France, the most influential of European countries for evil or for good, can hardly be properly spoken of as one, in nation or language. Yet that one dialect of hers that has contrived to be the most universal tongue of Europe, that character, which by its vivacity and earnestness, and, perhaps, above all, by its hard, rigid consistency, has impressed its ideas on all other nations, and too often dragged them in its wake, though both only belonging to a fraction of the population, are still, in general estimation, the French, and their importance undeniable. Dislike, despise, struggle as we will, we are still influenced, through imitation and vanity, and the deference of the weaker majority, in matters of conventional taste.

Old Gaul had its brave Keltic inhabitants, and its race in Brittany, unsubdued by even Rome, were only united to the rest of the country by the marriage of their heiress, only subdued by gradual legalized tampering with their privileges. Even in the Keltic province, however, genuine Keltic names are nearly gone; though Hervé, Guennolé, Yvain, Arzur, are still found in their catalogues; and in France, Généviève, by her protection of Paris, left her ancient name for perpetual honour and imitation.

The Roman overflow came early and lasted long; it left a language and manners strongly impressed, and the names seem to have been according to Latin forms and rules. Dionysius, Pothinus, Martinus, Hilarius, are all found among the Gauls in the end of the Roman sway; and when the Franks had burst over the country and held the north of the Loire, whenever a Gaul comes to the surface, he is called by a Roman name—Gregorius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Germanus, Eligius.

Southern Gaul was, indeed, never Frank. The cities were Roman municipalities, shut their gates, and took what care of themselves they could; while the Hlodvehs and Meervehs, the Hilperics, and Hildeberts ravaged over the stony country, which still called itself Provincia. And there, though Burgundians on the east, and Goths from the Pyrenees, gradually contrived to erect little dukedoms and counties, and hold them under the empire established by Charlemagne, the country was still peopled by the Romanized Gaul, and the Langue d’oc was spoken and sung. This was the centre of the softened classic names, Yolande and Constance, Alienor and Delphine, while the legends of St. Marthe and of the Martyrs of Lyons supplied provincial saints. The rich literature, chiefly of amatory songs, died away, and the current remains of the language are now unwritten, falling further and further into patois, and varying more from one another. One of its curious peculiarities is to make o a feminine termination; Dido is there short for Marguerite, Zino for Theresine, &c.

A great number of French surnames are still Roman, such as Chauvin (Calvinus), Godon (Claudius), Marat, Salvin, and many more, showing that Latin nomenclature must long have been prevalent among the mass of the people, though as history is only concerned with the court, we hear chiefly of the Franks around the unsteady thrones of Neustria and Austrasia. The High German of these kingdoms, as used by the Meerwings, was extremely harsh; Hlodveh and Hlodhild, Hlother and Hlodvald, were their rough legacies; but, despised as was the name and cheap the blood of the Roman among them, his civilization was conquering his victors; and when the Karlings, with their middle class cultivation, subdued the effete line of Meerveh, they spoke Latin as freely as Frankish, and the names they bore had softened; Ludovicus and Lotharius, Carolus and Emma in Latin, or in German, Ludwe and Lothar, Karl and Emme. And now, among the many saints that were fostered by the religious government and missionary spirit of Frankland, arose the founders of the chief stock names of Europe—Robert, Richard, Henry, Williaume, Walther, Bernard, Bertram, Eberhard, and the like.

When, in the next generation, Germany, Lorraine, and France fell apart, the latter country was beginning to speak the Langue d’oui, retaining the Latin spelling, but disregarding it in speech, as though the scholar had written correctly, but the speaker had disregarded the declension, and dropped the case endings alike of Latin and Teutonic. And so Karl was Charles, and Lodwe Louis, long before the counts of Paris, with their assimilation of the Cymric Hu to the Teuton Hugur, had thrust the Karlings down into Lorraine, and commenced the true French dynasty in their small territory between the Seine and Loire.

Already had the Northmen settled themselves in Neustria, and, taking the broken Frank names and mangled Latin speech for badges of civilization and Christianity, had made them their own, and infused such vigour into the French people, that from that moment their national character and literature begin to develop.

Then it was that France exercised a genuine and honourable leadership of Europe. Her language being the briefest form of Latin, was, perhaps, the most readily understood of the broken Romance dialects; and though Rome had the headship of the Church, and Germany the nominal empire of the West, France had the moral chieftainship.

The Pope did but sanction the Crusades; it was France that planned them. Frenchmen were the connecting link between the Lorrainer Godfrey, the Norman Robert, the Sicilian Tancred, the Provençal Raymond, the Flemish Baldwin. The kingdom of Jerusalem, though founded by the Lorrainer, was essentially French; the religious orders of knighthood were chiefly French; the whole idea and language of chivalry were French; and perhaps rightly, for France has at times shown that rare and noble spirit that can exalt a man for his personal qualities, instead of his rank, even in his own lifetime. The nation that could appreciate its St. Bernard, its Du Guesclin, its Bayard, deserved, while that temper was in it, to be a leader of the civilized world.

England was in these earlier days regarded as a foreign and semi-barbarous realm held by a French duke or count, while southern France was divided into independent fiefs of the empire. The names began to be affected by reverence for saints, and fast included more and more of the specially popular patrons, such as Jean, Jaques, Simon, Philippe. They became common to all the lands that felt the central crusading impulse, and the daughters of French princes, Alix, Matilde, the Provençal Constance, Alienor, Isabel, Marguérite, were married into all parts of Europe, and introduced their names into their new countries, often backed up by legends of their patrons.

Normandy lapsed to France through King John’s crime and weakness, and the persecution of the Albigenses, and the narrower views of the popes, changed the Crusades to a mere conquest of the Langue d’oc by the Langue d’oui, completed by the marriages of the brothers of St. Louis; and though Provence continued a fief of the empire, and the property of the Angevin kings of Naples, yet their French royal blood united it more closely to the central kingdom, and the transplanting of the papal court to Avignon, gave a French tinge to the cardinalate which it only recovered from at the expense of the Great Schism.

Philippe le Bel was the last able sovereign of France of the vigorous early middle ages; but the brilliant character of the nobility still carried men’s minds captive, and influenced the English even through the century of deadly wars that followed the accession of the House of Valois, and ended by leaving Louis XI. king of the entire French soil.

The ensuing century was that when the influence of France on other nations was at the lowest ebb. Exhausting herself first by attacks on Italy, and then by her savage civil wars, she required all the ability of Henri IV. and of Richelieu to rouse her from her depression, and make her be respected among the nations. Meantime, her nomenclature had varied little from the original set of names in use in the tenth century; dropping a few obsolete ones, taking up a few saintly ones, recommended by fresh relics, and occasionally choosing a romantic one, but very scantily; François was her only notable adoption. The habit of making feminines to male names seems to have spread in France about the eighteenth century, rather narrowing than widening the choice. Jeanne seems to have been the first to undergo this treatment; Philippine was not long after, then Jacqueline, and, indeed, it may have been the habit—as it is still among the peasantry of the South—always to give the father’s name to the eldest child, putting a feminine to it for a girl.

