A Norman family, called from one of these villages, became the De Clares. ‘Red De Clare,’ stout Glo’ster’s earl, the foe of Henry III., was one of them; and his son marrying into the house of Geraldin, in Ireland, received from Edward I. a grant of lands in Thomond, now known from his lordship as County Clare. His heiress carried the county to the De Burghs, and their heiress again marrying Lionel, son of Edward III., the county becoming a dukedom and royal appanage, was amplified into Clarence, and gave title to Clarencieux—king-at-arms, when Thomas, brother of Henry V., was Duke of Clarence—unless this be from Clare, in Suffolk. Clarence as a male Christian name did not solely arise when William IV. was Duke of Clarence, but began as early as 1595, when Clarence Babbington was christened at Hartlepool.
Spanish ballad lore gives a daughter, Clara, to Charlemagne, and a son, Don Claros de Montablan, to Rinaldo, and of course marries them; but it is to Italy that the feminine name, so much more universal, is owing. The first Chiara on record was the devoted disciple of St. Francis, who, under his direction, established the order of women following his rule, and called, poor Clares, or sisters of St. Clara. From them the name of Clara spread into the adjoining countries, little varied except that the French used to call it Claire, until recently, when they have added the terminal a, just as the English on the other hand are dropping it, and making the word Clare. The Bretons use both masculine and feminine as Sklear, Skleara; and the Finns have the feminine as Lara.
The old Latin feminine of words ending in or, meaning the doer, was ix—nutor, nutrix—and this became ice in modern Italian. Thus Clarice was probably intended to mean making famous. A lady thus named was the wife of Lorenzo de Medici, and France learnt it probably from her, but made the c silent; and England, picking it up by ear, obtained Clarissa, which, when Richardson had so named the heroine of his novel, was re-imported into France as Clarisse. Clarinda was another invention of the same date.
Esclairmonde, a magnificent name of romance, the heroine of Huon de Bourdeaux, walked into real life with a noble damsel of the house of Foix, in the year 1229, and was borne by various maidens of that family; but who would have thought of two ladies called Clarimond, in Devonshire, in 1613 and 1630?
Section IV.—Columba.
Columba is one of the sweetest and most gentle of all words in sound and sense, yet it has not been in such universal use as might have been expected from its reference to the dove of peace.
A virgin martyr in Gaul, and another in Spain, were both called Columba; and Columbina must at one time have prevailed in Italy, as a peasant name, since from the waiting damsel in the impromptu comedies that the poetical Italians loved to act, it passed to the light-footed maiden of modern farce, and now is seldom used save for her and the columbine, the dove-flower, so called from the resemblance of the curled spurs of its four purple petals to doves drinking.
It was from his gentle character that Crimthan, the great and admirable son of the House of Neill, was called Columba, a fitting name for him who was truly a dove of peace to the wild Hebrides. In Ireland this good man is generally called St. Columkill, St. Columb of the cell, or monastery, because of the numbers of these centres of Christian instruction founded by him, and he is thus distinguished from a second Columb, called after him. He has, indeed, left strong traces on the nomenclature of the country that he evangelized. Colin, so frequent among the Scots of all ranks, is the direct descendant of Columba, though it is often confounded with the French Colin, from Nicolas, who is the chief Colin of modern Arcadia, and perhaps has the best right to the feminine invention of Colinette. Besides this, it was the frequent custom to be called Gillie-colum and Maol-colm, the disciple, or shaveling, of Columb, from whence arose Malcolm, one of the most national of Scottish names. Colan, probably called after the patron saint of the place, was married at St. Columb Magna, in Cornwall, in 1752; but earlier it was Columb for men, Columba for women, both now disused.
Columbanus, another great Irish missionary saint, was probably called, after old Latin custom, by the adoptive formed from Columba. His influence on the Continent, newly broken and almost heathenized by the Teutonic invasions, was so extensive, reaching as it did from Brittany to Switzerland, and still marked by the relics of Irish art in the books of the monasteries of his foundation, that we wonder not to find more traces of his name. His day, November 1st, is called by the Germans St. Colman’s, and it is thought that the surnames Kohl and Kohlmann are remains of his name, as well as the French Coulon. So, too, the Genoese Colon was by historians identified with Columbus, when they Latinized the mariner who “gave a new world to Spain.” Two spots in that new world bear his name, that in Terra Firma, where he landed on his third voyage, and the bishopric newly founded in Vancouver’s Isle.
The Slavonian dove is Golubica, a cognate word to this and sometimes used as a name.[[77]]