Section X.—Heroic Names.

Not very many of the heroic names—glorious in poetry—have passed on; but we will select a few of those connected with the siege of Troy, and handed on upon that account. Mostly they were not easy of comprehension even to the Greeks themselves, and were not much copied among them, perhaps from a sense of reverence. It was only in the times of decay, and when the recollection of the fitness of things was lost, that men tried to cover their own littleness with the high-sounding names of their ancestors. Moreover, by that time, Greek associations were at a discount. Rome professed to descend from Troy, not from Greece; and, after her example, modern nations have tried to trace themselves back to the Trojan fugitives—the Britons to Brut, the French to Francus, &c.—and thus Trojan names have been more in vogue than Greek. However, be it observed that the Trojan names are Greek in origin. The Trojans were of Pelasgic blood, as well as most of their opponents; but they were enervated by residence in Asia, while the superior race of Hellenes had renovated their Greek relatives; making just the difference that the Norman Conquest did to the English Saxon in opposition to his Frisian brother.

One of these inexplicable names was borne by Ἀχιλλεύς (Achilleus), the prime glory of Homer and of the Trojan war. The late Greek traditions said that his first name had been Ligyron, or the whining, but that he was afterwards called Achilles, from Α privative and χέιλη (cheile), lip; because he was fed in his infancy on nothing but lions' hearts and bears' marrow. This legend, however, looks much as if the true meaning of the word had been forgotten, and this was a forgery to account for it. However this may be, modern Greece and France alone repeat the name, and it is much disguised by the French pronunciation of Achille. A martyr in Dauphiné was called Achilles; and an Achilla appears, as a lady, early in the Visconti pedigree.

Gallant Hector, who, perhaps, is the most endearing of all the Trojan heroes, from the perfection of his character in tenderness, devotion, and courage, and the beautiful poetry of his parting with his wife and son, bore a name that is an attribute of Zeus, Ἕκτωρ (holding fast), i. e., defending, from Ἕχω (hecho), to have or to hold—a word well-befitting the resolute mainstay of a falling cause.

Italy, where the descent from the Trojans was early credited and not, perhaps, impossible, is the only country where his name has been genuinely imitated, under the form of Ettore. The Hector of Norway is but an imitation of the old Norse Hagtar (hawk of Thor), and the very frequent Hector of Scotland is the travestie of the Gaelic Eachan (a horseman). In like manner the Gaelic Aonghas (excellent valour) and the Welsh Einiawn (the just), are both translated into Æneas; indeed it is possible that the early Welsh Saint, Einiawn, may indeed have been an Æneas; for, in compliment to the supposed descent of the Julii from Æneas, this name is very common in the latter times of the empire: it appears in the book of Acts, and belonged to several writers. Latterly, in the beginning of the classical taste of Italy, the name of Enea Silvio was given to that Piccolomini who afterwards became a pope. This form is in honour of that son of Æneas and Lavinia who was said to have been born in a wood after his father’s death. A son of the Earl of Hereford was called Æneas (temp. Ed. III).

The pious Æneas owes his modern fame to Virgil. In the time of Homer, even his goddess-mother had not raised him into anything like the first rank of the heroes who fought before Troy. His name in the original is Αἰνείας (Aineias), and probably comes from αἰυέο (aineo), to praise.

The poem that no doubt suggested the Æneid, the Homeric story of the Greek wanderer, contains some of those elements that so wonderfully show the kindred of far distant nations. We are content to call this wonderful poem by something approaching to its Greek title, though we are pleased to term the hero by the Latin travestie of his name—Ulysses, the consequence, it is supposed, of some transcriber having mistaken between the letters Δ and Λ. The Romans, likewise, sometimes called him Ulixes; the Greek σσ and ξ being, by some, considered as the same letter. Οδυσσεύς (Odysseus), his true name, is traced to the root δυς (dys), hate, the Sanscrit dvish, and from the same source as the Latin odio. Italians talked of Uliseo, and Fenelon taught the French to honour his favourite hero as le fils du grand Ulisse; but the only place where the name is now used is Ireland, probably as a classicalism for the Danish legacy of Ulick—Hugleik, or mind reward. The Irish Finnghuala (white shoulders) was not content with the gentle native softenings of her name into Fenella and Nuala, but must needs translate herself into Penelope; and it is to this that we owe the numerous Penelopes of England, down from the Irish Penelope Devereux, with whom is connected the one shade on Sidney’s character, to the Pen and Penny so frequent in many families.

