How medieval is “Your Medieval Name”?

There’s a meme (due to www.abbeytournament.com) that’s been circulating around Facebook sporadically recently, allowing people to generate their “medieval name” according to their birthday. You’ve probably seen it:

The first time it came up in a group that a couple DMNES staff are members of — a group not devoted to either the Middle Ages or to names — one editorial assistant put out a cry for “HALP”, and another swooped in with documentation. Now every time that meme comes around, we’re reminded of that thread, and finally decided to make a blog post out of it!

So, how medieval is “Your Medieval Name”? Actually, pretty medieval!

The feminine names are almost all good solid choices for late medieval England or France:

• Milicent – Yes, medieval!
• Alianor – Yes, medieval!
• Ellyn – Yes, medieval!
• Sybbyl – Yes, medieval!
• Jacquelyn – Yes, medieval!
• Catherine – Yes, medieval!
• Elizabeth – Yes, medieval!
• Thea – Possibly medieval but we’ve not found any evidence for it yet.
• Lucilla – Sort of medieval: R.G. Collingwood and R.P. Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain I: Inscriptions on Stone — Epigraphic Indexes (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), RIB 1288 and 1271, note one Iulia Lucilla in a first- to fourth-century British inscription (in this name, Lucilla appears as a cognomen), and another Romano-British inscription mentioning a woman known only as [L]ucilla.
• Mary – Yes, medieval!
• Arabella – Yes, medieval: E.G. Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). s.n. Arabel(la) has a 13th C Latin example of the name.
• Muriel – Yes, medieval: A variety of forms can be found in P.H. Reaney & R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames (London: Routledge, 1991).
• Isabel – Yes, medieval!
• Angmar – Um, no.
• Isolde – Yes, medieval!
• Eleanor – Yes, medieval!
• Josselyn – Yes, medieval, but not as a feminine name.
• Margaret – Yes, medieval!
• Luanda – Um, no.
• Ariana – Not medieval: It’s a modern Italian form of the Greek name Ariadne, found in mythology, and in the Greek and Byzantine empires.
• Clarice – Yes, medieval!
• Idla – Possibly medieval. It appears that this googlebook has a Polish example of the name, but we have not been able to get more than a snippet view, to be able to confirm the date and context.
• Claire – Yes, medieval!
• Rya – Um, no.
• Joan – Yes, medieval!
• Clemence – Yes, medieval!
• Morgaine – Yes, medieval, but only used in literature, and not by real people.
• Edith – Yes, medieval!
• Nerida – Definitely not.
• Ysmay – Yes, medieval: Withycombe (op. cit.) has an example of this spelling.

The masculine names don’t fare quite so well.

• Ulric – Yes, medieval!
• Baird – Yes, medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name. It is derived from Old French baiard or baiard ‘bay-colored’.
• Henry – Yes, medieval!
• Oliver – Yes, medieval
• Fraden – Possibly medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name.
• John – Yes, medieval!
• Geoffrey – Yes, medieval!
• Francis – Yes, medieval!
• Simon – Yes, medieval!
• Fendel – Not medieval to my knowledge, either as a given name or a surname.
• Frederick – Yes, medieval!
• Thomas – Yes, medieval!
• Arthur – Yes, medieval!
• Cassius – More Roman than medieval.
• Richard – Yes, medieval!
• Matthew – Yes, medieval!
• Charles – Yes, medieval!
• Reynard – Yes, medieval!
• Favian – Sort of medieval, if you take it as a variant of Fabian.
• Philip – Yes, medieval!
• Zoricus – Not medieval to our knowledge, but it could possibly turn up at some point in future research.
• Carac – Not medieval
• Sadon – Not medieval
• Alistair – Medieval, but not as the nominative form of the name, only as the genitive.
• Caine – Yes, medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name.
• Gawain – Yes, medieval!
• Godfrey – Yes, medieval!
• Mericus – More Roman than medieval.
• Rowley – Yes, medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name.
• Brom – Yes, medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name.
• Cornell – Yes, medieval, but only as a surname, not as a given name.

All the surnames are fine for 14th-16th C English, except these:

• Cabrera – This is Spanish, and would only have been used by women; the masculine form is Cabrero.
• Coastillon – Not quite sure what this is but it looks like a misspelling of some French place name.

