Section IV.—Cæsar, &c.

No cognomen has ever been so much used as that of Cæsar, which first began in the Julian gens, nearly two centuries before the time of the great Dictator. Some derived it, like Cæso, from cædo (to cut); others said that the eyes of the first owner of it were unusually blue (cæsius), or that his hair (cæsaries) was wonderfully profuse; and a fourth explanation declared that it was the Moorish word for an elephant, which one of the Julii had slain with his own hand in Africa. However this might be, adoption into the family of Cæsar was the means of obtaining that accumulation of magisterial offices that placed the successor of Julius at the head of affairs, civil and military; and whilst habits of republican equality were still retained by the emperors, Cæsar was merely used as their designation. After the first twelve, adoption could no longer be strained into any fiction of the continuance of the Julian clan, and Cæsar became more properly a title. After the new arrangement of the empire under Diocletian, Augustus was the title of the emperor who had become an actual monarch, and Cæsar of the heir to the empire with considerable delegated power. In consequence, when Charlemagne relieved Rome from the attacks of the Lombards, the pope, as the representative of the S.P.Q.R., created him Cæsar, and the title has been carried on among his German representatives as Kaiser, though no elected “King of the Romans” might assume this sacred title until he had been crowned by the pope’s own hand. As a Christian name it has seldom occurred. Cesare Borgia was named, like many Italians of his date, in the classical style, but no one wished to inherit it from him, and it is seldom found except in France as Cesar; though in some counties of England the peasantry give it in baptism, having taken it, perhaps, from the surname Cæsar. The only feminine I can find is Cesarina Grimaldi, in 1585. Kaiser occurs in the same manner in Germany.

Camilla was a warlike Volscian nymph, dedicated to the service of Diana, and celebrated in the Æneid. Her name is said to have been Casmilla, and to have been given as meaning that she was a votaress of Diana. It is believed to be an Etruscan word, and the youth of both sexes were termed Camilli and Camillæ when employed in any solemn office; and thus Camillus became a name in the gens of Furius, and was noted in him who saved the capitol. Nymphs always had an attraction for the French, and a Camille figures in Florian’s romance of Numa Pompilius, while Camilla was adopted in the rage for classical names which actuated the English after the Reformation, and in some few families it has been handed on to the present day. Camillo was revived with classical names in Italy; and at the time of the Revolution, Camille was very fashionable in France. Camilla is still very common in the Abruzzi, its old classic ground.

Clemens came in so late that it hardly deserves to be called a cognomen, but we find it as the third name of Titus Flavius Clemens, Vespasian’s nephew, who was put to death by Domitian, on a charge of atheism, like others who went over to the Jewish superstition, i. e. to Christianity. A very early church at Rome is dedicated to him, and he is thought by some to be the same as the Clemens mentioned by St. Paul (Phil. iv. 3), author of two epistles, and first of nine bishops of Rome so called. Another great Father, St. Clemens of Alexandria, was likewise of the same name; besides a martyr of Ancyra, all called from the adjective clemens, which has much the same meaning as its derivative clement in all modern tongues. Its origin is uncertain: some saying it meant of clear mind, others of inclining mind; but the substantive Clementia was a personified idea, worshipped at Rome as a goddess, bearing a cup in one hand and a lance in the other. “Your Clemency” became a title of the emperors, and we find the orator Tertullus even addressing it to Felix. It is possible that it was thus that Clemens first passed to the emperor’s kinsman. There is a pretty legend that St. Clement was martyred by being beheaded, and thrown into the sea, where a shrine (I think of coral) was formed round his head, and he thus became the patron of sailors, above all, of Danes and Dutchmen. In Germany Clemens has preserved its Latin form, but cuts down into Klenim, Mente, Menz, Mentzel; as in Denmark into Klemet and Mens. The English surname, Mence, may perhaps be from this source; and Clement and Clementi are French and Italian surnames, as Clement and Clemente are the Christian ones. Italy probably first modernized the abstract goddess into Clemenza, whence France took up Clémence, while Germany invented Clementine for the feminine, whence our Clementina, rendered popular for a time in honour of the Italian lady in Sir C. Grandison. The Russians have Kliment, the Hungarians Kelemen, and the Esthonians contract the name into Lemet. It must have been from the Dutch connections of eastern England, that Clement and Clemency were both at one time frequent.^[64]

Section V.—Constantius.