The faithful queen of Ithaca was probably named Πηνελόπη, or Πηνελόπεια, from her diligence over the loom, since πήνη (pēnē) is thread on the bobbin, πηνίζομαι is to wind it off; but a later legend declared that she had been exposed as an infant, and owed her life to being fed by a kind of duck called πηνέλοψ (penelops), after which she was therefore called. This has since been made the scientific name of the turkey, and translators of Christian names have generally set Penelope down as a turkey-hen, in oblivion that this bird, the D'Inde of France, the Wälsche Hahn of Germany, always in its name attesting its foreign origin, came from America 3000 years after the queen of Ithaca wove and unwove beneath her midnight lamp.

Her son Telemachus (distant battle) had one notable namesake in the devoted hermit who for ever ended the savage fights of the amphitheatre; but, though Télémaque was a triumph of genius and tender religious feeling in spite of bad pseudo-classical taste, has not been again repeated.

Cassandra appears in Essex in 1560, and named the sister of Jane Austen.

Section I.—The Lion.

Much of the spirit of the nation is to be traced in the animals whence their names are derived. The Jew, whose temper, except when thoroughly roused, was peaceful and gentle, had hardly any save the names of the milder and more useful creatures: the ewe, the lamb, the bee, the fawn, &c. The Indo-European races, on the other hand, have the more brave and spirited animals, many of them running through the entire family of nations thus derived, and very possibly connected with that ‘beast epic,’ as Mr. Dasent calls it, which crops out everywhere; in the East, in apologues and fables; and towards the West, in ‘mahrchen,’ according to the expressive German term. It is just as if in the infancy of the world, there was the same living sympathy with the animal creation that we see in a young child, and that the creatures had at one time appeared to man to have an individual character, rank, and history of their own, explained by myths, in which these beings are the actors and speakers, and assumed a meaning divine, symbolic, didactic, or simply grotesque, according to the subsequent development of the peoples by whom they were handed down.

The lion is one of these universal animals, testifying how long dim memories of the home in Asia must have clung to the distant wanderers.

Leon, or Leo, was early a favourite name among the Greeks; and Herodotus thinks, on account of its meaning, that the captive Leo was the first victim of the Persians. It passed on in unceasing succession through Greeks of all ranks till it came to Byzantine emperors and Roman bishops. Two popes, to whom Rome owed the deepest debt of gratitude—to the one, for interceding with Attila; to the other, for turning away the wrath of the Saracens—were both called Leo, and it thus became a favourite on the papal throne, and was considered to allude to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, which was therefore sculptured on St. Peter’s, in the time of the Medicean Leo X.

Leone, and Léon, and Léonie have continued in use in France and Italy. The word has been much compounded from the earlier Greek times, Leontius, Leontia, whence the modern French Léonce. The name Leonidas, the glorious self-devoted Spartan, after entire desuetude, has been revived in Greece and America.

The Romanized Britons adopted the Lion name, which amongst them became Llew, the Lot of the romances of the Round Table. Here likewise figured the gallant Sir Lionel, from whom Edward III., in chivalrous mood, named his third son, the ancestor of the House of York. An unfortunate young Dane, to whom the Dutch republic stood sponsor, received the name of Leo Belgicus. The Slavonic forms are Lev, Lav, and Lew, which, among the swarms of Jews in Poland, have become a good deal confounded with their hereditary Levi.