With the cinque-cento came a few names of literature, of which Diane was the most permanent; and the Huguenots made extensive use of Scripture names—Isaac, Gédéon, Benjamin, and many more; but the Christian name was quickly falling out of fashion. People were, of course, christened, but it is often difficult to discover their names. The old habit of addressing the knight as Sire Jehan, or Sire Pierre, and speaking of him as le Beau Sieur, had been entirely dropped. Even his surname was often out of sight, and he was called after some estate—as le Sieur Pierre Terrail was to the whole world Chevalier Bayard. Nay, even in the signature, the Christian name was omitted, unless from some very urgent need of distinction. Henri de Lorraine, eldest son of the duke of Guise, signs himself Le Guisard in a letter to the Dauphin Henri, son of François I. Married ladies wrote themselves by their maiden joined to their married title, and scarcely were even little children in the higher orders called by one of the many names that it had become the custom to bestow on them, in hopes of conciliating as many saints and as many sponsors as possible,—sometimes a whole city, as when the Fronde-born son of Madame de Longueville had all Paris for his godmother, and was baptized Charles Paris.

Now and then, however, literature, chiefly that of the ponderous romances of the Scudéry school, influenced a name, as Athenaïs or Sylvie; but, in general, these magnificent appellations were more used as sobriquets under which to draw up characters of acquaintances than really given to children. Esther is, however, said to have been much promoted by the tragedy of Racine.

The Bourbons, with their many faults, have had two true kings of men among them—Henri IV. and Louis XIV.—men with greatness enough to stamp the Bourbon defects where their greatness left no likeness.

There is something very significant in the fact, that these were the days when it was fashionable to forget the simple baptismal name. There was little distinction in it, if it had been remembered; Louis or Marie always formed part of it, with half-a-dozen others besides. As to the populace, nobody knows anything of them under Louis XIV.: they were ground down to nothing.

The lower depth, under Louis XV., brought a reaction of simplicity; but it was the simplicity of casting off all trammels—the classicalism of the Encyclopædists. Christian names are mentioned again, and were chosen much for literary association. Emile and Julie, for the sake of Rousseau; and, from Roman history, Jules and Camille, and many another, clipped down to that shortened form by which France always appropriated the words of other nations, and often taught us the same practice.

The Revolution stripped every one down to their genuine two names, and woe to the owners of those which bore an aristocratic sound, or even meaning. Thenceforth French nomenclature, among the educated classes and those whom they influence, has been pretty much a matter of taste. Devotion, where it exists, is satisfied by the insertion of Marie, and anything that happens to be in vogue is added to it. Josephine flourished much in the first Bonaparté days; but Napoléon was too imperial, too peculiar, to be given without special warrant from its owner; nor are politically-given names numerous: there are more taken from popular novels or dramas, or merely from their sound. Zephyrine, Coralie, Zaidée, Zénobie, Malvine, Séraphine, prevail not only among the ladies, but among the maid-servants of Paris; and men have, latterly, been fancifully named by appellations brought in from other countries, never native to France—Gustave, Alfred, Ernest, Oswald, &c. Moreover, the tendency to denude words of their final syllable is being given up. The names in us and in a are let alone, in spelling, at least; and some of our feminine English contractions, such as Fanny, have been absolutely admitted.

All this, however, very little affects the peasantry, or the provinces. Patron saints and hereditary family names, contracted to the utmost, are still used there; and a rich harvest might be gathered by comparison of the forms in Keltic, Latin, Gascon, or German, in France.

Section VI.—Great Britain.

The waning space demands brevity; otherwise, the appellations of our own countrymen and women are a study in themselves; but they must here be treated of in general terms, rather than in detail.

The Keltic inhabitants of the two islands bore names that their descendants have, in many instances, never ceased to bear and to cherish. The Gael of Ireland and Scotland have always had their Niel and Brighd, their Fergus and Angus; Aodh, Ardh, and Bryan, Eachan, Conan, the most ancient of all traditional names, continuing without interval on the same soil, excepting a few of the more favoured Greek and old Italian.

The Cymry, in their western mountains, have a few equally permanent. Caradoc, Bronwen, Arianwen, Llud, and the many forms of Gwen, are extremely ancient, and have never dropped into disuse. In both branches of the race there was a large mass of poetical and heroic myth to endear these appellations to the people; and it is one of the peculiar features of our islands to be more susceptible than any other nation to these influences on nomenclature. Is it from the under-current of the imaginative Kelt that this tendency has been derived?

Rome held England for four hundred years; and though Welsh survived her grasp and retained its Keltic character, instead of becoming a Romance tongue, it was considerably imbued with Latin phraseology; and the assumption of Latin names by the British princes, with the assimilation of their own, has left a peculiar class of Welsh classic names not to be paralleled elsewhere, except, perhaps, in Wallachia. Cystenian, Elin, Emrys, Iolo, Aneurin, Ermin, Gruffydd, Kay, are of these; and there are many more, such as March, Tristrem, Einiawn, Geraint, which lie in doubt between the classic and the Cymric, and are, probably, originally the latter, but assimilated to those of their Latin models and masters. It was these Romanized Kelts who supplied the few martyrs and many saints of Britain; whose Albanus, Aaron, and Julius left their foreign names to British love, and whose Patricius founded the glorious missionary Church of Ireland, and made his name the national one. His pupils, Brighde and Columba, made theirs almost equally venerated, though none of these saintly titles were, at first, adopted in the Gadhaelic Churches without the reverent prefix Gille, or Mael, which are compounded with all the favourite saintly names of the Keltic calendar.

Again, the semi-Roman Kelts were the origin of the Knights of the Round Table. Arthur’s own name, though thorough Keltic, is claimed by Greek. Lancelot is probably a French version of the Latin translation of Maelgwn; and the traces of Latin are here and there visible in the nomenclature of the brave men who, no doubt, aimed rather at being Roman citizens than mediæval knights.

The great Low German influx made our island English, and brought our veritable national names. An immense variety existed among the Anglo-Saxons, consisting of different combinations, generally with some favourite prefix, in each family—Sige, Æthel, Ead, Hilde, Cuth, Ælf, and the terminations, generally, beorht, red, volf, veald, frith, or, for women, thrythe, hilde, gifu, or burh. The like were in use in the Low German settlements on the Continent, especially in Holland and Friesland.

Christianity, slowly spreading through the agency of the Roman Church on the one hand and the Keltic on the other, did not set aside the old names. It set its seal of sanctity on a few which have become our genuine national and native ones. Eadward, Eadmund, Eadwine, Wilfrith, Æadgifu, Æthelthryth, Mildthryth, Osveald, and Osmund, have been the most enduring of these; and Æthelbyrht we sent out to Germany, to come back to us as Albert.

