History of Christian names

Section XX.—Flower Names.

Flower names seem to have been entirely unknown to the ancient Romans, but the Latin language, in the mouths of more poetical races, has given several graceful floral names, though none perhaps are quite free from the imputation of being originally something far less elegant.

Thus, oliva (the olive), the sign of peace and joy, is closely connected with the Italian Oliviero; but it is much to be suspected that it would never have blossomed into use, but for the Teutonic Olaf (forefather’s relic). Oliviero, or Ulivieri, the paladin of Charlemagne, may be considered as almost certainly a transmogrified Anlaf, or Olaf (ancestor’s relic); and perhaps it is for this reason that his name is one of the most frequently in use among all those of the circle of paladins. He was a favourite hero of Pulci, and seems to have so nearly approached Orlando in fame, as at least to be worthy of figuring in the proverb of giving a Rowland for an Oliver. The middle ages made great use of his name in France and England. Olier, as it was called at home by the Breton knights, whom the French called Olivier, was the name of the favourite brother of Du Guesclin, as well as of the terrible Constable de Clisson. Oliver was frequent with English knights, and of high and chivalrous repute, until the eminence of the Protector rendered ‘old Noll’ a word of hate and would-be scorn to the Cavaliers—an association which it has never entirely overcome. The feminine was probably first invented in Italy, but the Italian literature that flowed in on us in the Tudor reigns brought it to us, and we were wise enough to naturalize Olivia as Olive, a form that still survives in some parts of the country.

Whether it is true that the “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” never appears to have been tried, for all countries seem to express both the flower and its blushing tint by the same sound; and even the Syriac name for the oleander (the rose-laurel), “the blossoms red and bright” of the Lake of Tiberias, is rodyon.

The Greeks had their Rhoda, but the Romans never attained such a flight of poetry as a floral name, and the rose-wreath would hardly deserve to be relegated to a Latin root, were it not that the branches spread so widely, that it is more convenient to start from this common stem, to which all are bound by mutual resemblance; besides which, both the saints of this name were of Romance nations. Still, I believe, that though their names were meant for roses when given to them, that the first use of hrôs among the Teutons was a meaning sometimes fame, sometimes a horse—not the flower.

Rohais, or Roesia, most probably the French and Latin of hrôs (fame), or else from hros (horse), is the first form in which the simple word appears in England. Rohais, wife of Gilbert de Gaunt, died in 1156; Roese de Lucy was wife of Fulbert de Dover, in the time of Henry II.; Roesia was found at the same time among the De Bohuns and De Veres; and some of these old Norman families must have carried it to Ireland, where Rose is one of the most common of the peasant names. Rosel and Rosette both occur at Cambrai between 900 and 1200.

During the twelfth century, probably among the Normans of Sicily, lived Rosalia, “the darling of each heart and eye,” who, in her youth, dedicated herself to a hermit life in a mountain grotto, and won a saintly reputation for her name, which is frequent in her island, as is Rosalie in France, and at the German town of Duderstadt, where it is vilely tortured into Sahlke.

St. Dominic arranged a series of devotions, consisting of the meditations, while rehearsing the recurring aves and paters marked by the larger and smaller nuts, or berries, on a string. These, which we call beads from beden (to pray), formed the rosarium, or rose garden, meaning originally the delights of devotion. This rosarium has a day to itself in the Roman calendar, and possibly may have named the Transatlantic saint, Rosa di Lima, the whole of which appellation is borne by Peruvian señoras, and practically called Rosita.

Rosa is found in all kinds of ornamental forms in different countries, and the contractions, or diminutives, of one become the names of another. Thus Rosalia, herself, probably sprang from the endearment Rosel, which together with Rosi is common in Switzerland and the Tyrol; the German diminutive Roschen is met again in the Italian Rosina, French Rosine, English Rosanne; the Rasine, or Rasche, of Lithuania; and Rosetta, the true Italian diminutive, is followed by the French Rosette.

These may be considered as the true and natural forms of Rose. Others were added by fancy and romance after the Teuton signification of fame had been forgotten, and the Latin one of the flower adopted.

Of these, are Rosaura, Rosaclara; in English, Roseclear, Rosalba (a white rose), Rosabella, or Rosabel, all arrant fancy names.