Leandros, Leander, as we call it, means lion-man. Besides the unfortunate swimming lover whose exploit Byron imitated and Turner painted, it belonged to a sainted bishop of Seville, who, in 590, effected the transition of the Spanish Visigoths from Arianism to orthodoxy. Very likely his name was only a classicalizing of one of the many Gothic names from leut (the people), which are often confused with those from the lion; but Leandro passed on as a Christian name in Spain and Italy.

The name Leocadia, a Spanish maiden martyred by the Moors, had probably some connection with a lion; but it cannot be traced in the corrupted state of the language. Léocadie has travelled into France.

The Slavonians have Lavoslav (lion-glory), which they make the equivalent of the Teutonic Liutpold or Leopold, really meaning the people’s prince.

Löwenhard (the stern lion, or lion strong), was a Frank noble, who was converted at the same time as his sovereign, Clovis, and became a hermit near Limoges. Many miracles were imputed to him, and St. Leonard became a peculiarly popular saint both in France and England. Leonard is a favourite name in France; and has some popularity in England, chiefly, it is said, in the north, and in the Isle of Wight. Lionardo is Italian, witness Lionardo da Vinci; and, according to Gil Blas, Leonarda is a Spanish feminine; Germany has in surnames Lenhardt, Lehnart, Leinhardt, Lowen; Italy invented the formidable Christian name, Brancalleone (Brachium leonis), or arm of a lion; and Bavaria has Lowenclo (lion-claw).

Section II.—The Horse.

The horse is as great a favourite as the lion, and is prominent in many a myth from the Caspian to the Frozen Ocean. His name in Sanscrit açva, in Zendish esp or asp, comes forth in the Greek ἵππος or ἵkkoς, showing its identity with the Latin equus, the Gaelic each, and it may be with the Teutonic hengst.

Among these various races it is the Persian, the Greek, and the Gael who have chiefly used the term for this noble animal in their nomenclature.

The Persian feminine Damaspia is said exactly to answer to the Greek Hippodameia, the female of Hippodamus (horse-tamer), and Hippos forms part of far too many Greek names to be here enumerated, except where they have become popular elsewhere.

One would have imagined that Hippos and λύω (to destroy) must have suggested the name of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who was destroyed by his own horse, terrified by a sea monster; but, on the other hand, he appears to have been named after his mother Hippolita, the beautiful queen of the Amazons, whom Shakespeare has shown us hunting in his wondrous Attic forest. However this may be, Hippolytus has many namesakes; among them an early Christian writer, and also a priest at Rome, who in the year 252 was condemned by the persecuting judge to die the death his name suggested. The Christians buried him in a catacomb, which bears his name. Sant’Ippolito became a parish church at Rome, and of course gave a title to one of the cardinals, and Ippolito and Ippolita have always been fashionable Italian names. He was also the patron of horsemen and horses, and the latter were solemnly blessed in his name. Xanthippe’s name is feminine of Xanthippus (a yellow horse!) What a pity it was not a grey one!

The Persian Aspamitras (horse-lover) exactly corresponds to the Greek Φίλιππoς (loving horses). Thus were named many obscure kings of Macedon, before that sagacious prince who prepared the future glories of his son by disciplining his army, and crushing Greece in spite of those indignant orations of Demosthenes, which have made Philippics the generic term for vehement individual censure.

Macedon, by colonizing the East, spread Philippos over it, and thus was named the apostle of Bethsaida, and likewise one of the deacons, chosen for his ‘Grecian’ connections.

The apostle was martyred at Hierapolis; nevertheless an arm of his, according to the Bollandists, was brought to Florence from Constantinople, in 1205, and made Filippo, Filippa, Lippo, Pippo, Pippa, great favourites in Northern Italy.

Greece and her dependent churches always used the name of Philip, or Feeleep, as they call it in Russia; and it was the eldest son of the Muscovite Anne, Queen of Henri I., who was the first Philippe to wear the crown of France. He transmitted his name to five more kings, and to princes innumerable, of whom one became Duke of Burgundy. His descendant, the half Flemish, half Austrian Philippe the handsome, married Juana la Loca of Castille and Aragon, and their grandson was known as Felipe II. in Spain. During his brief and ill-omened stay in England, he was godfather to Philip Sidney, whose name commemorated the gratitude of his mother to the King Consort for having interceded for the life of his father the Duke of Northumberland.