The remains of the Danish invasions are traceable rather in surnames than Christian names. The permanent ones left by them were chiefly in insular Scotland and Ireland. Torquil, Somerled, Ivor, Ronald, Halbert, are Scottish relics of the invaders; and in Ireland, Amlaidh, Redmond, Ulick.

But it was the Normans, Norsemen in a French dress, that brought us the French rather than Frank names that are most common with us. Among the thirty kings who have reigned since the Conquest, there have been ten Christian names, and of these but two are Saxon English, three are Norman Frank, two French Hebrew, one French Greek, one French, one Anglicized German Greek. Strictly speaking, Richard is Saxon, and began with a native English saint; but it was its adoption by Normans that made it popular after the Conquest; and it came in company with William, Henry, Robert, Walter, Gilbert, all in perpetual use ever since. Alberic, Bertram, Baldwin, Randolf, Roger, Herbert, Hubert, Reginald, Hugh, Norman, Nigel, and many others less universally kept up, came at the same time; and Adelheid and Mathilda were imported by the ladies; but, in general, there were more men’s names than women’s then planted, probably on account of William’s policy of marrying Normans to English women.

Scripture names were very few. There are only two Johns in Domesday Book, and one is a Dane; but the saints were beginning to be somewhat followed; Eustace was predominant; Cecily, Lucy, Agnes, Constance, were already in use; and in the migration, Brittany contributed Tiffany, in honour of the Epiphany. At the same time she sent us her native Alan, Brian, and Aveline; and vernacular French gave Aimée and afterwards Algernon.

It was a time of contractions. Between English and French, names were oddly twisted; Alberic into Aubrey, Randolf into Ralph, Ethelthryth into Awdry, Eadgifu into Edith, Mathilda into Maude, Adelheid into Alice.

Saint and Scripture names seem to have been promoted by the crusading impulse, but proceeded slowly. The Angevins brought us the French Geoffrey and Fulk, and their Provençal marriages bestowed on us the Provençal version of Helena—Eleanor, as we have learnt to call their Alienor, in addition to the old Cymric form Elayne. Thence, too, came Isabel, together with Blanche, Beatrice, and other soft names current in poetical Provence. Jehan, as it was called when Lackland bore it, and its feminine Jehanne, seem to have been likewise introductions of our Aquitanian queen.

The Lowland Scots had been much influenced by the Anglo-Saxons, whose tongue prevailed throughout the Lothians; and after the fall of Macbeth, and the marriage of Malcolm Ceanmore, English names were much adopted in Scotland. Cuthbert has been the most lasting of the old Northumbrian class. The good Queen Margaret, and her sister Christian, owed their Greek names, without a doubt, to their foreign birth and Hungarian mother, and these, with Alexander, Euphemia, and George, forthwith took root in Scotland, and became national. Probably Margaret likewise brought the habit, then more eastern than western, of using saintly names, for her son was David; and from this time seems to have begun the fashion of using an equivalent for the Keltic name. David itself, beloved for the sake of the good king, is the equivalent of Dathi, a name borne by an Irish king before the Scottish migration. David I., nearly related to the Empress Maude, and owning the earldom of Northumbria in right of his wife, was almost an English baron; and the intercourse with England during his reign and those of his five successors, made the Lowland nobles almost one with the Northumbrian barons, and carried sundry Norman names across the border, where they became more at home than even in England; such as Alan, Walter, Norman, Nigel, and Robert.

Henry II. was taking advantage of the earl of Pembroke’s expedition to Ireland, and the English Pale was established, bringing with it to Erin the favourite Norman names, to be worn by the newly-implanted nobles, and Iricized gradually with their owners. Cicely became Sheelah; Margaret, Mairgreg; Edward, Eudbaird; and, on the other hand, the Irish dressed themselves for civilization by taking English names. Finghin turned to Florence, and Ruadh to Roderick, &c.

Henry III. had been made something like an Englishman by his father’s loss of Normandy; and in his veneration for English saints, he called his sons after the two royal saints most beloved in England, Edward and Edmund; and the death of the elder children of Edward I. having brought the latter a second time to the throne, it was thenceforth in honour. Thomas owed its popularity to Becket, who was so christened from his birth on the feast of the Apostle, St. Thomas, and, in effect, saintly names were becoming more and more the fashion. Mary was beginning to be esteemed as the most honourable one a woman could bear; and legends in quaint metrical English rendered Agnes, Barbara, Katharine, Margaret, and Cecily well known and in constant use.

The romances of chivalry began to have their influence. Lionel and Roland, Tristram, Ysolda, Lancelot, and Guenever, were all the produce of the revival of the tales of Arthur’s court, arrayed in their feudal and chivalrous dress, and other romances contributed a few. Diggory is a highly romantic name, derived from an old metrical tale of a knight, properly called D'Egaré, the wanderer, or the almost lost, one of the many versions of the story of the father and unknown son. Esclairmonde came out of Huon de Bourdeaux; Lillias, such a favourite in Scotland, came out of the tale of Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and Sir Graysteel; Lillian out of the story of Roswal and Lillian; and Grizel began to flourish from the time Chaucer made her patience known.

The Scots, by their alliance with France, were led to import French terminations, such as the diminutives Janet and Annot; also the foreign Cosmo, and perhaps likewise Esmé.

Meantime we obtained fresh importations from abroad. Anne came with the Queen of Richard II.; Elizabeth from the German connections of Elizabeth Woodville’s mother, Jaquetta of Luxemburg; Gertrude was taken from Germany; Francis and Frances caught from France; and Arthur was revived for his eldest son by the first Tudor; Jane instead of Joan began, too, in the Tudor times.

But when the Reformation came, the whole system of nomenclature received a sudden shock. Patron saints were thrown to the winds; and though many families adhered to the hereditary habits, others took entirely new fashions. Then, Camden says, began the fashion of giving surnames as Christian names; as with Guildford Dudley, Egremont Ratcliffe, Douglas Sheffield; and in Ireland, Sidney, as a girl’s name, in honour of the lord deputy, Sir Henry, the father of Sir Philip, from whom, on the other hand, Sydney became a common English boy’s name.

Then, likewise, the classical taste came forth, and bestowed all manner of fanciful varieties; Homer, Virgil, Horatius, Lalage, Cassandra, Diana, Virginia, Julius, &c., &c., all are found from this time forward; and here and there, owing to some ancestor of high worth, specimens have been handed on in families.

The more pious betook themselves to abstract qualities; Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence and Patience, Modesty, Love, Gift, Temperance, Mercy, all of which, even to the present day, sometimes are used, but chiefly by the peasantry, or in old Nonconformist families.

