History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

France, Germany, Lombardy, and Spain, all looked back to the same emperor, and hung their traditions around him, with a far more national sentiment than it was possible for them to possess for the British Arthur. In the Charles who bore the surname of the Great, all the legends centred. He was at once emperor, and, like his grandfather, champion of Europe against the Saracens, with whom in popular fancy, both his own Saxons and his grandson’s Northmen were fused together; he was besieged, like his grandson, in Paris, and lost all his best followers in the pass of Roncesvalles, by the treachery of the Navarrese.

These were the materials that fancy had to work upon. The existing feudal system supplied the machinery, and not with utter incorrectness, since it had actually then existed in its infancy, and the chiefs of the Frank court were veritably obliged to pay martial service to their head for the lands that they had received from him on the conquest of the country. Pfalz, the same word which we now call palace, the central court, furnished the title for the feudatories employed at the court; Pfalzen, a word that continued in use in its proper region, Germany, naming the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, whence we have learnt to speak of the Count Palatine and the Palatinate.

Pfalzen, then, on French tongues, became Paladins, and Paladins were supposed to have been not so much political as military, so that we regard the term as meaning a champion of high prowess. There was an idea likewise of a council of these Paladins as the twelve peers of France in the golden age of her constitution; and the Docipairs, as the Douzepairs were sometimes run together, stood on a level in romantic imaginations with the Seven Champions of Christendom, or the Knights of the Round Table.

Spanish ballads, German lays, and Provençal songs, had been working up the stories of the Paladins, when somewhere about the year 1100, there came forth a French translation of the supposed chronicle of Turpin, who had really been archbishop of Rheims in the reign of Charlemagne. The chronicle was confirmed in 1122 by the infallible authority of the Pope, and was translated again and again, amplified and referred to by every one who wrote or sung of the Paladins, for the events they celebrated, whether it contained them or not.

The influence of the Karlingen upon our subject has been great. First, some of the genuine historical characters left hereditary Christian names; next, several were adopted in romantic and chivalrous families, and in the poetical ages of literary Italy, they became absolutely frequent.

Paladins, however, connect themselves with hardly any genuine female names of the same period. The Ossianic Fenians have their wives and beloved maidens, the knights of the Round Table are united with ladies of Cymric title, like their own, and evidently as traditionary as themselves; the dames of the Nibelungenlied are intimately connected with the whole structure of the legend; but the knights of Charlemagne have brought with them few genuine ladye loves. Orlando once had a wife, the Alda, or Belinda, of the old traditions; but even the Clarice of Renaud in the Quatre Fils Aymon, betrays a late French, or rather Romanesque, influence; and far more do the Doña Clara, Belerma, and Sebilla of the Spanish ballads, show how late they must have arisen; whilst Angelica, Marfisa, Bradamante, Fiordespina, and Fiordiligi, and the like, are absolute Italian inventions.

The Frankish ladies seem, in fact, to have been held in little estimation. Chivalry had not blossomed into respect for womanhood, and they had probably been left behind by their lords in the march of civilization. The female names from time to time cast up in the surging tide of affairs seldom appear except for disgrace or misfortune, so that we come to the conclusion that womanhood in the Frank empire was seldom happy or honourable except in the cloister. Thus, no traditional names of woman came down with the Paladins; and when love became an essential part of the machinery of the Italian poets, they had to invent, and entitle, the heroines for themselves.

Section II.—Charles.

Most heroes gain by becoming the subjects of romance, but this has been by no means the case with the great Karl of the Franks, for though ‘il Rè Carlo’ be three rolled into one, he has lost the heroism of him of the hammer, and the large-minded statesmanship of the first emperor, obtaining instead the dulness and weak credulity of him who was called the Bald.

The three Charleses are matter of history, and the Carlo Magno of romance and ballad is little more than a lay figure, always persuaded to believe traitorous stories of his best friends, and meeting with undignified adventures, as in the case of the enchanted ring that bound his affections to lady, bishop, and lake. We therefore pass on at once to this name, which a foolish old story thus accounts for. As an infant he was put out to nurse, and when brought home, much grown, his mother exclaimed, ‘What great carle is this?’ whence he continued to be so called, instead of by his baptismal name of David. This tale may have been suggested by the fact, that the veritable Charles the Great, when laying aside his state he became a scholar in his palace hall, under the teaching of the English Alcuin, assumed the appropriate title of David.