Philip, in both genders, was, however, already common in England. Queen Philippe, as she called herself, our admirable Hainaulter, was the god-daughter of Philippe de Valois, her husband’s rival; and many a young noble and maiden bore her honoured name, which one female descendant carried to Portugal, and another to Sweden, where both alike worthily sustained the honour of Plantagenet.

The name of Philippe is particularly common in the Isle of Jersey, so that it has become a joke with sailors to torment the inhabitants by calling them Philip as they would term an Irishman Paddy.

Filippo is additionally popular in Italy at present from the favourite modern Saint Filippo Neri.^[31]

Section III.—The Goat.

The goat (αἴξ) stands out prominently in northern mythology, though there scarcely, if at all, used in nomenclature. In Greek mythology he appears, though not distinctly, and the names derived from him are manifold.

The goat was the standard of Macedon (the rough goat was the King of Grecia), as Daniel had announced while Greece was yet in her infancy, and Macedon in barbarism, not even owned as of the Hellenic confederacy. The unfortunate posthumous son of Alexander was therefore called Aigos, or Ægos, in addition to his father’s name.

The aigis, ægis, or shield of Pallas Athene, though said to bear the gorgon’s head, was probably at first a goat skin. From it is formed Aigidios, Ægidius. In 475, there was an Ægidius, a Roman commander in Gaul, who was for a time an independent sovereign, ruling over both Romans and Franks. About two centuries later, an Athenian, as it is said, by name Ægidius, having worked a miraculous cure by laying his cloak over the sick man, fled to France to avoid the veneration of the people, and dwelt on the banks of the Rhone, living on the milk of a hind. The creature was chased by the king of France, and, flying wounded to her master, discovered him to the hunters. Thenceforth he has been revered as St. Giles, and considered as the patron of numbers thus called. Now, is Giles a contraction of Ægidius, or is it the corruption of the Latin Julius; or, again, is it the Keltic Giolla, a servant, or the Teutonic Gils, a pledge? Every one of these sounds more like it than the Greek word, and it does seem probable that the Athenian, if Athenian he were, was seized upon as patron by aliens to his name, and then cut down to suit them. However, Ægidius continued to be treated as the Latin for Giles; Egidio became an Italian name; and as St. Giles was patron of Edinburgh, Egidia was used by Scottish ladies; one of the sisters of King Robert II. was so called, and even now it is not quite extinct.^[32]

Section IV.—The Bee.

The word μείλα (soothing things) gave the verb μειλίσσω, or μελίσσω (melisso), to soothe or sweeten, whence the name of honey, and of the honey-bee. Melissa was sometimes said to have been the name of the nymph who first taught the use of honey, and bees, perhaps from their clustering round their queen, became the symbol of nymphs. Thence Melissa grew to be the title of a priestess as well as a lady’s name in classic times.

Melissa was invented by the Italian poets as the beneficent fairy who protected Bradamante, and directed Ruggero to escape from Atlante, and afterwards from Alcina, upon the hippogriff. Thus she entered the domain of romance, and became confounded with the Melusine and Melisende, who had risen out of the Teutonic Amalaswinth; and Melisse and Melite were adopted into French nomenclature.

Akin to Melissa is Γλυκηρά (Glykera), the sweet. This was not a feminine in good repute in ancient Athens, but it has since belonged to a saint of the Greek Churches, namely, the daughter of Macarius, thrice consul, who in the time of Antoninus suffered torments for a long time at Trajanopolis; and Gloukera is prevalent in Russia; and Glykera, or Glycère, in France.^[33]

Section V.—Names from Flowers.

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.

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.

Of these was ἀγαθός (the good), precisely the same word as our own good and the German guth, only with the commencing α and a Greek termination.

