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CHAPTER VI.
THE BIBLE AND NOMENCLATURE

I said in my last chapter that I should devote the present one to a relation of the causes that led to a complete revolution in our English baptismal nomenclature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this comparatively brief period, most of the popular mediæval names lapsed, not merely from favour, but into total oblivion. ’Tis true, this does not properly appertain to the subject of surnames, because, having now become an established system, it was impossible for the Reformation to affect them to any appreciable extent. That is, the Reformation could revolutionize our baptismal names, but not our surnames. Had the Reformation occurred three or even two centuries earlier, the London Directory of 1877 would have presented a totally different appearance to that which it does. Instead of half a thousand Harrisons and Harrises, we should have had, may be, a hundred “Calebsons,” and “Abnersons,” and “Joshuasons,” and “Jaelsons.” Why? Because surnames were undergoing their hereditary formation then.

Nevertheless, our subject is quite apropos to the Directory, for Christian names abound there as well as surnames. If the pages of that great tome do not show that our surnames were visibly affected by an open Bible, a Reformation of Religion, and a Puritan Commonwealth, it is not so with the baptismal names. Every page bears strong evidence of a wondrous and stirring revolution.

Let us first clear the ground. In what relation did the Bible stand to English nomenclature in pre-Reformation days? The Scripture names in use during that period were fourfold in origin.

(a) Names so prominent in Scripture that none could be ignorant of them, such as Adam and Eve. All our Atkins, Atkinsons, Adams, Adamsons, Adkins, Adkinsons, and Addisons come from Adam; all our Eves, Evisons, Evetts, Evitts, Evotts, and Evesons, from Eve. An old will, dated 1391, speaks of the same individual as Eve and Evot (i. e. little Eve). Adam and Eve, four hundred years ago, were two of our commonest personal names.

(b) Names of Bible heroes, whose story was wont to be dramatized on religious festivals, and thus made familiar to the peasantry. The offering of Isaac, and Daniel in the den of lions, were two favourite plays. Thus, Isaac as Higg or Hick, and Daniel as Dan, were popular everywhere. Thus we got as surnames, Higgins (i. e. little Isaac), Higginson, Hicks, Hickson, Higgott and Higgs, from the one, and Daniels, Danson, Dankins, Dannett (i. e. little Daniel), and Dann from the other. Higgonet, – a double diminutive (treated of in our last chapter), – became Hignett; and even non-smokers must have seen the virtues of Hignett’s “mixture” glowingly described in the daily advertisements! Imagine Higgins or Hignett as derived from Isaac! Nevertheless, such is the undoubted fact.

(c) Ecclesiastic names, or names taken from the calendar of the saints, such as Bartholomew, Nicholas, or Peter. The reader would be indeed amazed if I were to furnish him with a list of all the surnames founded upon these three once familiar names. Bate, Bartle, and Bartelot were the pet forms of Bartholomew, whence our Bates, Battys, Batsons, Bartles, and Bartletts. St. Nicholas gave us Nicholls and Nicholson, Nix, Nicks, Nixon, and Nickson. Cole (whence our Coles) was the most favoured pet form, however, of Nicholas; and this, with the popular Norman-French diminutives “in” and “et” appended, made Colin and Colet. Hence our many Collins, Collinsons, Colsons, Colletts and Colets, not to mention the double diminutive Colinet. As for Peter, I have already reminded the reader of the pages of names that the London Directory contains, all originated by that agnomen upon which Rome has founded her most pretentious and arrogant claims. When we reflect that previous to the incoming of the Normans there were no Scripture names in use in England, saving in the case of a few ecclesiastics, who had adopted them at ordination, we can in some little degree realize the great revolution our national nomenclature had undergone in respect of the three classes I have here summarised.

