The cause of the various ways of spelling this word would appear to be that the more ancient English made no use of the letter K, which only came in with printing and the types imported from Germany. Miss Catherine Fanshaw wrote a playful poem in defence of the commencement with C, avouching K to be no Saxon letter, and referring to the shrewish Katharina and the Russian empress as examples of the bad repute of the K; but her argument breaks down, since the faithful Spanish Catalina, as English queen, wrote herself Katharine, while the ‘Shrew’ in Italy could only have been Caterina, and the Russian empress is on her coins Ekaterina. On the whole, Katherine would seem properly to be a namesake of the Alexandrian princess, Catherine, the Votaress of Sienna. No name is more universal in all countries and in all ranks, partly from its own beauty of sound, partly from association, and none has more varied contractions. Our truest old English ones are Kate and Kitty—the latter was almost universal in the last century, though now supplanted by the Scottish Katie and the graceful Irish Kathleen.
Catherine has even produced a masculine name. Perhaps Anne and Mary are the only others which have been thus honoured; but the sole instance is Caterino or Catherin Davila, the historian, who had the misfortune to have Catherine de Medici for his godmother.
| English. | Scotch. | Irish. | Welsh. |
| Katharine | Catharine | Kathleen | Cathwg |
| Catherine | Katie | Katty | |
| Catharina | Dutch. | Bret. | |
| Kate | Kaat | Katel | |
| Kitty | Kaatje | Katelik | |
| Katrine | |||
| French. | Portuguese. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Cathérine | Catharine | Catalina | Caterina |
| Catant | |||
| Caton | |||
| Gaton | |||
| Trinette | |||
| Cataut | |||
| Swedish. | Danish. | German. | Dantzic. |
| Katarina | Kathrina | Katharine | Trien |
| Kajsa | Karina | Kathchen | Kasche |
| Kolina | Karen | Kathe | |
| Kasen | Thrine | ||
| Bavarian. | Swiss. | Russian. | Polish. |
| Katrine | Kathri | Ekaterina | Katarnyna |
| Kadreinl | Kathrili | Katinka | Kasia |
| Treinel | Tri | Katinsha | |
| Kadl | Trili | Katja | |
| Kattel | Trine | ||
| Ketterle | Hati | ||
| Hatili | |||
| Slovak. | Illyrian. | Esthonian. | Hungarian. |
| Katrina | Katarina | Katri | Katalin |
| Katra | Katica | Kaddo | Kati |
| Katrej | Kats | Katicza | |
Section XV.—Harvest Names.
From θέρω (to heat) was derived θέρος (summer), which, in sunny Greece, came likewise to mean the summer crop, just as in Germany Herbst serves for both autumn and harvest. θερίζω (to reap or gather in the crop), and from this verb comes the pretty feminine Theresa, the reaper. “The first to bear the predestined name of Theresa,” as Montalembert says, was a Spanish lady, the wife of a Roman noble called Paulinus, both devotees under the guidance of St. Jerome, whose writings most remarkably stamped the memory of his friends upon posterity; and this original Theresa was copied again and again by her own countrywomen, till we find Teresa on the throne of Leon in the tenth century. The name was confined to the Peninsula until the sixteenth century, when that remarkable woman, Saint Teresa, made the Roman Catholic Church resound with the fame of her enthusiastic devotion. The Spanish connection of the House of Austria rendered it a favourite with the princesses both of Spain and Germany. The Queen of Louis XIV. promoted it in France as Thérèse, and it is specially common in Provence as Térézon, for short, Zon. The empress-queen greatly added to its fame; and it is known everywhere, though more in Roman Catholic countries and families than elsewhere. That it nowhere occurs in older English pedigrees is one of the signs that it was the property of a saint whose claims to reverence began after the Reformation.
| English. | French. | Portuguese. | Spanish. |
| Theresa | Thérèse | Theresa | Teresa |
| Terry | Térézon | Teresita | |
| Tracy | Zon | ||
| Italian. | German. | Hamburg. | Bavaria. |
| Teresa | Theresia | Tresa | Res’l |
| Teresina | Trescha | ||
| Bohemian. | Slavonic. | Illyrian. | Hungarian. |
| Terezie | Terezija | Tereza | Terezia |
| Terza | Threzsi |
The real popularity of the word, witnessed by its many changes of sound, is, be it observed, in those Eastern domains of the empress where her noble spirit won all hearts to the well-remembered cry “Moriamur pro Rege nostrâ Maria Theresa.”
Eustaches has already been explained as one of these harvest names. And to these may be added that of the old Cypriot shepherd hermit Σπυρίδων (Spiridōn), from σπυρίς (a round basket). He was afterwards a bishop, and one of the fathers of Nicea, then going home, died at a great age, asleep in his corn field; in honour of whom Spiridione, or Spiro, as the Italianized Greeks call it, is one of the most popular of all names in the Ionian Islands, and has the feminine Spira.[[49]]
[49]. Liddell and Scott; Montalembert; Surius; Anderson, Genealogies.