Between the dates 1500 and 1600 began the full employment of Scripture names, chosen often by opening the Bible at haphazard, and taking the first name that presented itself, sometimes, however, by juster admiration of the character. Thus began our use of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Rachel, Joseph, Benjamin, Josiah, Gershom, Gamaliel, &c.; and others more quaint and peculiar. The Puritan clergy absolutely objected to giving unedifying names. A minister was cited before Archbishop Whitgift for refusing to christen a child Richard. The Bible was ransacked for uncommon names only found in the genealogies, and parish registers show the strangest varieties, such as Hope still, Dust and Ashes, Thankful, Repent, Accepted, Hold-the-Truth, &c. These were chiefly given at the baptisms in the latter days of Elizabeth and the reign of James I. They were the real, not assumed, names of the Ironsides, but they were not perpetuated. A man called Fight-against-Sin would have too much pity for his son to transmit such a name to him. Original is, however, a family name still handed on in Lincolnshire. Probably it was at first Original Sin. The most curious varieties of names were certainly used in the 17th century. The register of the scholars admitted to Merchant Taylors' school between 1562 and 1699 shows Isebrand, Jasper, Jermyn, Polydore, Cæsar, Olyffe, Erasmus, Esme, Ursein, Innocent, Praise, Polycarpe, Tryamour, and a Sacheverell, Filgate, admitted in 1673.

Comparatively few of these Puritan names were used in Scotland; but several were for sound’s sake adopted in Ireland as equivalents; Jeremiah for Diarmaid; Timothy for Tadhgh; Grace for Graine.

Charles was first made popular through loyalty to King Charles I., who had received it in the vain hope that it would be more fortunate than the hereditary James, itself brought into Scotland seven generations back by a vow of Annaple Drummond, mother of the first unfortunate James. English registers very scantily show either Charles or James before the Stuart days, but they have ever since been extremely popular. Henrietta, brought by the French queen, speedily became popular, and with Frances, Lucy, Mary, Anne, Catherine, and Elizabeth, seem to have been predominant among the ladies; but all were contracted, as Harriet, Fanny, Molly, Nanny, Kitty, Betty. The French suppression of the Christian name considerably affected the taste of the Restoration; noblemen dropped it out of their signature; the knight’s wife discarded it with the prefix Dame; married daughters and sisters were mentioned by the surname only; young spinsters foolishly adopted Miss with the surname instead of Mistress with the Christian; but the loss was not so universal as in France, for custom still retained the old titles of knights and of the daughters and younger sons of the higher ranks of the nobility. The usual fashion was, in imitation of the French, for ladies to call themselves and be addressed in poetry by some of the Arcadian or romantic terms, a few of which have crept into nomenclature; Amanda, Ophelia, Aspasia, Cordelia, Phyllis, Chloe, Sylvia, and the like.

The love of a finish in a was coming in with Queen Anne’s Augustan age. The soft e, affectionate ie or y, that had been natural to our tongues ever since they had been smoothed by Norman-French, was twisted up into an Italian ia: Alice must needs be Alicia; Lettice, Letitia; Cecily, Cecilia; Olive, Olivia; Lucy, Lucinda; and no heroine could be deemed worthy of figuring in narrative without a flourish at the end of her name. Good Queen Anne herself had an a tacked on to make her ‘Great Anna’; Queen Bess must needs be Great Eliza; and Mary was erected into Maria; Nassau had lately been invented for William III.’s godchildren of both sexes; and Anne, after French precedent, made masculine for his successor’s godsons. Belinda, originally the property of the wife of Orlando, was chosen by Pope for his heroine of Rape of the Lock; Clarissa was fabricated out of the Italian Clarice by Richardson; and Pamela was adopted by him out of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, as a recommendation to the maid-servant whom he made his heroine; and these, as names of literature, all took a certain hold. Pamela is still not uncommon among the lower classes.

In the mean time the House of Brunswick had brought in the regnant names of German taste—George, of which, thanks to our national patron, we had already made an English word, Frederick, Ernest, Adolphus—a horrible English Latinism of good old German, Augustus, an adoption of German classic taste; and, among the ladies, generally clumsy feminines of essentially masculine names—Caroline, Charlotte, Wilhelmina, Frederica, Louisa, together with the less incorrectly formed Augusta, Sophia, and Amelia.

This ornamental taste flourished, among the higher classes, up to the second decade of the nineteenth century, when the affectations, of which it was one sample, were on the decline, under the growing influence of the chivalrous school of Scott, and of the simplicity upheld by Wordsworth. The fine names began to grow vulgar, and people either betook themselves to the hereditary ones of their families, or picked and chose from the literature then in fashion.

Two names, for the sake of our heroes by sea and land, came into prominence—Horatio and Arthur, the latter transcending the former in popularity in proportion to the longer career and more varied excellences of its owner. Womankind had come back to their Ellen, Mary, and Lucy; and it was not till the archaic influence had gone on much longer that the present crop sprang up, of Alice and Edith, Gertrude, Florence, and Constance, copied again and again, in fact and in fiction, and with them the Herbert and Reginald, Wilfrid and Maurice, formerly only kept up in a few old families. It is an improvement, but in most cases at the expense of nothing but imitation, the sound and the fashion being the only guides. After all, nomenclature cannot be otherwise than imitative, but the results are most curious and interesting, when it is either the continuation of old hereditary names, like the Algernon of the Howards or the Aubrey of the de Veres, or else the record of some deeply felt event, like the Giustina of Venice, in honour of the battle of Lepanto, or our own Arthur, in memory of the deeds of our great duke.

Names are often an index to family habits and temper. Unpretending households go on for generations with the same set, sometimes adopting one brought in by marriage, but soon dropping it out if it is too fine. Romantic people reflect the impressions of popular literature in their children’s names; enthusiastic ones mark popular incidents,—Navarino, Maida, Alma, have all been inflicted in honour of battles. Another class always have an assortment of the fashionable type—Augusta, Amelia, and Matilda, of old; Edith and Kate at present.

Nonconformity leaves its mark in its virtue names and its Scripture names, the latter sometimes of the wildest kind. Talithacumi was the daughter of a Baptist. A clergyman has been desired to christen a boy ‘Alas,’ the parents supposing that ‘Alas! my brother,’ was a call on the name of the disobedient prophet. There is a floating tradition of ‘Acts’ being chosen for a fifth son, whose elder brothers had been called after the four Evangelists; and even of Beelzebub being uttered by a godfather at the font.

Among other such names may be mentioned ‘Elibris,’ which some people persisted belonged to their family, for it was in their grandfather’s books: and so it was, being e libris (from the books), the old Latin manner of commencing an inscription in a book. Sarsaparilla was called from a scrap of newspaper. ‘Valuable and serviceable’ is also said to have been intended for a child, on the authority of an engraving in an old watch; and an unfortunate pair of twins were presented for the imposition of Jupiter and Orion, because their parents thought them pretty names, and ‘had heard on them.’

Double names came gradually in from the Stuart days, but only grew really frequent in the present century; and the habit of calling girls by both, now so common among the lower classes in towns, is very recent.

