned supreme over French, English, and German imaginations of a certain calibre, and rendered Virginie triumphant in France, and a name of sentiment in England. Nay, had the true Virginia lived and died a couple of centuries earlier, her story would have passed for a myth expressed in her appellation; but the fact is, that she derived it from a good old plebeian gens, who formerly spelt themselves Verginius, thus connecting themselves with ver (the spring), Persian behar, Eolic Βεαρ, the old Greek Γέαρ, and with all its kindred of virga (a rod, or green bough), vireo (to flourish), viridis (green); and again with the more remote descendants of these words in modern Europe—vert, verdure, il vero, &c. Virginio was a name in the Orsini family, but otherwise it has not been kept up.
[62]. Liddell and Scott; Pott; Facciolati; Smith; Arnold; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Brand, Popular Antiquities; Michaelis.
CHAPTER IV.
COGNOMINA.
Section I.
Roman cognomina were originally neither more nor less than nick-names, sometimes far from complimentary, but for the sake of convenience, or of honourable association, continued in the family.