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‘Love’-ly Names for Valentine’s Day

Today is an good excuse to take a tour through names in the Dictionary that derive from words related to love.

Latin

Latin amo “I love” gives us a wealth of names, both masculine and feminine. The participle amandus/amanda ‘meant to be loved’ becomes Amant and Amanda, and the adjective amatus/amata ‘loved, beloved’ gives rise to Amat and Amata. On the active side of things, amator ‘lover’ turns into the name Amadore. From the Old French development of the Latin root, we have Ami and Amy, and then finally there are the compounds: Amadeus ‘beloved by God’ is wholly Latin, while the lovely Amadilde displays the unusual combination of a Latin prototheme with a Germanic deuterotheme.

Latin carus/cara ‘dear, beloved, loved’ was popular in Italian developments, including Caro and Cara simpliciter, and the compounds Bellacara, Carabella, Caradonna, and Deocar. The superlative form of the adjective is found in Carissima.

Finally, the Latin goddess name Venus is the root of the name Venerio (and also the word ‘venereal’, so we wouldn’t recommend this option to anyone seeking a name for their baby.)

Celtic

The root of the romantic Welsh name Angharad is a Proto-Celtic word for ‘love’.

The Old Breton word cum can mean both ‘gentle’ and ‘beloved’, and appears in the name Iarncum.

Hebrew

In rare cases, the name Dodo can derive from a Hebrew word meaning ‘beloved’. A more well-known Hebrew name with this meaning is David.

Slavic

The Slavic element drag, drog, drah ‘precious, beloved’ is a popular theme, found in Dragoslav.

Germanic

Old English is where we must turn for names of deriving from a Germanic element meaning love, specifically, lēof ‘dear, loved’. Here on the feminine side we have Loveday as well as, possibly, Lovewell, though the origin of the latter is uncertain, and on the masculine side Lefchild, Lefsy, Lefward, and Lefwin.

Greek

Finally, we have two names incorporating Greek φίλος ‘dear, loved, loving’: Philip and Theophilus.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

What name forms were used by both men and women in 14th-16th C France?

That’s a question we recently received, so we thought we’d devote a post to answering it!

When French developed from Latin, it retained a gendered marking for the majority of its names — marking which is most obvious when looking at masculine/feminine pairs of names. In Old French, the most common way of feminizing a name was simply adding an -e to the end, but in Middle French, especially by the early 15th C, it became more common to duplicate the final consonant and then add -e.

Some names, however, (particularly ones that already ended in -e!), were used in the same form by both men and women. Here are some examples:

Claude was used in this form by both men and women in France in the 16th C.

While the more common masculine form of the name was Dennis, both Denise and Denyse were used by both men and women at the end of the 13th C.

Gile, which can be a form of Giles or sometimes Gilo, is also the Old French vernacular form of the feminine form of both names, found in the early 14th C.

A bit of a rarity, but Guillaume was used by both men and women in the early 14th C.

Laurence was the usual Middle French vernacular for both men and women in the 16th C.

While Marin was almost exclusively masculine in the 16th C (and the expected Middle French feminine form would be Marine), we have one lone example of Marin used by a woman.

Phelippe, Phlippes, and Phlippe were all used by both men and women; the first form is an Old French one found in the early 14th C, while the latter two are 16th C Middle French forms.

Finally, Robert. Diminutive forms such as Robine and Robinette were much more commonly used by women, but Robert itself was used, albeit rarely, by both men and women.

So, there you are! These are the names we’ve found that were used in exactly the same spelling by both men and women in Old and Middle French.