Constantius arose likewise as late as any cognomen deserving to be reckoned. It comes from constans (constant), a word meaning holding together firmly, and compounded of con (together), and stans, the participle of the verb sto (I am, or I stand).

So late, indeed, did Constantius become prominent in history in the person of Flavius Valerius Constantius, that he does not even seem to have had a prænomen, and his sons and grandsons varied the cognomen by way of distinction into Constans and Constantinus. Of these the first Christian emperor rendered the diminutive glorious, and though it has not been much copied in the West, Κονστάντινος is one of the very few Latin names that have been Latinized among the Greeks, as well it might be, in memory of the emperor who transported the seat of empire to a Greek city, and changed its appellation from Byzantium to Constantinopolis.

Constantius Chlorus was very popular in Britain, and—as has been said before—the belief that his wife Helena was of British birth, held the island firm in its allegiance till the death of the last emperor who claimed kindred with him. And then Constantius and Constantinus were names assumed by the rebels who first began to break the bonds of union with the empire, as if the sound were sure to win British hearts. Indeed, Cystenian has never entirely disappeared from the Welsh nomenclature, nor Kusteninn from Brittany.

Perhaps one charm of the name to a Kelt was its first syllable, which resembles the con or cu (wisdom or hound), which was one of their favourite beginnings. The Constantines of Hector Boece’s line of Scottish kings are ornamental Congals and Conchobars; and, in like manner, Ireland has turned many a Connal and Connor into Constantine in more modern times, accounting for the prevalence of the trisyllabled Roman as a surname.

In Russia Konstantin has been carried on, especially since the days of Catharine II., as a witness to the continuation of the Byzantine empire in that of Muscovy; and here and in the other Slavonian countries alone does it really prevail as a popular name, frequent enough for vernacular contractions, such as Kostja, Kosto, Kostadin.

The feminine of both names was used by the daughters of the imperial family, and Constantia continued among the Provençal ladies, so as to be brought to the throne of France by the termagant Constance of Provence, wife to that meek sovereign, Robert the Pious. She is said to have insisted on his composing a Latin hymn in her honour, when he, not being in a mood for flattery, began to sing “O constantia martyrum” which she took as a personal compliment. Constance has ever since been a royal and noble name in France, but the unfortunate Breton duchess, mother of Arthur, probably received it as a supposed feminine to Conan, the name of her father. Italy made it Gostanza, and the Sicilian mother of Frederick II. transmitted it to Germany as Constanz, or Stanze. Her great granddaughter, the heiress of Manfred’s wrongs, took it to Spain as Constanza, the traces of which we see in the Custance, by which Chaucer calls that excellent daughter of Pedro the Cruel, who was the wife of John of Gaunt. After her time it was common in England, and it is startling to find a real Constance de Beverley in disgrace in the reign of Henry VIII., not, however, for forging Marmion’s letters, but for the much more excusable misdemeanour of attending the Marchioness of Exeter in a stolen visit to the Nun of Kent. In the times immediately after the Reformation, Constance died away, then came forth as Constantia in the Minerva press, and at present reigns among the favourite fancy names.

Kostancia, Kotka, Stanca are used in the Slavonian countries, but far less commonly than the masculine Constantine, which is almost entirely disregarded by the Teuton side of Europe.

Section VI.—Crispus, &c.

Crispus (curled, or wrinkled), the same word which has produced our crisp; and the French crépé (applied to hair), became a cognomen, and in late times produced Crispinus and Crispinianus, two brothers who accompanied St. Quentin when he preached the Gospel in France. They settled at Soissons, and there, while pursuing their mission, supported themselves by making shoes until their martyrdom, A.D. 287. Shoemakers, of course, adopted them as their patrons, and theirs was a universal holiday.

That day being the 25th of October, that of the battle of Agincourt, of which King Henry augurs—

Crispin has never been a frequent Christian name, but it has become a surname with us, and the French have Crêpin, Crêpet, and the Italians Crispino. Crispin is still the French for a shoemaker’s last. Crêpin means a little stool which the Irish call a creepeen.

