The next day of the Christian year that has given a name is that which we emphatically call Good Friday, but which the Eastern Church knows by the title that it bears in the New Testament, the Day of Preparation, Παρασκευή (Paraskewe), from πάρα (beyond), and σκεύη (gear or implements). Thence, a daughter born on that holy day, was christened among the Russians Paraskeva; and the name that has been corrupted by the French into Prascovie, and which is called for short Pascha, is very frequent in the great empire, and belonged to the brave maiden, Paraskeva Loupouloff, whose devotion to her parents suggested Madame Cottin’s tale of Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia, where the adventures, as well as the name, are deprived of their national individuality in the fashion of the last century.
The Passover was known from the first to the Israelites as Pasach, or Pesach, a word exactly rendered by our Passover, and which has furnished the Jews with a name not occurring in the Scripture—Pesachiah, the Passover of God.
The Greek translators represented the word by Πάσχα. It is Pascha likewise in Latin; whence all modern languages have at least taken some of their terms for the great feast of the Resurrection that finally crowned and explained the Jewish Passover.
Italy inherits Pasqua; Spain, Pascua; Portugal, Pascoa, terms that these two nations pass on to other festal Sundays. Illyria has Paska; Wales, Pasg; Denmark, Paaske; France, Pâques; and we ourselves once used Pasque, as is shown by the name of the anemone or pasque flower.
About 844, Radbert, Abbot of Corbie, put forth a book upon the holy Eucharist, in honour of which he was surnamed Paschasius; and, perhaps, this suggested the use of words thence derived for children born at that season.
Cambrai has Pasqua, Pasquina, Pasquette, from 1400 to 1500. Pasquale, Paschino, Paschina, Pasquier, Pascal, all flourished in Italy and France; and in Spain a Franciscan monk, named Pascual, was canonized. Pascoe was married in St. Columb Major, in 1452; Paschal is there the feminine; and many other instances can be easily found to the further honour of the name. There lived, however, a cobbler at Rome, the butt of his friends, who gave his name of Paschino to a statue of an ancient gladiator that had been newly disinterred, and set up in front of the Orsini palace, exciting the waggery of the idle Romans by his likeness to the cobbler. Paschino, the gladiator, proved a convenient block for posting of lampoons and satires, insomuch that the generic term at Rome for such squibs became paschinado, whence our English word pasquinade.
I have seen Easter as a Christian name upon a tombstone in Ripon Cathedral, bearing the date 1813; but as I have also seen it in a Prayer Book belonging to a woman who calls herself Esther, it is possible that this may be a blunder of the same kind.
There was, however, soon after the Reformation, an inclination in England to name children after the vernacular titles of holy days. In 1675, Passion occurs at Bovey Tracey, in Devon; another in 1712, at Hemiock; and Pentecost is far from uncommon in old registers. At Madron, in Cornwall, in 1632, appear the masculine, Pentecost, and feminine, Pentecoste; and in Essex, an aunt and niece appear, both called by this singular festal name, in honour of Whit Sunday. In 1643, I find it again at St. Columb Major. It means, of course, fifty, and is Greek.
Easter is called Λάμπα (the bright day) in Greek, because of the lighting of candles that takes place at midnight in every church. Can it be from this that the Eastern saint of the 10th of February, who suffered at Antioch in Pisidia, was called Charalampios, Χαραλάμπιος, a name which is still used in the Ionian Islands, and is imitated in Russia as Kharalampia, or Kharalamm. Its component parts are καρα (joy), and a derivative from λαμπάς (a torch); and we might explain it either glad-light, or the joy of Easter.[[92]]