Rosamond has a far more ancient history, but the rose connection must be entirely renounced for her. The first Hrosmond (famous protection, or horse protection) was the fierce chieftainess of the Gepidæ, who was compelled by her Lombard husband to drink to his health in a ghastly goblet formed of the skull of her slaughtered father, and who avenged this crowning insult by a midnight murder.

Even from the fifth century, the period of this tragedy, hers has remained a favourite name among the peasantry of the Jura, the land of the Gepidæ, but it does not appear how it came from them to the Norman Cliffords, by whom it was bestowed upon Fair Rosamond, whose fate has been so strangely altered by ballad lore, and still more strangely by Cervantes, who makes his Persiles and Sigismunda encounter her in the Arctic regions, undergoing a dreary penance among the wehr wolves. Her name, in its supposed interpretation, gave rise to the Latin epigram, Rosa mundi, sed non Rosa munda (the rose of the world, but not a pure rose). The sound of the word, and the popular interest of the ballad, have continued her name in England.

Hroswith, the poetical Frank nun, is certainly famous strength, or famous height, though when softened into Roswitha, she has been taken for a white rose, or a sweet rose.

Rosalind makes her first appearance in As You Like It, whether invented by Shakespeare cannot be guessed. If the word be really old, the first syllable is certainly hrôs, the last is our English lithe, the German lind, the Northern lindre, the term that has caused the Germans to call the snake the lindwurm, or supple worm. The Visigoths considered this litheness as beauty, and thus the word survives in Spanish as lindo, linda, meaning, indeed, a fair woman, but a soft effeminate man. Yet, the linda, meaning fair in Spanish, was reason enough in the sixteenth century for attaching it to many a name by way of ornament, and it is to be apprehended that thus it was that Rosalind came by her name, and possibly Rosaline, whom Romeo deserted for the sake of Juliet. However she began, she has ever since been one of the English roses.

Rosilde, or Roshilda, a German form, is in like manner either really the fame-battle, or else merely ilda tacked by way of ornament to the end of the rose.

Violante is a name occurring in the South of France and the North of Italy and Spain. Whence it originally came is almost impossible to discover. It may very probably be a corruption of some old Latin name such as Valentinus, or, which would be a prettier derivation, it may be from the golden violet, the prize of the troubadours in the courts of love.

The name of the flower is universal; it is viola, in Latin, vas in Sanscrit; and in Greek anciently Γιον, but afterwards ἴον, whence later Greeks supposed it to have been named from having formed a garland round the head of Ion, the father of the Ionians.

That V is easily changed to Y, was plain in the treatment received by Violante, who was left to that dignified sound only in Spain; but in France was called Yolande, or for affection, Yolette; and in the confusion between y and j, figures in our own English histories in the queer-looking form of Joletta. The Scots, with much better taste, imported Yolette as Violet, learning it probably through the connections of the Archers of the Royal Guard, or it may be through Queen Mary’s friends, as Violet Forbes appears in 1571, and I have not found an earlier instance. At any rate, the Scottish love of floral names took hold of it, and the Violets have flourished there ever since. Fialka is both the flower and a family name in Bohemia; as is Veigel in the Viennese dialect. Eva Maria Veigel was the young danseuse, called by Maria Theresa, la Violetta, under which designation she came to England, and finally became the excellent wife of Garrick. Whether Viola has ever been a real Italian name I cannot learn, or whether it is only part of the stage property endeared to us by Shakespeare. The masculine Yoland was common at Cambrai in the thirteenth century; Yolante was there used down to the sixteenth.

Viridis (green, or flourishing) was not uncommon among Italian ladies in the fourteenth century, probably in allusion to some romance.

It is much to be feared that the lily, is as little traceable as the rose. There was a Liliola Gonzaga in Italy in 1340, but she was probably a softened Ziliola, or Cecilia. Lilias Ruthven, who occurs in Scotland, in 1557, was probably called from the old romantic poem of Roswal and Lillian, which for many years was a great favourite in Scotland. The Lillian of this ballad is Queen of Naples, and thus the name appears clearly traceable to the Cecilias of modern Italy, though it is now usually given in the sense of Lily; the English using Lillian; the Scots, Lillias. Indeed, it is quite possible that these, like Lilla, may sometimes have risen out of contractions of Elizabeth. Leila is a Moorish name, and Lelia is only the feminine of Lælius. On the whole, it may be said that only the Hebrew and Slavonic tongues present us with names really taken from individual flowers.^[88]

Section XXI.—Roman Catholic Names.