An onomastic calendar: August

• August 1: Justinian I became sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in 527.
• August 2: Pope Severinus died in 640.
• August 3: Saint’s day of Olaf II of Norway.
• August 4: Berengar II of Italy died in 699.
• August 5: Alexander I Jagiellon was born in 1461.
• August 6: Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order, died in 1221.
• August 7: Otto I of Germany was crowned in 936.
• August 8: Conrad Lycosthenes, humanist and ecyclopedist, was born in 1518.
• August 9: Arnold Fitz Thedmar, London chronicler, was born in 1201.
• August 10: Eleanor, the maid of Brittany, died in 1241.
• August 11: Mary of York was born in 1467.
• August 12: Christian III of Denmark was born in 1503.
• August 13: Alfonso XI of Castille was born in 1311.
• August 14: Duncan I of Scotland was murdered in 1040.
• August 15: Carolingian military leader Roland died in 778.
• August 16: Philippa of Clarence, Countess of Ulster, was born in 1355.
• August 17: Cesare Borgia became the first person to resign a cardinalcy in 1498.
• August 18: Saint Clare of Montefalco died in 1308.
• August 19: Catherine of Bohemia was born in 1342.
• August 20: Stephen I of Hungary was canonized in 1083.
• August 21: Philip II of France was born in 1165.
• August 22: Saint Columba sees the Loch Ness monster in 565.
• August 23: William Wallace was executed for treason in 1305.
• August 24: Italian painter Lavinia Fontana was born in 1552.
• August 25: Anna of Saxony married William of Orange in 1561.
• August 26: Thomas Bradwardine, logician, mathematician, and archbishop died in 1349.
• August 27: Arthur II, Duke of Brittany, died in 1321.
• August 28: Saint Augustine of Hippo died in 430.
• August 29: Hungarian poet Janus Pannonius was born in 1434.
• August 30: Amalasuntha became queen regent of the Ostrogoths in 524.

An Onomastic Calendar: May

• May 1: Mathilda of Scotland died in 1118.
• May 2: Anne Boleyn was arrested for treason in 1536.
• May 3: Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, was born in 1415.
• May 4: John Wyclif and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance in 1415.
• May 5: Gerberga of Saxony died in 968/9 or 984.
• May 6: Dieric Bouts, Dutch painter, died in 1475.
• May 7: Remigius de Fécamp died in 1059.
• May 8: Pope Saint Benedict II died in 685.
• May 9: Hernando de Alarcón set sail for the Gulf of California in 1540.
• May 10: Emperor Claudius Gothicus was born in 210.
• May 11: Anne of Bohemia, queen consort of England, was born in 1366.
• May 12: Berengaria of Navarre was crowned queen of England in 1191.
• May 13: Julian of Norwich experienced her mystical visions in 1373.
• May 14: Simon de Montfort became de facto ruler of England in 1264.
• May 15: Mary Queen of Scots married her third husband, James, Earl of Bothwell, in 1567.
• May 16: Baldwin I was crowned Latin emperor of Constantinople in 1204.
• May 17: Anne of Denmark was crowned queen of Scotland in 1590.
• May 18: Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II of England in 1152.
• May 19: Saint Alcuin of York died in 804.
• May 20: Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas in 1570.
• May 21: Albrecht Dürer was born in 1471.
• May 22: Saint Rita of Cascia died in 1457.
• May 23: Girolamo Savonarola was burned to death in 1498.
• May 24: Magnus Ladulås was crowned king of Sweden in 1276.
• May 25: Pope Boniface IV died in 615.
• May 26: Saint Augustine of Canterbury died in 604.
• May 27: Ludovico Sforza died in 1508.
• May 28: Caterina Sforza died in 1509.
• May 29: Philip VI was crowned king of France in 1328.
• May 30: Jerome of Prague was burned for heresy in 1416.
• May 31: Manuel I of Portugal was born in 1469.

An onomastic calendar: February

• February 1: Edward III was crowned king of England in 1327.
• February 2: Bona Sforza, queen consort of Poland, was born in 1494.
• February 3: Douce of Provence married Ramon Berenguer in 1112.
• February 4: Hrabanus Maurus died in 856.
• February 5: Aegidius Tschudi, Swiss writer and historian, was born in 1505.
• February 6: Dunnchad mac Domnaill, king of Mide, died in 797.
• February 7: Pandulf IV of Benevento died in 1074.
• February 8: Mary Queen of Scots was executed for treason in 1587.
• February 9: Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VII, died in 1450.
• February 10: Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn in 1306.
• February 11: Elizabeth of York, queen consort of England, was born in 1466.
• February 12: Charles the Fat was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 881.
• February 13: Catherine Howard was executed for treason in 1542.
• February 14: The feast day of Saint Valentine.
• February 15: Pope Pascal II established the Knights Hospitallers in 1113.
• February 16: German philosopher Philipp Melancthon was born in 1497.
• February 17: Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, was born in 1490.
• February 18: Mary I of England was born in 1516.
• February 19: Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473.
• February 20: Edward VI was crowned king of England.
• February 21: James I of Scotland was assassinated in 1437.
• February 22: Robert II of Scotland became king in 1371.
• February 23: Justinian I orders the building of the Hagia Sophia.
• February 24: Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582.
• February 25: Theodoric the Great negotiated for peace with Odoacer in 493.
• February 26: Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia was born in 1361.
• February 27: Henry IV was crowned king of France in 1594.
• February 28: Pope Saint Hilarius died in 468.
• February 29: Oswald, Archbishop of York, died in 992.