(d) Festival names, such as Christmas or Pascal. The other day I was passing through a street in Kensington, and saw “Pentecost” over a door. It is a curious surname, and yet not uncommon. The reader perhaps wonders how such a term got into our Directory. Its origin is perfectly simple. Like John, or Thomas, it was but a baptismal name, and having become so used, it inevitably came to the honours of a surname. How? says a reader. This way, – John, the son of Pentecost, five hundred years ago, becomes John Pentecost, and the thing is done. Pentecost is no exceptional instance. The London Directory contains many a Christmas, or Midwinter, or Paschal, or Pask, or Nowell, or Noel. All these mediæval terms for religious seasons were used as baptismal names, (being given to children born on these festivals,) and then became surnames. The Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel got his surname in such a manner. Noel was quite a familiar term in England and France for Christmas Day; and a child born on that eventful morn would naturally receive as his font-name that which gave title to the day, especially when we consider that Noel is nothing more than “Natalis,” the “natal day.” As time passed on, and the meaning of Noel became obscure, the Christmas waits pronounced it “Now well! Now well;” as they sang their midnight carol. It was a pretty and significant mistake. Surely, as Noel comes round, many a believer can catch the strain of angelic “glad tidings” of a Saviour born, and say, “Now well, indeed, for me and all mankind.” “Nowell” is the commonest form of the surname. In France, all children born on Easter Day were christened “Pascal.” This, becoming a surname, was handed down to Blaise Pascal, one of the most brilliant and most pious men that that great country has ever produced. In the north of England Easter was always known as “Pace,” or “Pask.” These of course are common surnames. “To go a pace-egging” is still a familiar phrase in Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the prettily ornamented eggs are still sold in the shops as Easter comes round. By a happy conceit, they are often called “Peace-eggs”; and certainly “Pace” has proved “Peace” to myriads of souls. The Registrar-General, in one of his reports, came across a Christmas Day —i. e., the child’s surname being “Day,” the parents had it christened “Christmas.” “Pentecost,” for a child born on Whit-Sunday, was once extremely popular. ⁸

But these quaint customs have come to an end. To baptize an infant by the name of “Pentecost” or “Paschal” would now be considered a piece of eccentricity, not to say irreverence. The Reformed Church of England has sufficiently emphasized these festivals in her Services, without laying too great stress upon them. The superstitions and follies that gave over-prominence to such seasons in mediæval days ceased with an open English Bible and a purer and simpler Christianity. The danger now is a rush to the other end of the tether. I believe there are thousands of living Nonconformists who regret that they have allowed such services as would have commemorated the events of Easter Day, Good Friday, and Ascension Day to fall into desuetude. The neglect of Ascension Day, even among Churchmen, is, I think, much to be deplored.

But if the Reformation threw one class of names into the cold shadow of neglect and oblivion, it took care to fill up the gap with an assortment of its own selection. We may set down the interval between 1580 and 1720 as the most curious era in the history of personal names, whether of this or any other country. The more I have studied our English baptismal registers of the seventeenth century, – and I may say, without boasting, few have studied them more frequently than I, – the more profoundly am I convinced that no other revolution of a religious or social character in the annals of nations can present claims to eccentricity equal to that which, beginning with the Reformation, found its climax in the Puritan Commonwealth. Alas! I can only touch upon the subject here, but I could easily fill a book with instances gleaned by myself in a not very long life. Friends interested in the same pursuit, I must add, have also helped me; not to mention Notes and Queries, that storehouse of treasures to antiquaries of every bent.

The first signs of serious change betrayed themselves at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. The English Bible rested in English hands. But it was a new book. Names familiar enough in 1877, but probably heard of for the first time in 1577, were drawn forth from their concealment, and made to subserve the new impulse of the nation. It was then that the minister at the font had to begin registering such names as “Abacucke Harman,” “Sydrach Sympson,” “Phenenna Salmon,” “Gamaliel Capell,” “Archelaus Gifford,” “Melchizedek Payne,” “Dyna Bocher,” or “Zebulon Clerke.” It was as if the Bible were a new country full of verdant tracks, and as they passed through each plucked the flower that pleased him most. By the time King James came to the throne, “Phineas,” “Philemon,” “Uriah,” “Aquila,” “Priscilla,” and “Hilkiah” had become the rage. Before he died, Harry had fallen into neglect, Ralph and Guy were utterly despised, and names like Hamlet, or Hamnet (Shakespear’s son was Hamnet), or Avice, or Douce, or Warin, or Drew, or Fulke, had gone down like sodden logs in a stagnant pool. Whether they will ever come into use again is very doubtful. Only national caprice can do it; but that, we know, can do anything. That Avice, so pretty and simple as it is, should have disappeared, I cannot but think a national loss.