With many families it is a convenient custom to christen the sons by the mother’s maiden name in addition to their first individual name; but the whole conversion of surnames into Christian names is exclusively English, and is impossible on the Continent, as state and church both refuse to register what is not recognized as in use. Of English surnames we need say nothing; they have been fully treated of in other works, and as any one may be used in baptism, at any time, the mention of them would be endless.

In speaking of England we include not only our colonies but America. There our habits are exaggerated. There is much less of the hereditary; much more of the Puritan and literary vein. Scripture names, here conspicuous, such as Hephzibah, Noah, Obadiah, Hiram, are there common-place. Virtues of all kinds flourish, and coinages are sometimes to be found, even such as ‘Happen to be,’ because the parents happened to be in Canada at the time of the birth.

The Roman and Greek influence has been strong, producing Cato, Scipio, Leonidas, &c.; but the habit of calling negroes by such euphonious epithets has rather discouraged them among the other classes, and the romantic, perhaps, predominates with women, the Scriptural with men. The French origin of many in the Southern States, and the Dutch in New England, can sometimes be traced in names.

Section VII.—Germany.

What was said of Frankish applies equally to old High German, of which Frankish was a dialect, scarcely distinguishable with our scanty sources of information.

We have seen Frankish extinguished in Latin in the West; but in the East we find it developing and triumphing. The great central lands of Europe were held by the Franks and Suevi, with the half civilized Lombards to their south, and a long slip of Burgundians on the Rhine and the Alps, all speakers of the harsh High German, all Christians by the seventh century, but using the traditional nomenclature, often that of the Nibelungenlied. The Low Germans, speaking what is best represented by Anglo-Saxon literature, were in the northerly flats and marshes, and were still heathens when the Franks, under Charlemagne conquered them, and the Anglo-Saxon mission of Boniface began their conversion.

The coronation of Charles by the pope was intended to establish the headship of a confederacy of sovereigns, one of them to be the Kaisar, and that one to be appointed by the choice of the superior ones among the rest. This chieftainship remained at first with the Karlingen; but after they had become feeble it remained, during four reigns, with the house of Saxony, those princes who established the strange power of the empire over Italy, and held the papal elections in their hands. It was under them that Germany became a confederation, absolutely separate from her old companion France.

There is not much to say of German nomenclature. She little varied her old traditional names. Otto, Heinrich, and Konrad, constantly appeared from the first; and the High German, as the literary tongue, has had the moulding of all the recognized forms.

The Low German continued to be spoken, and became, in time, Dutch and Frisian, as well as the popular dialect of Saxony and West Prussia. The Frisian names are, indeed, much what English ones would be now if there had been no external influences.

In spite of being the central empire, the German people long resisted improvement and amalgamation. The merchant cities were, indeed, far in advance, and the emperors were, of necessity, cultivated men, up to the ordinary mark of their contemporary sovereigns; but the nobility continued surly and boorish, little accessible to chivalrous ideas, and their unchanging names—Ulrich, Adelbert, Eberhard, marking how little they were affected by the general impressions of Europe. A few names, like Wenceslav, or Boleslav, came in by marriage with their Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian neighbours; and Hungary, now and then, was the medium of the introduction of one used at Constantinople, such as Sophia, Anne, Elisabeth, which, for the sake of the sainted Landgraffinn of Thuringia, became a universal favourite. Friedrich came in with the Swabian dynasty; Rudolf and Leopold, with the house of Hapsburg.

Holland and the cluster of surrounding fiefs meanwhile had a fluctuating succession, with lines of counts continually coming to an end, and others acceding who were connected with the French or English courts. The consequence was, that the gentlemen of these territories gained a strong French tinge of civilization, especially in Flanders, where the Walloons were a still remaining island of Belgæ. The Flemish chivalry became highly celebrated, and, under the French counts of Hainault and Flanders, and dukes of Burgundy, acquired a tone, which made their names and language chiefly those of France, and tinctured that of the peasantry and artisans, so as to distinguish them from the Hollanders. Andreas, Adrianus, Cornelius, saints imported by the French dukes, were both in Holland and the Netherlands, however, the leading names, together with Philip, which was derived from the French royal family. The Dutch artificers and merchants had their own sturdy, precise, business-like character—their German or saintly names, several of which are to be found among our eastern English, in consequence of the intercourse which the wool trade established, and the various settlements of Dutch and Flemish manufacturers in England.

The revival of classical scholarship in the fifteenth century was considerably felt in the great universities of the Netherlands and of Germany, and its chief influence on nomenclature is shown in the introduction of classical names; namely, Julius and Augustus, and the Emperior Friedrich’s notable compound of Maximus Æmilianus into Maximilian, but far more in finishing every other name off with the Latin us. Some were restorations to the original form; Adrianus, Paulus, and the ever memorable Martinus; but others were adaptations of very un-Latin sounds. Poppo turned to Poppius; Wolf to Wolfius; Ernst to Ernestus; Jobst, instead of going back to Justinus, made himself Jobstius; Franz, Franciscus. The surnames were even more unmanageable, being often either nicknames or local; but they underwent the same fate; Pott was Pottus; Bernau, Bernavius; while others translated them, as in the already-mentioned instance of Erasmus, from Gerhardson, and the well-known transformation of Schwarzerd into Melancthon. The Danish antiquary Broby (bridge town), figures as Pontoppidan; Och became Bos; Heilman, Severtus; Goldmann, Chrysander; Neumann, Neander; and as to the trades, Schmidt was Faber; Müller, Molitor; Schneider, Sartorius; Schuster, Sutorius; Kellner, Cellarius.

The German Christian names did not permanently retain this affectation; but the Netherlanders, owing probably to the great resort to their universities, retained it long and in popular speech, so that in many Dutch contractions, the us is still used, as in Janus for Adrianus; Rasmus for Erasmus; and almost always the full baptismal name includes the classical suffix. The surnames, of course, adhered, and are many of them constantly heard in Germany and Holland, while others have come to England chiefly with the fugitives from the persecution that caused the revolt of the Netherlands. The Latin left in Dacia and long spoken in Hungary must have assisted to classicalize the Germans even on their Slavonic side.

The Reformation did not so much alter German as English nomenclature. The Lutherans, following their master’s principle of altering only what was absolutely necessary, long retained their hereditary allegiance to their saints, and did not break out into unaccustomed names, though they modified the old Gottleip into Gottlieb. Some of their sects of Germany however, invented various religious names; Gottseimitdir, Gottlob, Traugott, Treuhold, Lebrecht, Tugendreich, and probably such others as Erdmuth and Ehrenpreis were results of this revival of native manufacture. A few Scriptural names came up among the Calvinists, but do not seem to have taken a firm hold.