Masc/Fem names: When do they differ?

We mentioned in our previous post how Latin records are so nice for uniquely identifying the gender of the bearer of names — someone who is filius Edwini is the son of a man named Edwin, while if he were filius Edwine he’d be the some of a woman called Edwina.

But how often is this merely a requirement of Latin grammar, that every word have one of three grammatical genders, and how often is this reflective of the underlying vernacular practice? Naturally, this depends on what the vernaculars are, and those which descended from Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) are much more likely to keep an explicit grammatical distinction in the names. In Iberia, that shows up in the preponderance of women’s names ending in -a (though, of course, there are exceptions, such as Spanish and Catalan forms of Beatrice). In Italy, you see the same marking of feminine names, but often paired with a distinctive masculine ending in -o (as can be seen in the list of masculine/feminine pairs in 15th C Florence). In France, southern dialects tend towards Iberian practices, while in northern dialects, masculine names are generally unmarked, while feminine forms are derived by adding an -e (earlier) or doubling the final consonant and then adding an -e (later).

In England, however, the Latin forms often introduced distinctions not present in the vernacular. Withycombe, p. xxxv notes that:

Latin records of the 12th to 15th centuries show that the custom of giving masculine names to girls was also common in England; they appear in Latin with feminine endings, e.g., Philippa, Nicholaa, Alexandra, Jacoba, but it is clear that girls so named were in fact baptized and called Philip, Nicholas, Alexander, James, etc….Other names which were commonly used for girls were Gilbert, Aubrey, Reynold, Basil, Eustace, Giles, Edmund, Simon, Florence.

When the only references we have are in Latin, it is difficult to obtain evidence via which to test Withycombe’s assertion about the vernacular. However, once we start seeing records in Middle English and Early Modern English, then it is possible to see to what extent the feminine vernacular forms resemble the masculine.

The majority of our examples of Philipa in England are from the 16th C, and the majority of these are variants without the terminal – (in fact, most of the examples with the -a are restricted to Devon, suggesting a regional early adoption of the Latin form as the vernacular.)

Feminine forms of Nicholas were never very common in England, and inspection of the entry for Nicole is only partly confirmatory of what Withycombe says. The vernacular forms have all lost the -a, but none of them have the -as. Instead, vernacular forms like Nichol and Nycoll look much more like the French feminine form of the name (and the spelling we took as the header name). This makes it more likely that girls named Nichol in the vernacular were named in accordance with the imported French form than simply given the masculine English form.

We don’t yet have any examples of Alexandra in England; Withycombe herself has only two early 13th C examples, adding that

Alexandra is found in England in 1205 and Alexandria in 1218, and these may have been named after a 4th-C martyr, though they are more likely to be mere latinizations of Alexander used as a girl’s name….Lyford 1655 gives Alexander as a f. name, and an early-14th-C English legendary gives Alisaundre as the name of the mother of St. Thomas of Canterbury

Further data will need to be collected to see more clearly how this feminine name appears in the vernacular.

Similarly, we have very few examples of Jacoba in English contexts, and curiously, all of them are diminutive forms: Jacobin, Jackett, and Jakett, all of which could equally easily be used by men.

Of the other names Withycombe mentions, only three of them do we have feminine examples from England. We have a handful of 12th-14th C examples of Basile in its Latin form Basilia, but our only vernacular example, in the 16th C, is not Basil but Basile, the usual French form. Eustacia in the vernacular is Eustice. The third name, Florence, is curious in that we have plenty of vernacular feminine examples of this spelling, — but no masculine ones! In fact, vernacular forms of the masculine version tend to end in -t, e.g., Florent.

It wasn’t until the end of the 16th C that you regularly start seeing Latinate forms, like Olivia, Isabella, Joanna, etc., instead of Olive, Isabel, Joan, etc., used in the vernacular. This is due in no small part to the influence of Shakespeare on English naming patterns at the turn of the 17th C, as he preferred Italian or Latinate forms of names in many cases. This penchant for the Latin -a ending can still be seen today, with the preponderance of feminine names given in English-speaking countries being ones ending with that letter or sound.