Drusus, a cognomen in the Livian gens, was only accounted for among the Romans by a story that its first owner took it from having killed a chieftain in Gaul named Drausus. This word is explained by comparative philologists as firm or rigid in Keltic, Drud, strong, in Welsh, droth in Erse. Either the Gaul was the real cause of the surname, or it is an instance of the Keltic element in old Italian. It is hardly worthy of notice, except that, in imitation of the sister and daughter of his patron Caligula, Herod Agrippa called his daughter by the feminine diminutive Drusilla, by which she appears by the side of Felix, hearing but little regarding the discourse of St. Paul.

The name of Felix himself was an agnomen frequently assumed by peculiarly fortunate individuals. It meant happy, and has given rise to all manner of words of good augury in the modern languages. No less than eleven saints so called are numbered in the Roman calendar, and yet it has never been a popular name, though sometimes occurring in Spain and France in the original form, and as Felice in Italy. The feminines, Felicia and Félise, in England and France, have been constructed from it, and Felicia was Queen of Navarre in 1067; but the abstract idea, Felicitas (happiness), once worshipped as a goddess at Rome, named the slave-martyr of Carthage, who suffered with St. Perpetua. There was another Felicitas who, with her seven sons, under Antoninus Pius, presented a Christian parallel to the mother in the Maccabees. Felicità in Italy, and Félicité in France, are the votaries of one or others of these. Felix is adopted in Ireland as a substitute for Feidlim or Phelim (ever good).

Faustus and Faustina are formed exactly in the same spirit of good augury, and Fausto is sometimes an Italian name.^[65]

Section VII.—Galerius, &c.

The Teutonic helm (protection), turned in the Latin pronunciation into galea (helmet), named the persecuting Emperor Galerius, and continued in Lombardy till it formed that of Galeazzo, which became notable among the Visconti of Milan, and was called by the French Galeas. Old Camden augured that the first Galearono was so called from all the cocks in Milan crowing at the time of his birth, and certainly, unless the frequent Roman cognomen Gallus indicates a partly Gallic extraction, it would either be one of the farming names, and show that the owner was notable for his poultry, or be a differently spelt variety from Galea or helmet. Galileo, Galilei, and Galeotti are all Italian continuations of this old Latin name—that is, if the great astronomer’s name be not in honour of Galilee. It is also possible that it may be connected with the Keltic Gal (courage, or a stranger), which occurs again as the Irish saint who founded an abbey in Switzerland; but more of this in Keltic regions of names.

Niebuhr considers the Prisci to have been the original Latin tribe, whose name acquired its sense of age from their antiquity, just as Gothic was at one time a French and English synonym for antiquated. Priscus was the Porcian cognomen, probably denoting the descent of the gens from the Prisci; and he whom we are accustomed to call Cato the elder, as a translation of Marcus Porcius Priscus Cato, was the first to add the second cognomen, the meaning of which is wary, from Catus, probably a contraction from Cautus (cautious). Priscus and Prisca are both found in the Roman martyrology; but to us the most interesting person thus named is Priscilla, the fellow-worker of St. Paul, in honour of whom this diminutive has had some prevalence in England, though somewhat of a puritan kind.

Sabinus, of course indicating a Sabine family, occurs among the Flavii, and many other gentes. Sabina was the second name of that Poppæa, Nero’s wife, whose extravagances have become a proverb, who bathed in asses' milk, and shod her mules with gold. As a frequent cognomen, this was the name of many other women, and specially of a widow who was converted by her maid, Seraphia, to the Christian faith, and was martyred in Hadrian’s persecution. There is a church at Rome dedicated to her, which was formerly the first “Lent station,” a fact which commended her to the notice of the Germans, and has made Sabine frequent among them. Sabina is often found among the peasantry about Gloucester, but it is possible that this may be a corruption of Sabrina (the Severn).

Serenus (serene, or good-tempered) was an old cognomen, and two saints were so called. Serena was the niece of Theodosius, and wife of Stilicho. Her appellation was chosen by Hayley for the heroine of his Triumphs of Temper; but it is more often imaginary than real. In Norway, however, it has been revived as an ornamental form of Siri, the contraction of Sigrid.

Scipio means nothing but a staff; but it is a highly honourable title, since it was given to one of the Cornelii, who served as the staff of his old blind father; and the same filial piety distinguished the great Africanus when, at seventeen, he saved the life of his father in the battle of the Ticinus. Distinguished as is the cognomen it has not often been followed, though Scipione has occasionally occurred in Italy, and if Gil Blas may be trusted, in Spain.