Classical times showed many an Agathon, and Agathias, and numerous compounds, such as Agathocles (good fame), to be repeated in the Teutonic Gudred, and other varieties; but the abiding use of the word as an European name was owing to a Sicilian girl, called Agatha, who in the Decian persecution was tortured to death at Rome. Sicily considered her as one of its guardian saints. Thus, the festival day of this martyred virgin is observed by both the Eastern and Western Churches, and her name is found among all the nations that ever possessed her native island. Greece has transmitted it to Russia, where the th not being pronounceable, it is called Agafia; and the masculine, which is there used, Agafon; and the Slavonian nations derive it from the same quarter. The Normans adopted it and sent it home to their sisters in Neustria, where it was borne by that daughter of William the Conqueror who was betrothed to the unfortunate Earl Edwin, and afterwards died on her way to a state marriage in Castille. In her probably met the Teutonic Gytha and the Greek Agatha, identical in meaning and root, and almost in sound, though they had travelled to her birth-place in Rouen by two such different routes from their Eastern starting-place. Agatha was once much more common as a name than at present in England, and seems still to prevail more in the northern than the southern counties. Haggy, or Agatha, is the maid-servant’s name in Southey’s Doctor, attesting its prevalence in that class before hereditary or peculiar names were discarded as at present.

France did not fail to take up Agatha. Spain had her Agatha like that of the Italians, both alike omitting the h of θ. Portugal makes it Agneda; and the only other change worth noting is that the Letts cut it short into Apka.

Aristos (best) was a favourite commencement with the Greeks. Aristides, most just of men, was thus called the son of the best. He has reappeared in his proper form in modern Greece; as Aristide in republican France; as Aristides in America.

Aristobulus (best counsel) came originally from an epithet of Artemis, to whom Themistocles built a temple at Athens, as Aristoboulè, the best adviser. It was very common in the various branches of the Macedonian empire, and was thus adopted in the Asmonean family, from whom it came to the Herodian race, and thence spread among the Jews. In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul sends his greetings to the household of Aristobulus; and Welsh ecclesiastical antiquaries endeavour to prove that Arwystli, whom the Triads say was brought by Bran the blessed to preach the Gospel in Britain, was the same with this person.

Aristarchus (best judge) is also a Scriptural name; and besides these we have Aristocles (best fame), Aristippos (best horse), Aristagoras (best assembly), and all the other usual Greek compounds among the Greeks.

Perhaps this is the fittest place to mention that Arethusa is in use among the modern Greeks, and interpreted by them to mean the virtuous, as coming from this source. Aretino has been used in Italy.^[34]

Section II.—Alexander, &c.

Conquering Macedon was the portion of Greece, if Greece it could be called, that spread its names most widely and permanently; and as was but right, no name was more universally diffused than that of the great victor, he who in history is as prominent as Achilles in poetry. Ἀλέξανδρος (Alexandros), from ἀλέξω (alexo), to help, and ἄνδρες (andres), men, was said to have been the title given to Paris by the shepherds among whom he grew up, from his courage in repelling robbers from the flocks. It was afterwards a regular family name among the kings of Macedon, he who gave it fame being the third who bore it. So much revered as well as feared was this mighty conqueror, that his name still lives in proverb and song throughout the East. The Persians absolutely adopted him into their own line, and invented a romance by which ‘Secunder’ was made the son of a native monarch. Among the eastern nations, Iskander became such a by-word for prowess, that even in the sixteenth century the Turks would find no greater title of fear for their foe, the gallant Albanian, Georgios Kastriotes, than Skander Beg, or Lord Alexander.

Not only did the great conqueror possess many namesakes,—as indeed, there is a story that all the children born the year of his conquest of India were called after him,—but Alexandros was already frequent in Greece; and among the kingdoms formed out of the fragments of his empire, it recurred so as to become usual all over the Græcized East. Even the Maccabean Jews used it, and it was common in Judea, as well as elsewhere, in the time of the Gospels, so that a large proportion of saints and martyrs bore it and handed it on, especially in Greece and Italy. A pope, martyred in the second century, rendered it a papal assumed name; and the Italians used it frequently as Alessandro, shortened into Sandro. Nowhere, however, is it so thoroughly national as in Scotland, imported thither, apparently, with other Greek names, by Margaret Ætheling, who learnt them in the Hungarian court where she was born and brought up. Her third son was the first of the three Scottish Alexanders, under whom the country spent her most prosperous days.