The two names that follow are as thorough evidences of the teachings of the Roman Church as are the epithets of the Blessed Virgin, before mentioned, and can, therefore, only be classed together, though it is rather hard upon good Latin to be saddled with them, compounded as they are of Latin and Greek.

The Latin verus (true), and the Greek εἰκών (an image), were strangely jumbled together by the popular tongue in the name of a crucifix at Lucca, which was called the Veraiconica, or Veronica; and was that Holy Face of Lucca by which William Rufus, having probably heard of it from the Lombard Lanfranc, his tutor, was wont to swear. Another Veronica is the same countenance upon a piece of linen, shown at St. Peter’s. Superstition, forgetting the meaning of the name, called the relic St. Veronica’s handkerchief, accounted for it by inventing a woman who had lent our Blessed Saviour a handkerchief to wipe His Face during the passage of the Via dolorosa, and had found the likeness imprinted upon it.

In an old English poem on the life of Pilate, written before 1305, it appears that the Emperor of Rome learnt that a woman at Jerusalem named ‘Veronike’ possessed this handkerchief, which could heal him of his sickness. He sent for her, and

Thence Veronica became a patron saint; and in the fifteenth century a real monastic Saint Veronica lived near Milan.

Véronique is rather a favourite name among French peasant women, and Vreneli in Suabia. Pott and Michaelis suggest that Veronica may be the Latin form of Berenice, or Pherenike (victory-bringer); but the history of the relic is too clear to admit of this idea. The flower, Veronica, appears to have won its name from its exquisite blue reflecting a true image of the heavens; and the Scots, who have a peculiar turn for floral names, thus seem to have obtained it.

In 1802 an inscription, with the first and last letters destroyed, was found in the catacombs standing thus, lumena pax tecum fi. A priest suggested that Fi should be put at the beginning of the sentence instead of the end, and by this remarkable trick, produced Filumena. There was a real Greek name Philomena, which had fallen into disuse, and of course was derived from Love, but to please the ears of the Italians, the barbarous Latin Filumen was invented.

Thereupon a devout artisan, a priest, and a nun, were all severally favoured by visions of a virgin martyr, who told them the story of Diocletian’s love for her, of her refusal, and subsequent martyrdom; and explained that, having once been called Lumena, she was baptized Filumena, which she explained as daughter of light! Some, human remains near the stone being dignified as relics of St. Filomena, she was presented to Mugnano; and, on the way, not only worked many miracles on her adorers, but actually repaired her own skeleton, and made her hair grow. So many wonders are said to have been worked by this phantom saint, the mere produce of a blundered inscription, that a book, printed at Paris in the year 1847, calls her “La Thaumaturge du 19me Siècle” and she is by far the most fashionable patroness in the Romish Church. Filomena abounds in Rome, encouraged by the example of a little Filomena, whose mosquito net was every night removed by the saint, who herself kept off the gnats. She is making her way in Spain; and it will not be the fault of the author of La Thaumaturge if Philomene is not common in France. The likeness to Philomela farther inspired Longfellow with the fancy of writing a poem on Florence Nightingale, as St. Philomena, whence it is possible that the antiquaries of New Zealand, in the twenty-ninth century, will imagine St. Philomena, or Philomela, to be the heroine of the Crimean war.^[89]

Section I.

The great festivals of religion have supplied names which are here classed together for convenience of arrangement, though they are of all languages. Most, indeed, are taken from the tongue that first proclaimed the glory of the days in question; but in several instances they have been translated into the vernacular of the country celebrating them. Perhaps the use of most of these as Christian names arose from the habit of calling children after the patron of their birthday, and when this fell upon a holiday that was not a saint’s day, transferring the title of the day to the child. Indeed, among the French peasantry, Marcel and Marcelle are given to persons born in March, Jules and Julie to July children, and Auguste and Augustine to August children.

Section II.—Christmas.

The birthday of our Lord bears in general its Latin title of Dies Natalis; the latter word from nascor (to be born). The g, which old Latin places at the commencement of the verb and its participle, gnatus, shows its connection with the Greek γίγνομαι (to come into existence), with γένεσις (origin), and the Anglo-Saxon beginning.