This was the land of the double Christian name. It was common among the princes of Germany, before the close of the fifteenth century, long before France and Italy showed more than an occasional specimen. It was probably necessitated, by way of distinction, by the large families all of the same rank in the little German states. They seem to have set the fashion which has gradually prevailed more and more in Europe; indeed, there are some double names that have so grown together as to be recognized companions, such as Annstine for Anne Christine, Anngrethe for Anne Margarethe. At present it is the custom in almost all royal families to give the most preposterous number of Christian names, of which one, or at most two, is retained as serviceable, &c.

A few Slavonic names crept in; chiefly Wenzel from Bohemia; Kasimir from the Prussian Wends; Stanislas from Poland; and the house of Austria, when gaining permanent hold of the empire, spread the names derived from their various connections; the Spanish Ferdinand, and Flemish Karl and Philipp, besides their hereditary Leopold and Rudolf, and invented Maximilian.

The counter-reformation brought the Jesuit Ignaz and Franz into the lands where the Reformation was extinguished, and canonized Stanislav. Under the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, Germany retrograded in every respect; and when she began to emerge from her state of depression, the brilliance of the French court rendered it her model, which she followed with almost abject submission. Every one who could talked French, and was called by as French a name as might be; the royal Fritz became Fédéric, and little Hanne, Jeannette, the French ine and ette were liberally tacked to men’s names to make them feminine, and whatever polish the country possessed was French.

This lasted till the horrors of the Revolution, and the aggressions that followed it, awoke Germany to a sense of her own powers and duties as a nation. Her poets and great men were thoroughly national in spirit; and though, after the long and destructive contest, she emerged with her grand Holy Roman Empire torn to shreds, her electoral princes turned into petty kings, her noble Hanse towns mostly crushed and absorbed in the new states, her Kaisar merely the Markgraf of Austria, enriched by the spoils of Lombardy and the Slavonic kingdoms, yet she had recovered the true loyalty to the fatherland and its institutions, cared again for her literature and her language, and had an enthusiasm for her own antiquities, a desire to develop her own powers.

German names, to a degree, reflect this. They have ceased to ape Latin or French. So far as any are literary, they come from their own national literature; but as in most of the states only ordinary names are registered, the variety is not great. More and more German names pass to England in each generation, and become naturalized there; but the same proportion of English do not seem to be returned.

Bavaria, having been always Roman Catholic, has more saintly names than most other parts of Germany, and, in particular, uses those of some of the less popular apostles, who probably have been kept under her notice by the great miracle plays.

Switzerland, once part of the empire, though free for five hundred years back, is a cluster of varying tongues, races, languages, and religions,—Kelt and Roman, Swabian and Burgundian, Romanist, Lutheran, Calvinist, German, French, Italian. Names and contractions must vary here; but only those on the German side have fallen in my way, those about Berne, which are chiefly remarkable for the Ours and Ursel, in honour of the bears, and Salome among the women; the diminutive always in li.

Section VIII.—Scandinavia.

Grand old Northmen! They had their own character, and never lost it; they had their own nomenclature, and kept it with the purity of an unconquered race.

The few influences that affected their nomenclature were, in the first place, in some pre-historic time, the Gaelic. Thence, when Albin and Lochlinn seem to have been on friendly terms, they derived Njal, Kormak, Kylan, Kjartan, Mælkoln, and, perhaps, Brigitte. Next, in Denmark, a few Wend names were picked up; and, in fact, Denmark being partly peopled by Angles, and always more exposed, first to Slavonic, and then to German influences, than the North, has been less entirely national in names.

In the great piratical days the Northmen and Danes left their names and patronymics to the northern isles, from Iceland to Man, and even in part to Neustria and Italy. Oggiero and Tancredi, in the choicest Italian poems, are specimens of the wideness of their fame. Our own population, in the north-east of England, is far more Scandinavian than Anglian, and bears the impress in dialect in manners, and in surnames, though the baptismal ones that led to them are, in general, gone out of use.

Christianity did not greatly alter the old northern names, though it introduced those of the universally honoured saints. But the clergy thought it desirable—and chiefly in Denmark—to take more ecclesiastical names to answer to their own; so Dagfinn was David; Sölmund, Solomon; Sigmund, Simon; and several ladies seem to have followed their example, so that Astrida and Griotgard both became Margarethe, and Bergliot Brigitte.

The popular nomenclature has included all the favourite saints with the individual contractions of the country. The royal lines have been influenced by the dynasties that have reigned. Gustaf grew national in Sweden after the disruption of the union of Calmar, and Denmark alternated between Christiern and Friedrich; but the main body of the people are constant to Olaf and Eirik, Ingeborg and Gudrun; and in the Norwegian valleys the old immediate patronymic of the father is still in use. Linnea as a feminine from Linnæus, the Latinism of their great natural historian’s surname is a modern invention. Linne itself means a lime tree.

The Northmen have hitherto been the most impressing, and least impressed from without, of all the European nations; and thus their names are the great key to those of the South.

Section IX.—Comparative Nomenclature.

Before entirely quitting our subject, it may be interesting to make a rapid comparison of the spirit of nomenclature, and the significative appellations that have prevailed most in each branch of the civilized family which we have been considering.

For instance—of religious names, the Hebrew race alone, and that at a comparatively late period, assumed such directly Divine appellations, as Eli, Elijah, Adonijah, Joel. The most analogous to these in spirit would be the heathen Teutonic ones, Osgod, Asthor, Aasir; but these were, probably, rather assertions of descent than direct proclamations of glory.

The very obvious and appropriate Gift of God is in all branches save the Keltic.

Servant of God is everywhere but among Latins and the Slaves.

Greek and Gaelic likewise own the Service of Christ, by Christopheros (Christbearer), Gilchrist, and Malise; and the Arabic has Abd-Allah, and Abd-el-Kadir, servant of the Almighty. The name of the late Sultan, Abdul Medschid, signified the servant of the All-Famed.

The Greek and Slavonic have by far the most directly religious names, next to the Hebrew, from having been less pledged to hereditary names, and the time of the conversion. The Gaelic devotion was almost all expressed in the Giolla and Mael prefix.

Idol names are of course numerous, but comparison between them is not easy, as they vary with different mythologies. One point is remarkable, that the Supreme God, whether Zeus, Jupiter, Divas, or Woden, never has so many votaries as his vassal gods. Zeno, Jovius, and, perhaps, the Grim of the North, are almost exceptions. The Phœnician Baal had, indeed, many namesakes, and the Persian Ormuzd, giver of life, had several, of whom the pope, called Hormisdas, was one. In general, Ares, Mars, Thor, and Ranovit, the warlike gods, or the friendly Demeter and Gerda, the beneficent Athene, the brilliant Artemis, and Irish Brighde, the queens of heaven, Hera, Juno, Frigga, are chosen for namesakes. Mithras in Persia, and Apollo in Greece, have their share; but, in general, the sun is not very popular, though Aurora and Zora honour the dawn; and the North has various Dags.