Traherne, an old Welsh name, is formed from Trajanus, which belonged to others besides the emperor, whose noble qualities had made such an impression on the Italian mind as to have led to the remarkable tradition that St. Gregory the Great had obtained permission to recall him from the grave, and convert him to the true faith.

Torques (a neck-chain) gave the cognomen Torquatus to the fierce Lucius Manlius, who, having slain a gigantic Gaul in single combat, took the gold chain from about his neck, and hung it on his own; and who afterwards put his son, Titus Manlius Torquatus, to death for the breach of discipline in accepting a like challenge from a Tusculan noble. Torquato Tasso is the sole modern instance of the recurrence of the surname of this “Roman Father,” the northern Torquil being from an entirely different source, i.e. Thorgils (Thor’s pledge).^[66]

The precedence must be given to the less on account of its far greater dignity.

There can be no doubt that the cognomen Paullus, or Paulus, the contraction of Pauxillus, originated with one of the Æmilian gens, who was small in stature. It was common in other gentes, though chiefly distinguished among the Æmilii, and was most probably the name by which “Saul of Tarsus” would have been enrolled as a citizen, either from its resemblance to his Jewish name, or from the person who had conferred liberty upon his parents.

Some, however, imagine that he assumed it out of compliment to the deputy, Sergius Paulus; others, that it was an allusion to his “weakness” of “bodily presence,” or that he took it in his humility, meaning that he was “less than the least of the Apostles.” Be that as it may, he has given it an honour entirely outshining that which is won from the Æmilii, and has spread Paul throughout Europe. The strong presumption that St. Paul preached the Gospel in Spain has rendered Pablo very common there; but, in fact, the name is everywhere more usual than in England, in spite of the tradition that the great Apostle likewise landed here, and the dedication of our great cathedral. Perhaps this may be owing to the fact that twelve other SS. Paul divide the allegiance of the Continent with the Apostle. Paula is not only honoured as his feminine, but as the name of the friend and correspondent of St. Jerome, the mother of Eustochium; and Paola is in consequence found in Italy. Paulinus (the lengthened form) became in Welsh, Pewlin, and also named three saints—among them our first Northumbria, bishop of York; but it has not been followed, except in Italy, by Paolina, and there is, perhaps, a mere diminutive of Paulus. Yet the feminine is far more fashionable; and Paulina, Pauline, Paolina, are the favourite forms everywhere occurring. Perhaps Pauline became the more popular in France for the sake of that favourite grandchild whose Christian name is almost the only one mentioned in Madame de Sévigné’s letters. It was the only form commonly recognized in France; but it seems that the sister of Napoleon was commonly called Paulette in her own family. The direct Italian diminutive always seems to be a greater favourite with the southern blood than its relative from the northern chen.

The adjective of size is another word of universal kindred, though not always with the same meaning. The Sanscrit mahat, and Persian mi or meah, are close connections of the Gothic mikils (which survives in mickle and muckle, and has furnished our much), and of the Greek μεγαλος or μεγας, and Roman magnus and Slavonic magi. All these possibly may be remotely connected with the verb magan (may), which is the source of macht (might) in all Teutonic tongues.

Magnus was an agnomen added as a personal distinction, as in the case of Pompey. It was never a name till long after the Roman empire was over, when Karl der Grösse, as his Franks called him, had been Latinized into Carolus Magnus, and honoured by the French as Charlemagne. St. Olaf of Norway was known to be a great admirer of Charlemagne, whose example he would fain have imitated, and his followers, by way of a pleasant surprise and compliment to him, before they woke him to announce to him the birth of his first son, christened the child, as they thought, after the latter half of the great Emperor Carolus Magnus. That child became a much-beloved monarch, under the denomination of King Magnus Barefoot, from his having established his identity on his return from Ireland, by the ordeal of walking unshod over red-hot ploughshares. In honour of his many excellencies, as King of Norway, the entire North uses his name of Magnus, and transplanted it to Ireland, where it flourished under the form of Manus, until it became the fashion to ‘Anglicize’ it into Manasses. The Scottish islands, where the population is Norse, likewise use Magnus as a baptismal name; and the Lapps have turned it into Manna, or Mannas.

Maximus was likewise properly an individual agnomen of size, or of victory, as with Fabius Maximus; but it came to be a proper name, and was borne by Maximus the Monk, a great Greek ecclesiastic of the sixth century, as well as by many other obscure saints, from whom the Italians derive their Massimo, and the French Maxime, and the Welsh their old Macsen.