This word Natalis has furnished the title of the feast to all the Romance portion of Europe, and to Wales. There all call it the Natal day; Nadolig in Welsh. France has cut the word down into Noël, a word that at Angers was sung fifteen times at the conclusion of lauds, during the eight days before the feast, and which thus passed even into an English carol, still sung in Cornwall, where the popular tongue has turned the chorus into

This cry of Noël became a mere burst of joy; and in Monstrelet’s time was shouted quite independently of Christmas. Noel is a Christian name in France; Natale, in Italy; Natal, in the Peninsula. Indeed, the Portuguese called Port Natal by that title in honour of the time of its discovery, but the Spanish Natal must be distinguished from Natividad, which belongs to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a feast established by Pope Sergius in 688, on the 8th of September.

That same 8th of September was chosen by the Greek Church as the festival day of St. Natalia, the devoted wife who attended her husband, St. Adrian, in his martyrdom, with heroism like that of Gertrude von der Wart. He is the same Adrian whose relics filled the Netherlands, and who named so many Dutchmen; but while the West was devoted to the husband and neglected the wife, the East celebrated the wife and forgot the husband. Natalia is one of the favourite Greek Christian names; Lithuania calls her Nastusche and Naste; Russia, Natalija, Nataschenka, and Natascha; and France has learned the word as Natalie from her Russian visitors. Natalie, however, occurs at Cambrai as early as 1212.

Our own name for the feast agrees with one German provincial term Christfest. Christmas now and then occurs in old registers as a Christian name, as at Froxfield, Hants, in 1574, and is also used as a surname; but Noel is more usual for Christmas-born children.

The Eastern Church did not originally observe the Nativity at all, contenting itself with the day when the great birth was manifested to the Gentiles, and for this reason there is no genuine Greek name for Christmas-day, and Natalia, though now used as a Greek woman’s name, is of Latin origin.

The Slavonic nations have translated Christmas into Bozieni, and their Christmas children, among the Slovak part of the race, are the boys, Bozo, Bozko, Bozicko; the girls, Bozena.^[90]

Section III.—The Epiphany.

The twelfth day after Christmas was the great day with the Eastern Church, by whom it was called Θεοφανεία, from Θεός and φαίνω (to make known, i.e., God’s manifestation), or Ἐπιφάνεια (forth showing).

The ancient Greek Church celebrated on the 6th of January the birth of Christ, His manifestation to the Gentiles, and the baptism in the Jordan. Their titles, Theophania and Epiphania, were adopted by the Latins, and when the Latin feast of the Nativity was accepted by the Greek Church, this latter was frequently called Epiphania, while the true manifestation-day was called by a name meaning the lights, from the multitude of candles in the churches in honour of the Light of the World and the Light of Baptism.

But in the West, it was the visit of the Magi that gave the strongest impress to the festival. Early did tradition fix their number at three, probably in allusion to the three races of man descended from the sons of Noah, and soon they were said to be descendants of the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, from whom they derived the expectation of the Star of Jacob, and they were promoted to be kings of Tarsus, Saba, and Nubia, also to have been baptized by St. Thomas, and afterwards martyred. Their corpses were supposed to be at that store-house of relics, Constantinople, whence the Empress Helena caused them to be transported to Milan by an Italian, from whom a noble family at Florence obtained the surname of Epiphania. Frederick Barbarossa carried them to Cologne.

By the eleventh century, these three kings had received names, for they are found written over against their figures in a painting of that date, and occur in the breviary of Mersburg. Though their original donor is unknown, their Oriental sound makes it probable that he was a pilgrim-gatherer of Eastern legends. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, are not according to European fancy, and are not easy to explain. The first may either be the Persian, gendshber (treasure master), or else be taken from the red or green stone called yashpah in the East, ἵασπις in Greek, jasper in Latin. This was the only one of these names ever used in England, where it was once common. Gasparde is the French feminine; in English the masculine is Jasper. It is extremely common in Germany; and has suffered the penalty of popularity, for Black Kaspar is a name of the devil, and Kaspar is a Jack Pudding.

Melchior is evidently the universal Eastern Malek, or Melchi (a king); but he is in much less favour than his companion; though sometimes found in Italy as Melchiorre, as well as in Germany and Switzerland in his proper form, and in Esthonia contracted to Malk.