By the time of Charles the First, the national taste had gone a degree further. It becomes positively amusing to study the registers of this period. It had evidently become a point of respectability among certain classes of the community to select for their children the rarest names of Scripture. John, Nicholas, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Peter, though Scriptural, were tabooed; a stain rested on them, as having been in the Calendar during centuries of popish superstition. In fact, the Apostles were turned out for having kept bad company. Many seemed to have rested their claim to thorough knowledge of the Bible upon the rarity of the name they had discovered in its pages. Thus I find “Ebedmeleck Gastrell,” whose Christian name only occurs once in the Scriptures (Jer. xxxviii. 8). “Epaphroditus Houghton,” “Othniell Haggat,” “Apphia Scott,” “Tryphena Gode,” “Bezaliel Peachie,” are cases in point. If a child were styled by a new, quaint, unheard-of title, as a matter of course it was assumed to be from the Bible. From the appearance of such a name as “Michellaliell,” I fancy tricks of this kind were common.

A further stage of eccentricity was reached when it became fashionable to emphasize the doctrine of original sin by affixing to the new-born child a Scripture name of ill-repute. The reader can have no conception how far this was carried. In the street Dinahs and Absaloms walked hand-in-hand to school; Ananiases and Sapphiras grovelled in the dirty courts and alleys; and Cains took Abels to pluck flowers in the rural lanes and meadows, without thoughts of fratricide. Archbishop Leighton, son of a much persecuted Presbyterian minister, had a sister Sapphira. The acme of eccentricity was reached in the case of Milcom Groat, whose Christian (!) name was “The abomination of the children of Ammon.” It may be seen in the State Papers (Domestic). I am furnishing all these names hap-hazard from my notebooks. In the dame’s school the twelve patriarchs could all have answered to their names through their little red-cheeked representatives who lined the wall, unless, maybe, Simeon or Reuben stood on a separate seat with the dunce’s cap on! But the strangest freak of all is still to be recorded. We have all heard of Praise-God Barebones. Hume, in his History of England, asserts that his brother bore the long name of “If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-condemned Barebones.” What the historian adds to this I will not repeat, for fear of seeming irreverent. Many have supposed this to have been a case of mere exceptional eccentricity. Nothing of the kind. It was not an uncommon custom for a man or woman after conversion to reject with horror the pagan name of “Harry” or “Dick,” which their god-parents had imposed upon them, and be known henceforth as “Replenish,” or “Increase,” or “Abstinence,” or “Live-well.” Of course, if they married after this, they spared their children the necessity of any such alteration by furnishing them with personal appellations of this character at the outset.

The earliest specimens of this peculiar spirit will be found in the reign of Elizabeth – that is, within a score of years or so of the Reformation and the gift of an open English Bible; so we must not suppose it was wholly an institution of what we may term the Cromwellian period. It reached its climax then, nothing more. In the Elizabethan “Proceedings in Chancery” may be seen such names as Virtue Hunt, Temperance Dowlande, – Temperance was one of our most popular names for a hundred and fifty years, – Charitie Bowes, and Lamentation Chapman. Lamentation would easily be affixed to a child whose mother had died in childbirth. Ichabod has often been given for a like reason. On the contrary, “Comfort” would be readily seized upon under circumstances of Christian or parental joy. The other day I was in Tewkesbury Abbey, now undergoing restoration, and, as is my wont, I began ferreting for peculiar names. In a churchyard I instinctively walk like a dog with my nose to the ground. Almost immediately, I came across two “Comforts,” – “Comfort, wife of Abram Farren, died Aug. 24th, 1720,” and “Comfort Pearce, died Nov. 17th, 1715;” the latter was granddaughter of the former. Miss Holt, whose “Mistress Margery” and other sound and thoroughly well-written stories will have been read by most of my readers, told me not long ago that she had seen in the register of St. James’s, Piccadilly, the following entries: – “Repentance Tompson,” “Loving Bell,” “Obedience Clark,” and “Unity Thornton”; “Nazareth Rudde,” also, was contained in the same record. This reminds me of “Jerrico Segrave” in a Derbyshire record. In that county it was very possible for Bible place-names to be thus incorporated into personal nomenclature. Among the ruder peasantry it was a common custom, – a custom dating from the Reformation, – to have their child baptized by the first name the eye lighted on after the parent had let the family Bible fall open upon the table. A clergyman not long ago, asking in the Baptismal Service “What name?” received the whispered rejoinder, “Ramoth Gilead.” Naturally enough, he inquired, sotto voce, “A boy or a girl?” A curious instance of this general class is to be found in the case of Frewen, Archbishop of York, who died in 1664. He was son of a Puritan minister in Sussex; his Christian name was “Accepted,” and his younger brother was “Thankfull.” It is from this epoch that we must date the origin of some of our prettiest, if not now most popular, names for girls: “Grace,” “Faith,” “Hope,” “Charity,” “Truth,” and “Prudence.” All these have survived the era in which they, and a hundred longer and less simple terms, were introduced; and if they are now getting out of favour, it is only one more proof that the fashions in detail, as well as the fashions generally, of this world, undergo silent, it may be, but inevitable change.