Maxentius and Maximinus, both named not only persecuting emperors, but Christian martyrs, whence Maxime and Maximien. Maximilianus was one of the Seven Sleepers, but he is not the origin of the German imperial name. According to Camden, this was a compound invented by the Emperor Frederick VII., and bestowed on his son in his great admiration of Fabius Maximus and Scipio Æmilianus. “The Last of the Knights,” with his wild effrontery and spirited chamois-hunting might be despised by the Italians, as Massimiliano Pochi Danari; but he was beloved by the Austrians as “Our Max.” His great grandson, Maximilian II., contributed to the popularity of his unwieldy name, and Max continues to be one of the favourite German appellations, from the archduke to the peasant, to the present day; and has even thrown out the feminine Maximiliane. The Poles and Illyrians use ks instead of x in spelling it.

Section IX.—Rufus, &c.

Rufus, the red or ruddy, was a cognomen of various families, and was, in fact, one of the adjectives occurring in the nomenclature of almost every nation; and chiefly of those where a touch of Keltic blood has made the hair vary between red and black. Flavius, Fulvius, Rufus, and an occasional Niger, were the Roman names of complexion; and it is curious to find the single instances of Chlorus (the yellow), occurring in the Flavian family. The Biondi of Italy claim to be the Flavii, and thence the Blound, Count de Guisnes, companion of William the Conqueror, took the name now Blount!

Rufus is, indeed, the Latin member of the large family of which we spoke in mentioning the Greek Rhoda; and the Kelts had, in plenty, their own Ruadh or Roy; nevertheless, such as fell under Roman dominion adopted the Roman Rufus or Rufinus; and it passed on by tradition in Wales, as Gruffin, Gruffydd, or as the English caught it and spelt it, correctly representing the sound of dd, Griffith. It was the name of many Welsh princes, and has passed into a frequent surname.

In its Gruffin stage, it passed into the commonwealth of romance. Among the British names that had worked through the lost world of minstrelsy, to reappear in the cycle with which Italian poets graced the camp and court of Charlemagne, is Grifone, a descendant of Bevis of Hampton. By this time, no doubt, his name was supposed to be connected with the Griffin, that creature with griffes, or claws; thatthat after having served in earlier times, as with Dante, to represent the Italian idea of the vision of the cherubim, had been gradually degraded to a brilliant portion of the machinery of romance.

No doubt the Italians who bore the name of Grifone, thought more of the “right Griffin” and the true knight, than of the ruddy Roman whose Ruffino or Ruffo was still left lingering among them; together with Rufina, the name of a virgin martyr.

Rufus is, for some reason or other, rather a favourite at present with our American neighbours.

Niger (the black) was a cognomen of various Romans of no great note, and distinguished a teacher from Antioch, mentioned in the Acts. The diminutive Nigellus seems to have been adopted in France, by the Normans, as a translation of the Nial which they had brought from Norway, after having learned it of the Gael, in whose tongue it means the noble. In Domesday Book, twelve proprietors are recorded as Nigel, both before and after the Conquest, being probably Danish Nials thus reduced to the Neustrian French Latin. Of these was Nigel de Albini (temp. William I.), and Nigel de Mowbray (temp. Henry II.). The influx of Anglo-Normans into Scotland introduced this new-fashioned Nigel, and it was adopted as the English form of Niel, and has since become almost exclusively confined to Scotland, where it is a national name, partly perhaps in memory of the untimely fate of Niel or Nigel Bruce; and among the covenanters, for the sake of the fierce Nigel Leslie, Master of Rothes. It has shared the fate of Colin and of the true Nial, and has been taken for Nicolas. The French used a like name, which Froissart spells Nesle; but this is probably from the inference that a lengthened sound of e infers a silent s.

Section I.

A short chapter must be given to the modern names that, in spite of the canon prohibiting the giving of names of heathen gods in baptism, are either those of Latin divinities, or are derived from them. These, though few in number, are more than are to be found in the Greek class, from the fact that where a Roman deity had become identified with a Greek one, the Latin name was used throughout Western Europe in all translations, and only modern criticism has attempted to distinguish between the distinct myths of the two races. Most of these are, or have been, in use either in France or England, the modern countries most under the dominion of fancy with regard to names.