Balthasar may be an imitation of Daniel’s Chaldean name of Belteshazzar (Bel’s prince). Some make it the old Persian Beltshazzar (war council, or prince of splendour). It is not unlike the Slavonic Beli-tzar, or White-prince, called at Constantinople Belisarius; but indeed it is probably a fancy name invented at a period when bad Latin and rude Teutonic were being mixed up to make modern languages, and the Lingua Franca of the East was ringing in the ears of pilgrims. However invented, Balthasar flourished much in Italy, and in the Slavonic countries, and very nearly came to the crown in Spain.

Some of the Italians devoutly believed that Gaspardo, Melchiorre, and Baldassare, were the three sons of St. Beffana, as they had come to call Epiphania; but, in general, Beffana had not nearly so agreeable an association.

In Italy the Epiphany was, and still is, the day for the presentation of Christmas gifts; and it is likely that the pleasant fiction that la Beffana brought the presents, turned, as in other cases, such as that of St. Nicholas, into the notion that she was a being who went about by night, and must therefore be uncanny. Besides, when the carnival was over, there was a sudden immolation of the remaining weeks of the Epiphany; and whether from thus personifying the season, or from whatever other cause, a figure was suspended outside the doors of houses at the beginning of Lent, and called la Beffana. It is now a frightful black doll, with an orange at her feet, and seven skewers thrust through her, one of which is pulled out at the end of each week in Lent; at least, this is the case in Apulia, where she is considered as a token that those who exhibit her, mean to observe a rigorous fast.

Some parts of Italy account for the gibbeting of the unfortunate Beffana, by saying she was the daughter of Herod, i.e. Herodias; and Berni (as quoted by Grimm) says in his rhymes:

At Florence, however, the story was told in an entirely different way. There it is said that Beffana was the Christian name of a damsel of the Epifania family before-mentioned: that she offended the fairies, and was by them tempted to eat a sausage in Lent, for which transgression she was sawn asunder in the piazza, and has ever since been hung in effigy at the end of the carnival, as a warning to all beholders.

In fact, Beffana is the Italian bugbear of naughty children; and it is no wonder that this strange embodiment of the gift-bringing day should not be followed as a Christian name, though the masculine form, Epiphanius, once belonged to a Father, born near Mount Olympus, in whose honour is named Capa Pifani, a headland on that coast, and from whom Epifanio sometimes is found at Rome.

The other form of the name of the day, Theophania, has been much more in favour; indeed, in the days of Christine de Pisane, the feast-day was called la Tiphaïne.

Theophano was a name in common use among the Byzantine ladies, and we hear of many princesses so called—one of whom married the German Emperor, Otho II., in 962, and was then called Théophania. Probably she made the name known in Western Europe, but it is curious that its chief home in the form of Tiphaïne, was in Armorica, whence, as the grumbling rhyme of the Englishman, after the Conquest, declared,

Tiffany took up her abode in England, and left her progeny. The name occurs in an old Devon register, within the last two hundred years, but seems now extinct.

The high-spirited wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, was either Theophanie, or Epiphanie Ragueuel, but was commonly called Tiphaïne la Fée, on account of the mysterious wisdom by which she was able to predict to her husband his lucky and unlucky days—only he never studied her tablets till the disaster had happened. Could she have first acquired her curious title through some report of her namesake, the Fairy Beffana? In a Cornish register I find Epiphany in 1672; Tiffany in 1682.

In an old German dictionary, the feast Theophania is translated “Giperahta naht” (the brightened night), a curious accordance with its Greek title. Indeed, before the relic-worship of the Three Kings of Cologne had stifled the recollection of the real signification of the day of the Manifestation, the festival was commonly termed Perchten tac, Perchten naht (bright day, or bright night). Then went on in Germany much what had befallen Beffana in Italy. By the analogy of saints' days, Perahta, or Bertha, was erected into an individual character, called in an Alsatian poem, the mild Berchte; in whose honour all the young farming men in the Salzburg mountains go dancing about, ringing cattle bells, and blowing whistles all night. Sometimes she is a gentle white lady, who steals softly to neglected cradles, and rocks them in the absence of careless nurses; but she is also the terror of naughty children, who are threatened with Frau Precht with the long nose; and she is likewise the avenger of the idle spinners, working woe to those who have not spun off their hank on the last day of the year. Can this have anything to do with distaff day—the English name for the 7th of January, when work was resumed after the holidays? Herrings and oat-bread are put outside the door for her on her festival—a token of its Christian origin; but there is something of heathenism connected with her, for if the bread and fish are not duly put out for her, terrible vengeance is inflicted, with a plough-share, or an iron chain.