Of animals the choice is much smaller than would have been expected. The lion’s home is, of course, the East, and Sinha, his Sanscrit title, is represented by the Singh, so familiar in the names of Hindu chiefs. The Arabs have Arslan in many combinations; the Greeks introduced Leo, which has been followed by the Romans, and come into the rest of Europe; but many as were the lion names of Greece and later Rome, Leonard, and, perhaps, Lionel, alone are of European growth.

The elephant is utterly unrepresented, unless we accept the tradition, that the cognomen of Cæsar arose from his African name. Persia has a few leopards, such as Chitratachna.

The bear does not show himself in favourable colours in the South, and Ursus and Ursula are more likely to be translations of the northern Biorn—so extremely common—than original Latin names. The Erse, however, owns him as Mahon.

The wolf is the really popular animal. Even the Hebrews knew Zeeb through the Midianites, the Greeks used Lycos in all sorts of forms, the Romans had many a Lupus, the Teutons have Wolf in every possible combination, the Slaves Vuk; the Kelts alone avoid the great enemy of the fold, whose frequency is almost inexplicable. The Kelts are, however, the namesakes of the dog, the Cu and Con, so much loathed in other lands, that only a stray Danish Hund, Italian Cane, and the one Hebrew Caleb, unite in bearing his name in honour of his faithful qualities.

The horse is, of course, neglected in Judea, where his use was forbidden; but in Sanscrit was found Vradaçva, owning great horses; and the horse flourished all over Persia. Aspamithras, horse’s friend, Aspachava, rich in horses, Vishtaspa, and many more, commemorate the animal; and in Greece, Hippolytus, Hippodamos, Hippomedon, Hipparchus, and many more, showed that riding was the glory of the Hellenes. Rome has no representative of her equus, except in Equitius, a doubtful name, more likely to be named in honour of the equestrian order, than direct from the animal. Marcus may, however, be from the word that formed the Keltic March, which, with Eachan and Eochaid, and many more, represent the love of horses among the Kelts, answering to the Eporedorix, mentioned by Cæsar. The Slaves have apparently no horse names; but many of our modern Roses are properly horses, and Jostein, Rosmund, and various other forms, keep up the horse’s fame in northern Europe.

Rome dealt, to a curious degree, in the most homely domestic names; Mus, the surname of the devoted Decius, was, probably, really a mouse; for while the swine of other nations never descend below the savage wild boar of the forest—Eber, Baezan, Bravac, the Romans have indeed one Aper, but their others are but domestic pigs, Verres, Porcius, Scrofa.

Goats flourished in Greece in honour of the Ægis, and of Zeus goats, and Ægidios, with others, there arose; but Sichelgaita, and a few northern Geits, alone reflect them. The chamois, or mountain goat, named Tabitha or Dorcas, and is paralleled by an occasional masculine Hirsch, or stag, in Germany.

The sheep appears to be solely represented by Rachael, for though the lamb has laid claim to both Agnes and Lambert, it is only through a delusion of sound.

Serpents, as Orm and Lind, are peculiar to the North.

The eagle figures in Aias, Ajax, Aquila, the Russian Orlof, and many an Arn of the Teutons. It is rather surprising not to find him among the Gael; but the raven, like the wolf, is the fashionable creature, as an attendant upon slaughter—Oreb, Corvus, Morvren, Fiachra, Rafn, he croaks his name over the plunderer everywhere but among the Greeks and Slaves.

The swan has Gelges in Ireland, Svanwhit in the North; the dove named Jonah, Jemima in Palestine, Columba in Christian Latinity, Golubica in Illyria; but gentle birds are, in general, entirely neglected, unless the Greek Philomela, which properly means loving honey, were named after the nightingale. The Latin Gallus may possibly be a cock; but Genserich is not the gander king, as he was so long supposed to be.

The bee had Deborah in Hebrew, and Melissa in Greek; but, in general, insects are not popular, though Vespasian is said to come from a wasp; and among fishes, the dolphin has the only namesakes in Romance tongues, probably blunders from Delphi.

Plants were now and then commemorated; Tamar, a palm tree, Hadassah, a myrtle, are among the scanty eastern examples. Rome had a Robur, and Illyria Dobruslav, in honour of the oak; but the Slaves have almost the only genuine flower names. Rhoda is, indeed, a true Greek Rose, but the modern ones are mistakes for hross, a horse. Violet, probably, rose out of Valens, and Lilias from Cæcilius, Oliver from Olaf. Primrose, Ivy, Eglantine, &c., have been invented in modern books at least, and so has Amaranth.

Passing to qualities, goodness is found in many an Agathos of the Greeks, with his superlative Aristos, but early Rome chiefly dealt in Valens, leaving Bonus and Melior for her later inventors to use. The goods of the Teutons are rather doubtful between the names of the Deity and of war, but in passing them, the relation between Gustaf and Scipio should be observed. The Slaves have many compounds of both Dobry and Blago, and the Irish, Alma.

Love is everywhere. David represents it in Hebrew, Agape and Phile in Greek; but the grim Roman never used the compounds of his amo, only left them to form many a gentle modern name—Amabel, Aimée, Amy. Caradoc was the old Cymric, and Aiffe the Gadhaelic, beloved; and Wine and Leof in the German races, Ljubov, Libusa, Milica in the Slavonic, proved the warm hearts of the people. Indeed, the Slavonic names are the tenderest of all, owning Bratoljub and Çedomil, fraternal and parental love, unparalleled except by the satirical surnames of the Alexandrian kings.

Purity—a Christian idea—is found in Agnes and Katherine, both Greek; perhaps, too, Devoslava, or maiden glory, with the Slaves. Holiness is in the Hieronymus and Hagios of heathen Greece, meaning a holy name, and in the northern Ercen and Vieh, at the beginning and end of names, the Sviato of the Slavonians.

Peace, always lovely and longed-for, names both Absalom and Solomon, and after them many an eastern Selim and Selima. Greece had Irene and Irenæus, but not till Christian days, and the Roman Pacificus was a very modern invention; but the Friedrich, &c., of the North, and Miroslav of the Slav, were much more ancient.

The soul is to be found in Greece, as Psyche, and nowhere else but in the Welsh Enid. Life, however, figured at Rome, as Vitalis, and in the Teutonic nations as the prefix fjor; and the Greek Zoë kept it up in honour of the oldest of all female names, Eve.

Grace is the Hebrew Hannah or Anna, and the charis in Greek compounds. Eucharis would not answer amiss to the Adelheid, or noble cheer, of Teuton damsels. Abigail, or father’s joy, Zenobia, father’s ornament, are in the same spirit.