Aurora (the dawn), so called, it is said, from aurum (gold), because of the golden light she sheds before her, assumed all the legends attached by the Greeks to their Eos, whose rosy fingers unbarred the gates of day. When the Cinque-cento made classic lore the fashion, Aurore came into favour with the fair dames of France, and has ever since there continued in vogue, occasionally passing into Germany. In Illyria, the dawn and the lady are both called Zora, and she in endearment Zorana.^[67]

Bellona was not a goddess whose name one would have expected to find renewed in Christian times, yet instances have been found of it in England among those who probably had some idea that it was connected with beauty instead of with bellum (war). In effect, hers is not quite a proper name, being really an adjective, with the noun understood, Bellona Dea (the war goddess). An infant born in the streets of Weimar during the sack that followed the battle of Jena was named Angelina Bellona, as having been an angel of comfort to her parents in the miseries of war. She became a great musician, and won renown for her name in her own land.^[68]

The old Latin deities were often in pairs, masculine and feminine. Divus, that part of their title that is still recognized as belonging to the supernatural, is from the same source as the Sanscrit deva, Persian dev, Greek δῖος, 0εός, Zeus, and was applied to all. Divus Janus and Diva Jana were one of these pairs, who presided over day and night, as the sun and moon. Divajana became Diana; and as groves were sacred to her, and she was as pure a goddess as Vesta, there was every reason for identifying her with the Greek Artemis, and giving her possession of the temple of Ephesus, and the black stone image that “fell down from Jupiter,” or the sky; she had Apollo given as her fellow instead of Janus, and thenceforth was the goddess of the silver bow, daughter of Jupiter and Latona, as Artemis had been of Zeus and Leto. Her name slept as a mere pagan device till the sixteenth century, when romances of chivalry gave place to the semi-classical pastoral, of which Greece was usually the scene. Jorge de Montemayor, the Spanish gentleman who led the way in this flowery path, named his heroine, Diana, and she was quickly copied by the sponsors of Diane de Poitiers, the fair widow whose colours of black and white were worn by Henry II. of France even to his last fatal tournament. Diane thus became so fashionable in France, that when the Cavalier court was there residing, the English caught the fashion, and thenceforth Lady Dye at times appeared among the Ladies Betty and Fanny of the court. In the lower classes, Diana seems to be at times confused with the Scriptural Dinah, though it may sometimes be adopted as a Bible name, since a peasant has been known to pronounce that he well knew who was “greatest ‘Diana of the Ephesians,’—a great lady of those parts, and very charitable to the poor.” At Rome Jewesses now alone bear it, and Italian Christians consequently despise it, and only give it to dogs. However, in the eighteenth century, a Monna Diana existed at Florence, who is recorded as an example of the benefits of a heavy head wrapper, for a large stone fell upon her head from a building, and she took it for a small pebble!

Diana’s fellow, Divus Janus, had a very different career. He was sometimes called Dianus, but much more commonly Janus, and from being merely the sun, he became allegorical of the entire year, and had a statue with four faces for the seasons, and hands pointing the one to 300, the other to 55, thus making up the amount of days then given to the year; and before him were twelve altars, one for each month. He thus presided over the beginning of everything, and the first month of the year was from him called Januarius, as were all gates jani, and doors januæ; and above all, that gate between the Sabines and the Romans, which was open when they were friends, shut when they were foes. When the two nations had become thoroughly fused together, the gate grew to a temple; but the ceremony of shutting the doors was still followed on the rare occasions when Rome was at peace, and of opening them when at war to let the god go out, as it was now said, to help the Romans. This idea of peace, however, turned Janus into a legendary peaceful monarch, who only wore two heads that he might look both ways to see either side of a question, and keys were put into his hand as the guardian of each man’s gate. His own special gate continued to be called Janicula, and his name passed from the door, janua, to the porter, janitor; and thence in modern times to St. Peter, who, bearing the keys, was called by the Italians, il Janitore di Cielo, and thence the fish, which was thought to bear the mark of St. Peter’s thumb, was il janitore, or, as we call it, the John Dory, if not from its gilded scales, dorée or dorado. Its Spanish name of San Pedro would favour the janitor theory. The month of Janus, Janvier, January, Gennaro, Januar, has kept its name, like all the other months of the Roman calendar, in spite of the French attempt to displace them with Glacial, Pluvial, &c. Birth in the month of January occasioned the name of Januarius to be given to various persons in the time of the Roman empire, to one of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, to a martyr whose day is the 13th of October, and especially to St. Januarius, of Beneventum, who in the persecution of Diocletian was thrown to wild beasts at Pozzuoli, and on their refusal to hurt him, was beheaded. His blood was already a religious curiosity before the eighth century, when it was thought to have delivered Naples from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and it furnishes one of the most questionable and most hotly-defended miracles of the Church of Rome. After this Gennaro cannot fail to be a very frequent Neapolitan Christian name.^[69]

Section II.—Florentius.