Masc/fem names: Masculine forms of feminine names

Browsing through the Dictionary, you’ll find plenty of names whose origin is listed as simply “Fem. of [NAME]”, with a cross-reference to the relevant masculine name. There are many pairs of names which differ only on the basis of their grammatical endings, usually Latin. (The fact that Latin is gendered makes it a most wonderful language for recording names; there is never any ambiguity as to whether Philippus filius is a man and Philippa filia a woman!)

Whenever we write an etymology which is simply “Fem. of [NAME]”, there is always a question of whether this accurately captures the whole story. There are certainly masc./fem. pairs where there is more to the feminine name than simply this pairing with a masculine name. For example, for names deriving from Latin adjectives, which come in different forms for different genders, it makes more sense to list the grammatically appropriate Latin word for the etymology of each, rather than glossing the masculine name with the masculine adjective and then cross-referencing the feminine form.

But when the root elements themselves are not gendered (as is the case with early dithematic Germanic names. Of course there are certain themes which are only used in men’s names, or only used in women’s names — and these will be a topic of a future post — but there are many cross-over elements, used for both genders, and these are often only distinguishable through their Latinized forms), there is no distinct origin that each name of the pair can be traced to. In this case, one could ask why we gloss the feminine name as a feminine form of a masculine name, rather than glossing the masculine name as a masculine form of a feminine name. For this, there is no strongly principled reason behind our decision, other than the fact that we simply have orders of magnitude more men’s names than women’s names — both in terms of specific citations and in terms of distinct names. It is much more likely to have a masculine name that we can point the feminine back to than to have a feminine name with no corresponding masculine form.

Which is why when this is not the case, the names are so interesting. In this post, we discuss three names that are most plausibly said to be masculine forms of feminine names, Katherin, Maria, and Margaritus.

Why do we consider these masculine forms of feminine names, rather than independent names of similar origin? The answer is slightly different in each case. The use of forms of Mary by men is usually thought of as a 17th C religious practice, when devotional names became more common. However, we have, so far, two clear examples of the name being used by men in the 16th C, an example of Marie in 16th C France (from the parish registers of the Protestant Church at Caen, no less! Probably the least likely place we’d expect to see it), and a slightly earlier one of Maria in Rome. There is very little doubt that these are cases of the feminine name being appropriate by men, rather than a masculine/feminine pair which happen to have related origin. It was difficult to choose an appropriate header form for these citations; when Mary was used by men, it was used in exactly the same spellings it was used by women at the same time and place. But the back-end structure of the Dictionary doesn’t allow us to have two distinct entries with the same header name, so in the end we opted for Maria, the standard Latin form of the name.

For Katherin, we can give an etymological argument. The origin of the feminine form, Katherine, is uncertain. The oft-repeated derivation of the name from Greek καθαρός ‘pure’ is unsupportable; it wasn’t until quite late that Kathar- spellings are found. The actual Greek root, Αἰκατερίνα or Αἰκατερίνη, does not have a masculine correlate. The two uses of this name that we have by men are quite late: Cathelin in France in 1566 (like the example of Marie from the Protestant Church at Caen) and Catherini, a Latin genitive from Rome in 1527. Again, the popularity of the feminine name, the paucity of examples of the masculine, and the lack of any plausible distinct but related etymological origin, the most likely explanation is that these are examples of the feminine name being co-opted by men.

The final example, Margaritus, is not so clear a case. We do not have any examples in the Dictionary yet, but in our data-waiting-to-be-processed, we have a collection of names from Imola, Italy, in 1312 which has 11 examples of Malgaritus, making it one of the more popular masculine names in the data set. Curiously, here, μαργαρίτης, the etymology of the feminine name, is itself masculine. Thus, one could argue that on the basis of etymology, it would make more sense to take Margaritus as basic, and Margaret as derivative. However, again the paucity of masculine examples, and the clear popularity of Margaret throughout medieval Europe, due first to the popularity of Saint Margaret of Antioch and then later also to other saints, make it more likely that Margaritus or Malgaritus was constructed as a masculine honor-name for the saint.

