History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

The remains of the Danish invasions are traceable rather in surnames than Christian names. The permanent ones left by them were chiefly in insular Scotland and Ireland. Torquil, Somerled, Ivor, Ronald, Halbert, are Scottish relics of the invaders; and in Ireland, Amlaidh, Redmond, Ulick.

But it was the Normans, Norsemen in a French dress, that brought us the French rather than Frank names that are most common with us. Among the thirty kings who have reigned since the Conquest, there have been ten Christian names, and of these but two are Saxon English, three are Norman Frank, two French Hebrew, one French Greek, one French, one Anglicized German Greek. Strictly speaking, Richard is Saxon, and began with a native English saint; but it was its adoption by Normans that made it popular after the Conquest; and it came in company with William, Henry, Robert, Walter, Gilbert, all in perpetual use ever since. Alberic, Bertram, Baldwin, Randolf, Roger, Herbert, Hubert, Reginald, Hugh, Norman, Nigel, and many others less universally kept up, came at the same time; and Adelheid and Mathilda were imported by the ladies; but, in general, there were more men’s names than women’s then planted, probably on account of William’s policy of marrying Normans to English women.

Scripture names were very few. There are only two Johns in Domesday Book, and one is a Dane; but the saints were beginning to be somewhat followed; Eustace was predominant; Cecily, Lucy, Agnes, Constance, were already in use; and in the migration, Brittany contributed Tiffany, in honour of the Epiphany. At the same time she sent us her native Alan, Brian, and Aveline; and vernacular French gave Aimée and afterwards Algernon.

It was a time of contractions. Between English and French, names were oddly twisted; Alberic into Aubrey, Randolf into Ralph, Ethelthryth into Awdry, Eadgifu into Edith, Mathilda into Maude, Adelheid into Alice.

Saint and Scripture names seem to have been promoted by the crusading impulse, but proceeded slowly. The Angevins brought us the French Geoffrey and Fulk, and their Provençal marriages bestowed on us the Provençal version of Helena—Eleanor, as we have learnt to call their Alienor, in addition to the old Cymric form Elayne. Thence, too, came Isabel, together with Blanche, Beatrice, and other soft names current in poetical Provence. Jehan, as it was called when Lackland bore it, and its feminine Jehanne, seem to have been likewise introductions of our Aquitanian queen.

The Lowland Scots had been much influenced by the Anglo-Saxons, whose tongue prevailed throughout the Lothians; and after the fall of Macbeth, and the marriage of Malcolm Ceanmore, English names were much adopted in Scotland. Cuthbert has been the most lasting of the old Northumbrian class. The good Queen Margaret, and her sister Christian, owed their Greek names, without a doubt, to their foreign birth and Hungarian mother, and these, with Alexander, Euphemia, and George, forthwith took root in Scotland, and became national. Probably Margaret likewise brought the habit, then more eastern than western, of using saintly names, for her son was David; and from this time seems to have begun the fashion of using an equivalent for the Keltic name. David itself, beloved for the sake of the good king, is the equivalent of Dathi, a name borne by an Irish king before the Scottish migration. David I., nearly related to the Empress Maude, and owning the earldom of Northumbria in right of his wife, was almost an English baron; and the intercourse with England during his reign and those of his five successors, made the Lowland nobles almost one with the Northumbrian barons, and carried sundry Norman names across the border, where they became more at home than even in England; such as Alan, Walter, Norman, Nigel, and Robert.

Henry II. was taking advantage of the earl of Pembroke’s expedition to Ireland, and the English Pale was established, bringing with it to Erin the favourite Norman names, to be worn by the newly-implanted nobles, and Iricized gradually with their owners. Cicely became Sheelah; Margaret, Mairgreg; Edward, Eudbaird; and, on the other hand, the Irish dressed themselves for civilization by taking English names. Finghin turned to Florence, and Ruadh to Roderick, &c.

Henry III. had been made something like an Englishman by his father’s loss of Normandy; and in his veneration for English saints, he called his sons after the two royal saints most beloved in England, Edward and Edmund; and the death of the elder children of Edward I. having brought the latter a second time to the throne, it was thenceforth in honour. Thomas owed its popularity to Becket, who was so christened from his birth on the feast of the Apostle, St. Thomas, and, in effect, saintly names were becoming more and more the fashion. Mary was beginning to be esteemed as the most honourable one a woman could bear; and legends in quaint metrical English rendered Agnes, Barbara, Katharine, Margaret, and Cecily well known and in constant use.

The romances of chivalry began to have their influence. Lionel and Roland, Tristram, Ysolda, Lancelot, and Guenever, were all the produce of the revival of the tales of Arthur’s court, arrayed in their feudal and chivalrous dress, and other romances contributed a few. Diggory is a highly romantic name, derived from an old metrical tale of a knight, properly called D'Egaré, the wanderer, or the almost lost, one of the many versions of the story of the father and unknown son. Esclairmonde came out of Huon de Bourdeaux; Lillias, such a favourite in Scotland, came out of the tale of Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and Sir Graysteel; Lillian out of the story of Roswal and Lillian; and Grizel began to flourish from the time Chaucer made her patience known.

The Scots, by their alliance with France, were led to import French terminations, such as the diminutives Janet and Annot; also the foreign Cosmo, and perhaps likewise Esmé.