The goddess of flowers was called from their Latin name flos, the same that has passed into all European languages except the German. In late times the name of Florus was formed from that of the goddess, and is memorable as that of the procurator, whose harshness drove the Jews to their last rebellion. Flora was probably first used merely as the feminine of Florus. There is a church at Florence to SS. Fiore and Lucilla, otherwise the first occurrence of any variety of Flora is in Roman-Gothic Spain, where the unhappy daughter of Count Julian was called by the Spanish diminutive Florinda, and thus caused the name to be so much detested, that while Spanish ballads called her la Cava, the wicked, her Christian name was only bestowed upon dogs, and curiously enough it was the little spaniel (a Spanish breed), for which Flora was considered in England as an appropriate name. A Spanish maiden, however, who was martyred by the Moors in 851, brought Flora into better repute; and Flore became known to the French, though probably first adopted as a romantic epithet; and through the close connection between France and Scotland, it passed to the latter country, the especial land of floral names, and there became frequent as the English equivalent to the Gaelic Finghin. It was spelt as Florie by the island heroine of the '45. Florentius was the natural product of the goddess Flora, and named a female saint, Florentia, martyred with two others, both men, in Diocletian’s persecution in Gaul, and commemorated by a monastery built over the spot. St. Florentius was likewise a Gaul, and was sent by St. Martin to preach in Poitou. His relics were at first at Saumur, but in the eleventh century were taken to Roye, and in the time of Louis XI., were divided between the two cities. As an Angevin saint, he quite accounts for the prevalence of Florence in the masculine gender among the Anglo-Norman nobles of the middle ages; but it soon died away. The recent revival is chiefly owing to the name having been given to English girls born at the Italian city so called, and it has since acquired a deeper and dearer honour in the person of Florence Nightingale. From the city, or else as a diminutive of Florentius, arose Florentinus, a name borne by various distinguished persons in the latter days of the empire, and saintly in the person of a martyr of Burgundy. Florentina was one of the daughters of St. Leander, of Spain, and the relics of these saints scattered the names of Florentin and Florentine over a wide extent in France. Besides these, should be mentioned the romantic name, Blanchefleur. It is given to Sir Trystan’s mother, and probably translates some Keltic name analogous to the Erse Blathnaid, Finbil, and Finscoth, all of which mean white flower.

The Irish Florence, or Flory, so common among the peasantry, is intended for Finghin, or Fineen (fair offspring); also for Flann, Fithil, and Flaithri.^[70]

Section III.—Laurentius.

It appears natural to refer Laurentius direct to laurus (the bay or laurel); but there is reason to think that it, as well as the tree, must go farther back to the dim vestiges of early Roman mythology. From the Etruscans the Romans learnt the beautiful idea of guardian spirits around their hearths, whom they called by the Etruscan word lar or lars; meaning lord or master. The spirits of great statesmen or heroes became public lares, and watched over the welfare of the city; those of good men, or of innocent infants under forty days old, were the lares of their home and family. Their images, covered with dogskins, and with the figure of a dog beside them, were placed beside every hearth; and, curiously enough, are the origin of the name dogs, still applied to the supports on either side of a wood fire-place. They were made to partake in every household festival; cups were set apart, in which a portion of every meal was poured out to them; the young bride, on being carried across her husband’s threshold, made her first obeisance to these household spirits of his family; and on the nones, ides, and calends of each month, when the master returned from the war, or on any other occasion of joy, the lares were crowned with wreaths and garlands. Pairs of lares stood in niches at the entrance of the streets; other lares guarded districts in the country; and the lares of all Rome had a temple to themselves, where stood twin human figures with a dog between them. All these wore green crowns on festival days, especially on those of triumph; and thus there can be little doubt that the evergreen whose leaves were specially appropriated to the purpose was thence called laurus, as the poplar was from forming people’s crowns. The special feast of the lares was on the 22nd of December, and it was immediately followed by that of a female deity called Lara, Larunda, Larentia, Laurentia, or Acca Laurentia, who was termed in old Latin genita mana (good mother), received the sacrifice of a dog, and was entreated that no good domestic slave might depart. Thus much custom had preserved to the Romans; but when Greek mythology came in, flooding and corrupting all their own, poor Laurentia was turned into a nymph, so given to chattering (λαλιά) that Jupiter punished her by cutting out her tongue and sending her, in charge of Mercury, to the lower world; and the lares, now allowed to be only two, were made into her children and those of Mercury. Another story, wishing to account for all traditions in one, made her into the woman who nursed Romulus and Remus, and thus disposed of her and of the she-wolf at once, and made the twelve rural Lares her sons; whilst a third version degraded her, like Flora, and made her leave all her property to the state, in the time of Ancus Martius.