No wonder his namesakes were numerous. In the Highlands they came to be Alaster, and formed the surname MacAlister; in the south, the contractions were Alick, Saunders, or Sandy, and the feminine Alexa, Alexandrina, and Alexandra, are chiefly German and Russian, though now and then occurring in France.

The first half of this name, Alexios, a defender, was in use in ancient Greece, where it belonged to a noted sculptor. Its saintly honours did not begin till the fifth century, when a young Roman noble, called Allexius or Alexis, is said to have been so much bent on a monastic life, that being compelled by his parents to marry, he fled away on his wedding day, and lived seventeen years in a convent in Syria; but, finding his reputation for sanctity too much for his humility, he came home in guise of a poor pilgrim, and spent another seventeen years as a beggar maintained on the scraps of his father’s kitchen, and constantly mocked and misused by the servants, until in his dying moments, he made himself known to his parents. His church at Rome, called St. Alessio, gives a title to a cardinal; and his day, July 17th, is observed by the Greeks as well as the Romans; and yet so strange is his history that it almost seems as if it might have been one of those instances in which an allegory acquired the name of a real saint, and attached itself to him as a legend. Alessio has in consequence always been an Italian name, and with the family of the Komnenoi, Alexios came into use among the Byzantine Greeks, with whom it was very frequent. Alexia is often found as a lady’s name in old records and accounts of the middle ages; but it is apparently intended merely as the Latin equivalent for Alice, which we shall show by-and-by to have had an entirely different origin.

Section III.—Anēr, Andros.

We come to the names derived from ἀνήρ, gen. ἀνδρός (anēr, andros), a man. The word itself has connections in the Sanscrit nara, and Zend ner; but its compounds are all from its oblique cases.

The most interesting of these is formed by the corrupt Greek dialect used in Syria, namely, that which fell to Ανδρέας (Andreas), the Galilean fisherman, whom the Church Universal reveres as one of the foremost in the Glorious Company of the Apostles. The saint was martyred at Patras in Achaia, whence some of his relics were carried in the fourth century to Scotland, and were thus the occasion of St. Andrew’s becoming the Metropolitan see. Shortly after, the vision of Hungus, King of the Picts, of St. Andrew’s Cross, promising him victory, rendered the white saltire the national ensign, and St. Andrew became not only the patron saint, but in due time the knightly champion of Scotland, and made Andrew one of the most universal of names, and the patronymic Anderson very common. The other relics went first to Constantinople, and after the taking of that city, were dispersed through Europe. Philip the Good, of Burgundy, obtained some of them, and made St. Andrew the patron of the order of the Golden Fleece, and Andreas became a frequent Flemish and Dutch name. It has a feminine in the countries where it is most popular, and its variations are as follows:—

The feminines are the French Andrée and Italian Andreana. The Russians use Andrean as an equivalent for Henry!

Andronicus, man’s victory, was a great favourite, and occurs in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, probably having belonged to a Corinthian who had gone from the busy city of traffic on the Isthmus to the great Capital of the world. The name continued among the Greeks, and belonged to numerous emperors, but has not been subsequently in much favour.

Section IV.—Eu.

The word εὖ (well or happily) was the commencement of many a name of good augury from the earliest times, and mingles as much among Christian as among classical associations.