Eu, meaning both happy and rich, wealthy in its best sense, is exactly followed by the Northern ad and Anglo-Saxon ead. Eulalia and Eulogios are the same as Edred, Euphrasia would answer to Odny, Eucharis and Aine likewise have the same sense of gladness. Eugenois is, perhaps, rather in the sense of Olaf, or of the host of Adels and Ethels. Patrocles and Cleopatra, both meaning the father’s fame, have nothing exactly analogous to them in the Teuton and Keltic world.

Royalty is found in the Syriac Malchus, the Persian Kshahtra, or Xerxes, the Malek of the Arab, the early Archos, Basileus, and Tyrannos of the late Greek; even the Roman Regulus, with Tigearnach among the Kelts, and Rik in its compounds in the Teutonic world. The loftiness and strength of the royal power is expressed in the Persian prefix arta, first cousin to our Keltic Art and Arthur, akin to the root that forms Ares, Arius, Arteinus, and many more familiar names from the superlative Aristos. It is the idea of strength and manhood, perhaps akin to the Latin vir and Keltic fear. Boleslav is the Wendic name, filling up the cycle of strength and manly virtue.

Majesty and greatness are commemorated by closely resembling words—the Persian Mathista or Masistes, Megas and Megalos in their Greek compounds, Latin Magnus and Maximus, Keltic Mor, Teutonic Mer; it is only the Velika of the Slav that does not follow the same root. The crown names Stephanas and Venceslas, or crown glory.

Justice and judgment are the prevalent ideas in the Hebrew Dan and Shaphat, Greek Archos, Dike, and Krite, Latin Justinus, Northern Ragn; perhaps, too, in the Irish Phelim and Slavonic Upravda. Damo, to tame, is in many Greek names; and ward, or protection, answers to the Latin Titus.

Venerable is the Persian Arsaces, with Augustus and Sebastian. Power figures in Vladimir and Waldemar, and the many forms of wald; and, on the other hand, the people assert themselves in the Laos and Demos of Greece, the leutfolk and theod of the Teuton, and even the ljud of the Slave. The lover of his people may be found under the various titles of Demophilos, Publicola, Theodwine, and the Slavonic feminine Ludmila; their ruler, as Democritus, or Archilaus, or Theodoric; their tamer, as Laodamos; their justice, as Laodike.

Boulos, council, finds a parallel in the Teuton raad; but Sophia, wisdom, is far too cultivated for an analogy among the name-makers of the rude North.

But fame and glory were more popular than wisdom and justice. Slava rings through the names of the Wends, and klas through the Greeks; while hluod and hruod form half the leading names of Germanized Europe.

Clara is the late Latin name best implying fame, but answering best to Bertha, bright, like the Phlegon of Greece, and Barsines of Persia, which are all from one root. Lucius, light, translates some of these.

Conquest, that most desired of events to a warlike nation, is the Nike of the Greeks. Nikias, Victor, Sige, Cobhflaith, are all identical in meaning; and the Greek and Teuton have again and again curiously similar compounds. Nicephorous and Sigebot, Nikoboulous and Sigfred, Stratonice would perhaps be paralleled by Sighilda. Nicolas has not an exact likeness, because the Teutons never place either sige or theod at the end of a word.

War itself has absorbed the Teuton spear, and is ger in our Teuton lands. But the Greek mache, and Teuton hadu, the Kelt cath, and the Slav boj or voj, all are in common use. Telemachus, or distant battle, is best represented by Siroslav, or distant glory. Stratos, meaning both army and camp, Kleostralos and Stratokles, answer to Stanislav; and Cadwaladyr, in sound as well as sense, to Haduvald.

Cathair, the Irish battle-slaughter, has likeness in the Teutonic derivatives of Val, but the North stands alone in honouring the Thiof with namesakes.

The hero, the warrior himself, the Hero as he really is of Greece, the Landnama-bok of our Teutons, the Landnama-bok and Landnama-bok and Landnama-bok of Ireland, the Landnama-bok of the Roman, has namesakes in hosts. Herakles himself was not far removed from Herbert, Robert, or Lothaire, in meaning; and Sigeher is the conquering warrior, as Nikostratos is the victorious army.

In fact, warlike names are exhausting in similarity and multitude, and our readers will discover many more for themselves. The peaceful ones are far more characteristic.

See how the ocean figures in Pelagios, in Morvan, Muircheartash, Haflide,—all the formation of maritime nations, while the Slaves have no sea names at all, and the Latin Marina is mere late coinage. It is the Welsh, however, who have the most sea names: Guenever, Bronwen, Dwynwen, &c.

The earth makes Georgos and Agricola, and its cultivators have in Greece commemorated their harvest with Eustaches and Theresa; in Illyria, their vintage with Grozdana; but though the old farmer citizens of Rome were called Faber, Lentulus, Cicero, and the like, produce of their fields, these were much too homely for our fierce Teuton ancestry.

Gold is not in much favour; Chryseis, Aurelia, Orflath, and Zlata, just represent it; and silver is to be found in Argyro, Argentine, and Arianwen; but iron nowhere but with the Germanic races, Eisambart, &c., in accordance with the weapon names in which they alone delight. Nor are jewels many,—Esmeralda, Jasper (perhaps), Margaret, Ligach, are almost their only representatives. Spices we have as Kezia, Muriel, and strangest of all, Kerenhappuch, a box of stibium for the eyes. Whether the Stein of the North is to be regarded as a jewel does not seem clear, but it is more according to the temper of the owners to regard it as answering to Petros, a rock. Veig, Laug, and Øl, represent liquors, and are one of the peculiarities of the North.

Beauty is less common than might have been expected. Kallista is the leading owner of the word in Greece, but the Latin bella must not be claimed for it, and, in spite of the ny and fridhr of the North, it is the Kelts who deal most in names of beauty,—Findelbh, Graine, and more than can here be specified.

Indeed, complexion names are chiefly found among the Kelts and Romans. The white, Albanus and Finn, (which last Finn passed to the North,) with Gwenn in Wales and Brittany; the light-haired, Flavius, Rufus, Ruadh, and Dearg. Fulvius, Niger, and Dubh, with the answering Swerker, paralleled only by the late Greek Melania have very few answering names in other lands, though the Bruno of Germany corresponds to Don, and the Blond, now Blount, of England is said to be meant to translate Fulvius.

On exceptional names, from the circumstances of the birth, we have not here dwelt. They were accidental, and never became national, except from the fame of some bearer of one. The names derived from places are almost all Latin, at first cognomina, then taken at baptism by converts. The number names are likewise Latin. Those of high Christian ideas, like Anastasius, Ambrosius, Alethea, are generally Greek; and when Latins as Benedictus, the blessed, and Beatrix, the blesser, are apt to be renderings of the Greek. The early Latin names are the least explicable, and the least resembling those of other nations; the Keltic are the most poetical; the Slavonic either tender or warlike; the Greek and the Teutonic are the most analogous to one another in sense, and are the most in use, except the more endeared and wide-spread of the Hebrew,—John and Mary deservedly have the pre-eminence in the Christian world above all others.