Laurentius does not occur in early history; but it belonged to the gentle Roman deacon who, on the 10th of August, 258, showed the “poor and the maimed, the halt and the blind,” as the treasures of the Church, and was martyred, by being roasted over a fire on bars of iron. Constantine built a church on his tomb, and seven other Churches at Rome are likewise dedicated to him. Pope Adrian gave some of his relics to Charlemagne, who took them to Strasburg, and thus rendered him one of the regnant saints in Germany, where the prevalence of shooting stars on the night of his feast has occasioned those meteors to be called St. Lorenz’s sparks. In fact, his gentle nature, his peculiar martyrdom, and his church at Rome, caused him to be a saint of universal popularity; and a fresh interest was conferred on him, in Spanish eyes, by Philip II.’s belief that the battle of St. Quentin, fought on his day, was won by his intercession, and the consequent dedication of the gridiron-palace convent of the Escurial to him.

Besides the original saint, England owns St. Laurentius among the band of Roman missionaries who accompanied St. Augustine, and, in succession, became archbishops of Canterbury. When England, in her turn, sent forth missionaries, another Laurence preached the Word in the North, with such effect as to compel the Trollds themselves to become church builders, much against their will, and to leave his name, cut down into Lars, its primitive form, as a favourite in all Scandinavia. In Ireland, Laurence, whose name I strongly suspect to have been Laghair, a son of Maurice O'Tuathail, of Leinster, was archbishop of Dublin at the time of the conquest by the Norman adventurers, and was thus brought into close connection with Canterbury and with Rome, knitting the first of the links that have made the Irish so abject in their devotion to the Papal See. It was probably on this account that he was canonized, but he was also memorable as one of the builders of St. Patrick’s cathedral at Dublin, and for his charities during a terrible famine, when he supported as many as 300 destitute children. It is he who has rendered Lanty and Larry so common among the Irish peasantry. Besides all these, the modern Venetian saint, Lorenzo Justiniani, worthily maintained the honour of the Christian name already so illustrious in excellence, and it has continued in high esteem everywhere, though, perhaps, less common in England than on the Continent. Germany is the place of its special reign; and in the Harz mountains, to bow awkwardly is called krummer Lorenz machen.

Some languages have the feminine, but it is not frequent anywhere. The Italian Lorenza is, perhaps, the most frequent.

The name of Laura is a great perplexity. It may be taken from Laurus, and ladies so called consider St. Laurence as their patron; but it may also be from the word Laura, the Greek Λαβρα, or Λαυρα, meaning an avenue, the same as labyrinth, and applied to the clusters of hermitages which were the germ of monasteries. Or again, a plausible derivation is that Lauretta might have commemorated the laurel-grove, or Loreto, whither Italian superstition declared that the angels transported the holy house of Nazareth away from the Turkish power on the conquest of Palestine. Those who call the milky-way the Santa Strada di Loretto, might well have used this as one of their varied forms of seeking the patronage of the Blessed Virgin. The chief objection that I can find to this theory is, that the first Lauretta that I have met with was a Flemish lady, in 1162; the next was a daughter of William de Braose, Lord of Bramber, in the time of King John, a period antecedent to the supposed migration of the holy house, which did not set out on its travels till 1294. Others think it the same with Eleonora, which I cannot believe; but, at any rate, it was the Provençal Lora de Sades, so long beloved of Petrarch, who made this one of the favourite romantic and poetical names, above all, in France, where it is Laure, Lauretta, Loulou.^[71]