It was not common in Greece to name persons from flowers, but two names in occasional use are connected with legends of transformation, though in each case it is evident that the name belonged originally to the flower, and then was transferred to the man.
Thus the Narcissus, named undoubtedly from ναρκάω (narkao), to put to sleep, has become the object of a graceful legend of the cold-hearted youth, for whose sake the nymph Echo pined away into a mere voice, and in retribution was made to see his own beauty in the water and waste from hopeless love for his own image, until his corpse became the drooping golden blossom, that loves to hang above still pools of water, like the “dancing daffodils” of Wordsworth.
Narcissus seems to have been a name among the Greek slaves of the Romans, for we twice find it belonging to freedmen of the Emperor. St. Narcissus was Bishop of Jerusalem in 195, and presided at the council that fixed the great festival of the Resurrection on a Sunday instead of on the day fixed by the full moon like the Jews. The Russians call it Narkiss; the Romans, Narcisso; and it has even been found belonging to an English peasant.
Hyacinthus (Ὑάκινθος) was a beautiful Spartan youth, who, being accidentally killed by Apollo in a game with the discus, was caused by the sorrowing divinity to propagate from his blood a flower bearing on its petals either his initial Υ or the αί (alas), the cry of lamentation. A yearly feast was held at Sparta in honour of Hyacinthus, and his name was perpetuated till Christian times, when a martyr bore it at Rome, and thus brought it into favour in Italy as Giacinto; also a Polish Dominican Jacinthus in the thirteenth century, is commemorated as the Apostle of the North, because he preached Christianity in great part of Russia and Tartary; but curiously enough it is in Ireland alone that Hyacinth has ever flourished as a man’s name, probably as a supposed equivalent to some native Erse name. There it is very common among the peasantry, and is in common use as Sinty, while in France, Italy, and Spain, though apparently without a saintly example of their own sex, Jacinthe, Giacinta, and Jacinta are always feminine, and rather popular peasant names.
Ῥόδος (Rhodos), the rose, is a word connected in its source with the origin of the Teuton roth, Keltic ruadh, and Latin rufus. Roses are the same in almost every tongue, and they almost always suggest female names; of which the most interesting to us is Rhoda, “the household maid, of her own joy afraid,” who “opened not the gate for gladness” when she knew the voice of St. Peter as he stood without the door after his release from prison and death. Her name, as a Scripture one, has had some use in England, though, in general, the Roses of each country have grown upon their own national grafts from the one great stock, or, more strangely, are changed from horses.
Φύλλις (Phyllis), a green leaf or bough, has another story of transformation. She was a Thalian damsel who hung herself because her lover did not keep his promise of returning to marry her, and was accordingly changed into an almond tree. Phyllis was the name of Domitian’s nurse, and in process of time found her way among the dramatis personæ of Arcadian poetry; and arrived at being somewhat popular as a name in England.
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORICAL GREEK NAMES CONSISTING OF EPITHETS.
Section I.—Agathos.
After passing from the fascinating but confused tales and songs that group around the ship Argo, the doomed family of Œdipus, and the siege of Troy, the Greeks are well-nigh lost for a time, but emerge again in the full and distinct brilliancy of the narratives of Herodotus and his followers, who have rendered their small aggregate of fragmentary states and their gallant resistance to Asiatic invasion the great nucleus of interest in the ancient world.
In the days of these wise and brave men, the nomenclature was, for the most part, expressive and appropriate, consisting of compounds of words of good augury from the spoken language, and, usually, as has been before shown, with a sort of recurring resemblance, from generation to generation, so as to make the enumeration of a pedigree significant and harmonious.