Thus in company with ἄγγελος, angelos (a messenger), it formed evangelus, happy messenger, or bearer of good tidings, the first time applied to a shepherd, who brought to Ephesus the tidings of a quarry of beautiful marble for the building of the temple that was the glory of the city and of all Asia. Adored with heroic honours as he was, the title must have seemed to the Ephesian Christians, above all, to befit those spiritual shepherds who brought the best of tidings, and Evangelista became the term for a preacher, as Evangelium of his doctrine, both becoming in time restricted to the four-writers of the personal history of our Lord, and their narrative, as being the very core and centre of the Good Tidings. Evangelista was an old Italian name; and Longfellow appears to have invented Evangeline for the heroine of his poem, whence many of the name have sprung up in America.

Εὔχειρ (Eucheir), dexterous hand, was no doubt at first a mere epithet of a sculptor, but afterwards considered as a name, and belonging to no less than four distinguished sculptors of ancient Greece.

Thence the Latinized Eucherius, which belonged to a Bishop of Lyons, a great author of ecclesiastical works, who died about A.D. 450; from him comes the Portuguese Euchario, the Italian Eucario, the French Euchaire, the Russian Jevcharij, the Polish Euckary.

Εὐδώρη (Eudora), happy gift, was one of the Nereids, and afterwards did duty as Eudore in French romance.

Eudocia and Eudoxia are so much alike as to be often confused, but have different significations. The first is Εὐδοκία (approval), the second Εὐδοξία (good fame of glory). Both were great favourites with the Greek empresses, and were assumed by imperial brides possessed of some appellation not supposed to befit the purple. Saints of the Greek Church handed Eudokhia on into Russia, where it has been worn upon the throne, and becomes in common parlance Jevdoksija.

Εὐγενή (Eugenes), well born, was a very old Greek author; but Eugenios was the more usual form in classical times, and was carried on as Eugenius by the Romans. St. Eugenius was an African Confessor, and another Eugenius was Bishop of Toledo in 646. Both these gave much popularity to their name; the first in the East, the second in Italy, where Eugênio came to that high-spirited Savoyard who, growing weary of lingering at the court of Louis XIV., and hearing himself called le petit Abbé du Roi, rendered the sound of Prince Eugène dear to Austria and England; terrible to France and Turkey. Foe as he was, it is to his fame that the great popularity of Eugène in France is owing, whilst even in the country for which he fought Eugen is far less common. The Russians have it as Jevgenij; and the Servians as Djoulija; indeed, well may these last remember the gallant prince who turned back the wave of Turkish invasion.

Eugenius stands forth again and again in the early roll of Scottish kings, but whether these sovereigns ever lived or not, their appellation was certainly not Eugenius, nor any corruption from it; but the Keltic Eoghan, Ewan, or Evan, still extremely common in the Highlands, and meaning a young warrior, though, after the favourite custom of the Gael, Anglicized and Latinized by names of similar sound. The Welsh Owain or Ywain appears to have had the same fate, as the first means a lamb; but this is not equally certain, as the British had many Latin and Greek names current among them, and this may be a corruption of Eugenius.

Eugenia was a virgin Roman martyr, of whom very little is known; but this convenient feminine for Eugène has been in favour in the countries where the masculine was popular, and the Empress Eugénie rendered it the reigning name in France.

The names beginning with this favourite adverb are almost beyond enumeration, and it is only possible to select those of any modern interest. Εὐνίκη (Eunike), Eunice, happy victory, was one of the fifty Nereids, from whom the name passed to Greek women, and thus to Eunice, the Jewish mother of Timothy, whence this has become a favourite with English lovers of Bible names.

John Bunyan would have been reminded of his town of Fair Speech by the number of Greeks called by words of this signification: Eulalius, Eulogius, Euphemius, all with their feminines, besides Euphrasia.

The feminines were more enduring than the masculines. Eulalia was a child of ten or twelve years old, who, with that peculiar exaggeration of feeling that distinguishes Spanish piety, made her escape from the place of safety where her parents had taken refuge, entered Merida, and proclaiming herself a Christian, was martyred with the utmost extremity of torture in the persecution of Diocletian, and was sung by the great Christian poet Prudentius, himself a Spaniard. His verses spread her fame into the East, where the Russians carry on her name as Jevlalija; the Servians, as Evlalija or Lelica. Another virgin martyr of the same name, under the same persecution, died at Barcelona, whence her relics spread into Guienne and Languedoc, and thus named the villages of Ste. Olaille, Ste. Aulazie, and Ste. Aulaire, the last a familiar seignoral title! Eulalia and Eulalie have been often used in Spain and France, and the former is found in the register of Ottery St. Mary, Devon—also frequently in Cornwall.