An onomastic calendar: January

• January 1: Albert II was crowned king of Hungary and Croatia in 1438.
• January 2: Italian painter Piero di Cosimo was born in 1462.
• January 3: Martin Luther was excommunicated in 1521.
• January 4: Amadeus VI of Savoy was born in 1334.
• January 5: Croatian poet Marko Marulić died in 1524.
• January 6: Philip of Swabia was crowned king of the Romans in 1205.
• January 7: Saint Lucian of Antioch was martyred in 312.
• January 8: Saint Severinus of Noricum died in 482.
• January 9: Marco Polo, Italian explorer, died in 1324.
• January 10: Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, was born in 1480.
• January 11: Michelle of Valois, duchess of Burgundy, was born in 1395.
• January 12: Marie of Brabant, queen of France, died in 1322.
• January 13: St. Remy died in 533.
• January 14: Andrew III of Hungary died in 1301.
• January 15: Elizabeth I of England was crowned in 1559.
• January 16: Isaac Komnenos, son of a Byzantine Emperor, was born in 1093.
• January 17: Alfonso III of Aragon invaded Majorca in 1287.
• January 18: Tamar of Georgia died in 1213.
• January 19: Sten Sure the Younger, regent of Sweden, was mortally wounded in 1520.
• January 20: Byzantine emperor Theophilos died in 842.
• January 21: Pope Paschal II died in 1118.
• January 22h: Walter Raleigh was born in 1552 or 1554.
• January 23: St. Vincent Ferrar was born in 1350.
• January 24: Emperor Hadrian was born in 76.
• January 25: Lucas Cranach the Younger, German painter, died in 1586.
• January 26: Eadgyth of England, queen consort of Otto I, died in 946.
• January 27: Dante Alighieri was exiled from Florence in 1302.
• January 28: Henry VIII died in 1547.
• January 29: German composer Elias Ammerbach died in 1597.
• January 30: Roman empress Livia was born in 56BC.
• January 31: St Máedóc of Ferns died in 632.

Protestant names: New Testament influences on men’s names (part 2)

We’re in the home stretch with the Biblical names! In this our final post on this sub-topic of our monthly topic, we look at the New Testament men’s names of Greek and Roman origin.

Names of Greek origin

The first batch we can set aside as being unable to tell us anything unique about Protestant naming practices for the same reason we set aside the names of the four evangelists in the previous post: The names of the apostles. Among the apostle names of Greek origin we have we have Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Simon, all of which were popular throughout the Middle Ages across Europe; for similar reasons, the name of the first martyr, Stephen, was also a continual favorite.

So, what New Testament names of Greek origin seem to have gained a new popularity in the 16th C?

Cleopas: The name of the disciple who encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, this name was rarely used in England in the 16th C.

Epaphras (entry still being written): The name of a disciple from Colossae, we have one example of this name from the Protestant Church at Caen in the 16th C.

Theophilus: The name of the person to whom the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were addressed, we also have a single example of the name from Caen in the 16th C.

Timothy: The name of the recipient of two epistles by Paul, Withycombe and Bardsley differ on the use of this name in England; Withycombe notes that the name didn’t come into use until after the Reformation, while Bardsley includes Timothy in the list of Biblical names in use before the Reformation (p. 36). Further research will allow us to arbitrate this question, but in the meantime, we certainly have clear evidence for the use of the name in 16th C England and 16th C French.

Curiously, we don’t (yet) have examples of any of these four names in Dutch Protestant contexts.

Names of Roman origin

In this class of names we have Paul, which like the names of the disciples and Stephen, was used throughout medieval Europe. It was never as popular, though, in England, until the 16th C, though it doesn’t show us quite the same spike in usage that some of the other names we’ve discussed have had.

Which leaves us with Crescent, the name of a minor character, of which we one example from 16th C England.

—

From this we can see that, yes, amongst the Biblical names that first came into use among Protestants in the second half of the 16th C, there was a special predilection for names of Hebrew origin, but the fad for Biblical names was not exclusive to the Hebraic ones, especially amongst the women’s names. Any minor character was fair game — and we have no doubt that as we continue to collect data, we’ll find both more examples of the names we’ve covered in this series, and new examples of obscure Biblical names.

Though we’ve come to the end of the Biblical names, we are not quite done with this series. There is one final class of names which have a right to be called distinctly Protestant names, which we will devote our final postin this series to: Virtue names!