That Frau Bertha is an impersonation of the Epiphany there seems little doubt, but it appears that there was an original mythical Bertha, who absorbed the brightened night, or if the bright night gave a new title to the old mythical Holda, Holla, Hulla, Huldr (the faithful, or the muffled), a white spinning lady, who is making her feather-bed when it snows. She, too, brings presents at the year’s end; rewards good spinners, punishes idle ones, has a long nose, wears a blue gown and white veil, and drives through the fields in a car with golden wheels. Scandinavia calls her Hulla, or Huldr the propitious; Northern Germany, Holda, probably by adaptation to hold (mild). Franconia and Thuringia recognized both Holda and Berchta; in Alsatia, Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria, Berchta alone prevails.

Some have even tried to identify Holda with Huldah, the prophetess, in the Old Testament, but this is manifestly a blunder. And, on the other hand, Bertha is supposed to be a name of the goddess Freya, the wife of Odin; but it appears that though Huldr may possibly have been originally a beneficent form of this goddess, yet that there is no evidence of Bertha’s prevailing in heathen times, and therefore the most probable conclusion is that she is really the impersonation of the Epiphany, with the attributes of Holda.

Tradition made her into an ancestress, and she must have absorbed some of the legends of the swan maidens, for she is goose-footed in some of her legends; and she is sometimes, as in Franconia and Swabia, called Hildaberta or Bildaberta, either from the Valkyr, or as a union of both Hilda and Bertha. The goose-foot has been almost softened away by the time she appears as Berthe aux grands pieds (wife of Pepin, and mother of Charlemagne); and the connection with the distaff is again traceable in the story of Charlemagne’s sister Bertha, mother of Orlando, who, when cast off on account of her marriage, and left a widow, maintained herself by spinning, till her son, in his parti-coloured raiment, won his uncle’s notice by his bold demeanour.

Proverbs of a golden age when Bertha spun, are current both in France and Italy, and in Switzerland they are connected with the real Queen Bertha.

Be it observed that Bertha is altogether a Frank notion, not prevailing among the Saxons, either English or Continental, nor among the Northern races. It is therefore quite a mistake to use Bertha, as is often done, as a name for an English lady, before the Conquest. One only historical person so called was Bertha, daughter of Chilperic, King of Paris, and wife of Ethelbert, of Kent, the same who smoothed the way for St. Augustine’s mission. She was probably called after the imaginary spinning ancestress, the visitor of Christmas night, but though bright was a common Saxon commencement or conclusion, we had no more Berthas till the Norman conquest brought an influx of Frank names.

The name was, indeed, very common in France and Germany; and in Dante’s time it was so frequent at Florence, that he places Monna Berta with Ser Martino, as the chief of the gossips. Since those days it has died away, but has been revived of late years in the taste for old names; and perhaps, likewise, because Southey mentioned it as one of the most euphonious of female appellations. One of the early German princesses, called Bertha, marrying a Greek emperor, was translated into Eudoxia, little thinking that she ought to have been Theophano.^[91]

Section IV.—Easter Names.

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]

Section V.—Sunday Names.

Sabbath (rest), in Hebrew, distinguished the seventh day, set apart from the service of the world in memory, first, of the cessation of the work of creation, and next, of the repose of the Israelites after their labours in Egypt.

While the Sabbath was still the sacred day, it does not appear to have suggested any historical name, except that of the father of Joses Barsabas, whose father must have been Sabas. In 532, however, was born in Cappadocia, Sabas, who became one of the most distinguished patriarchs of the monks in Palestine; and in 372, one of the first converts to Christianity among the Goths, then stationed in Wallachia, who had taken the name of Sabas, was martyred by being thrown into the river Musæus, now Mussovi. The locality attached the Slavonians to his name, and Sava is still common among them, as is Ssava in Russia.

Whether Sabea or Sabra, the king of Egypt’s daughter, whom St. George saved from the dragon, was named with any view to St. Sabas, cannot be guessed. I have seen the name in an old English register, no doubt in honour of the exploit of our patron saint.

The day of rest gave place to the day of Resurrection, the Lord’s day, as we still emphatically call it, after the example of the Apostles.

St. John called it Κυριακή ἡμέρα (the Lord’s day), and in this he has been followed by the entire Greek Church, with whom Sundays are still Kyriakoi.