Euphemia originally meant at once fair speech and abstinence from the reverse, so that almost in irony it signified silence, and was applied to the stillness that prevailed during religious rites, or to the proclamation of silence. The Euphemia who was the parent of the wide-spread name, was a virgin-martyr of Bithynia, whose legend of constancy, unshaken and invulnerable, alike by lion and flame, strongly impressed both the East and the West. Jevfimija, in Russia; Jeva, in Servia; Bema, in Lusatia; and Pimmie, in Lithuania. Then she is almost as much changed as by the Effie and Phemie of Scotland, which together with Euphame have prevailed since very early times. It is a question whether this Scottish Euphame were really one of the Greek names brought from Hungary by Queen Margaret, or if it be only another attempt to translate the Keltic Aoiffe. In the Highlands, however, the name is called Oighrigh; which, to English eyes and ears, seems equally distant from either Aoiffe or Euphemia. The church of Santa Eufemia at Rome gives title to a cardinal, and has spread the name in Italy and France.

It remains somewhat doubtful whether Eustace should be referred to ΕὐστᾶθηοςΕὐστᾶθηος (steadfast), or to Εὔσταχος (happy in harvest). The Eostafie, or Eustathius, of the Greco-Slavonic Church, certainly has the same festival-day (September 20th) as the Eustachius of the Latin; but the Latin Church has likewise a St. Eustachius, a different personage with a different day. He of September 20th was a Roman soldier, who lived and suffered under the Emperor Adrian, but his wild poetical legend is altogether a work of the Western mind. It begins like that of St. Hubert, with his conversion by the apparition of a crucifix planted between the horns of a stag, and a voice telling him that he should suffer great things. A soldier saint was sure to be a great favourite in the middle ages, and the supposed transport of St. Eustace’s relics to St. Denis, in very early times, filled France with Eustache, and thence Eustace, Wistace, or Huistace, as English tongues were pleased to call it, came over in plenty at the Norman Conquest. Eustace ‘Comes,’ who holds land in Domesday Book before the Conquest, must have been he of Boulogne who had such a desperate quarrel with the Godwin sons. There were six householders of this name after the Conquest, and they, or their descendants, sometimes called their daughters Eustachie, or Eustachia. Eustachia, a kinswoman of Henry II., married Geoffrey de Mandeville; and Eustacie was once in favour in France; but all these have a good deal lost their popularity, though we sometimes hear of Eustace in these days. The Bavarian contraction is Staches. Eusebius and Eusebia mean gentle or holy, and have not been frequent.^[35]

Section V.—Hieros.

The word ἵερος (hieros), sacred, gave the term for a priest, or any other person or thing set apart, and thus formed several names in the family of the kings of Syracuse, Hieron, Hieracles (holy fame), Hieronymus, i. e. Ἱερώνυμος (with a holy name). These continued in use among the Greeks, and came at length to that Dalmatian scholar and hermit, Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius, who is reckoned as one of the greatest of the Latin fathers. As a saint of high reputation, his name underwent the Italian process of changing its aspirate into a G, and he became San Geronimo, or even Girolamo, whence the French took their frequent Jerome, and we followed their example. The Germans did indeed hold fast to Hieronymus; and the old English reformers would quote St. Hierom; but Jerome is the abiding name by which the saint, his namesakes, and the friars who took his rule are called.

In Ireland, Jerome, like Jeremiah and Edward, has been forced into representing the good old Keltic Diarmaid.

In Cambrai, Hieronome was the form, with the Hieronomette for a feminine; and among the Swinburnes of Yorkshire, in the seventeenth century, Jeronima thrice occurs.^[36]