It seems to have been the translators of the Septuagint that first gave its highest sense to Κύριος (Kyrios), a lord or master, from the verb κυρέω (kyreo), to find, obtain, or possess.

St. Kyriakos, or, as Rome spelt him, Cyriacus, was martyred under Diocletian, had his relics dug up afterwards, and his arm given to the abbey of Altdorff, in Alsace. From him came the Roman Ciriaco and the French Cyriac, all of which may mean either “the Lord’s,” or “the Sunday child.”

At the same time a little Kyriakos of Iconium, a child of three years old, fell, with his mother, Julitta, into the hands of the persecutors of Seleucia. The prefect tried to save the child, but he answered all the promises and threats alike with “I am a Christian,” till, in a rage, the magistrate dashed his head on the steps of the tribunal, and his mother, in her tortures, thanked Heaven for her child’s glorious martyrdom. Their touching story made a deep impression, perhaps the more from the wide dispersion of their supposed relics, which were said to have been brought from Antioch by St. Amator, to Auxerre, about the year 400, and thence were dispersed through many French towns, and villages, in which he was called St. Quiric or St. Cyr.

The ancient British Church became acquainted with the mother and child through the Gallic. Welsh hagiology owns them as “Gwyl Gwric ac Elidan;” and Cwrig has been continued as a name in Wales, whilst, on the other hand, the child is equally honoured in his native East—by Russia, Armenia, Abyssinia, and even the Nestorian Christians. He is probably the source of the Illyrian names Cirjar and Cirko.

Kyrillos (Κύριλλος) fell to the lot of two great doctors of the Church—patriarchs, the one of Alexandria, the other of Jerusalem; also to two martyrs, one a young boy, and thus it became widely known. The Welsh had it as Girioel, which really is nearer the pronunciation than our own Cyril, with a soft C. It is a name known everywhere, but more in favour in the East than the West, and of honourable memory to us for the sake of Kyrillos Lucar, the Byzantine patriarch, the correspondent of Laud, and afterwards a martyr. Latterly fashion has somewhat revived it in England; and the feminine, Cyrilla, is known in Germany.

Probably, however, this is only the diminutive of kyrios (a master), and did not begin with a religious import.

The Latin equivalent for the Greek, Kyriake, was Dies Emera Dominica. The immediate derivation of this word is in some doubt. It certainly is from Dominus; but there is some question whether this word be from domo (to rule), a congener of the Greek δαμάω, and of our own tame; or if it be from domus (a house), a word apparently direct from the Greek δόμος, from δέμω (to build); another branch from that same root, meaning to rule or govern.

Dominicus, the adjective formed from this word, is found in the French term for the Lord’s prayer, l'Oraison Dominicale, and it likewise named the Lord’s Day, Dies Dominica; Domenica, in Italy; Domingo, in Spain; Dimanche, in France. The first saint, who was probably so called from being born on a Sunday, was San Dominico of the Cuirass, a recluse of the Italian Alps, whose mortification consisted in wearing an iron cuirass, which he never took off except to scourge himself. He died in 1024; and a still sterner disciplinarian afterwards bore the same name, that Dominico whom the pope beheld in a vision upbearing the Church as a pillar, and who did his utmost to extirpate the Albigenses; whose name is connected with the foundation of the Inquisition, and whose brotherhood spread wherever Rome’s dominion was owned. He is saint for namesakes out of Romanist lands, but in these it occurs, and has an Italian feminine, Domenica; for short, Menica. Perhaps this likewise accounts for the Spanish Mendez and Mencia. This last may, however, be from Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, whose name has never been accounted for. It may be from some unknown language; but is sometimes supposed to be from moneo, to advise. Monique is rather a favourite with French peasants, and Moncha was Irish, but it has not been as common as it deserves.

The Slavonians have, however, a name for their Sunday in their own tongue—Nedele; and have formed from it the Nedelco of the Bulgarians; the Nedeljko, Nedan, Nedo, and the feminine, Nedelijka and Neda, of the Illyrians.

I am aware of no other names from the days of the week, except the ‘Thursday October Christian’ of Pitcairn’s Island, who was probably so called in recollection of the Man Friday.

All Saints' Day has furnished Spain with Santos; and France, or rather San Domingo, with Toussaint, unless this last be a corruption, or, perhaps, a pious adaptation, of Thorstein—Thor’s stone, turned into All Saints.^[93]