We must not suppose, however, that there was no spirit of antagonism to this remarkable practice, so new in origin, and yet so deeply established. I have carefully avoided any reference to the disagreements that led to the execution of Charles the First, and the Commonwealth. If this era was socially vicious, it was also religiously hypocritical. Both sides had good and bad men in their midst. A poem written in 1660, styled a “Psalm of Mercy,” is an evident “skit” by some Royalist upon the new taste in nomenclature. It is too long for quotation, and though not actually ribald, is better left in its obscurity. It pokes fun at the following names: – Rachel, Abigaile, Faith, Charity, Pru (Prudence), Ruth, Temperance, Grace, Bathsheba, Clemence, Jude, Pris (Priscilla), Aquila, Mercy, Thank, Dorcas, Chloe, Phœbe. It is curious to note, that while none of these names could be found in an English register prior to 1560, in 1660, when this satirical ballad was indited, there was not one which was not more or less popular, not one of which I myself have not found several instances in contemporary records. We have only to add, that after the recital of all these names, the poet concludes with a couplet which we cannot insert here, but which indicates very clearly that the writer was not very much drawn to this new phase of feeling. However, if we are to thank the Roundheads for the introduction of many really pretty names, – names, too, awakening sweet Biblical and religious associations in our hearts, – we must not forget that it was owing to the antagonistic spirit of the Cavaliers that we are still in possession of not a few old names, which, though pagan in origin, are rendered dear by their antiquity and their relations to English life and character generations ere the Reformation was dreamt of. Above all, we must never forget, that whether the name be in the Bible or out of it, whether it be given at the font or even in the registrar’s office, it is the man that sanctifies the name, not the name the man. It was not their names that made Venn, and Simeon, and Wilberforce venerated; but Venn, and Simeon, and Wilberforce, by their earnest devotion and stable piety, made themselves so revered by Christian Englishmen that their names are still uttered with that hushed and bated breath that is the deepest demonstration of regard that human heart can express. Let us not then regret, that if by one band of men the treasury house of the Scriptures was ransacked for a new vocabulary of nomenclature, to another band we owe the preservation from the death they were threatened with, of Ralph, Walter, Dick, Harry, Cecilia, Lucy, Beatrice, Julia, Robert, Humphry, and Edward. Again do you say, “But they are pagan!” Prythee, friend, will you say that because Latimer bore the pagan name of Hugh, he died “without hope,” as a dog dieth; or that she who permitted his body to be burned, because she bore the name of Mary, could assert with her nominal prototype that “All generations shall call me blessed”? Her name is written in blood; and “Bloody Mary” she will be styled from English lips, till the Reformation be branded as a mistake, and its heroes as fools.

I have laid stress, – nay, I have dwelt lingeringly, – on these now quaint and old-mannered names for a particular reason. How many of my readers there must be who, without realizing the causes, are conscious of the fact that the Christian names of our cousins across the Atlantic, and those of ourselves, are marked by a certain divergence. When the Pilgrim Fathers set forth from Plymouth and Bristol, they bore with them their Puritan cognomens; and there, in Virginia and all the east border of the great States, they are established nearly as firmly to-day as they were in England two hundred years ago. Take up an American story, and in the names of its heroines you can tell, not only their nationality, but the writer’s also. “Faith,” and “Hope,” and “Patience,” and “Grace” are still their favourite titles. Nor is this a mere accident. If we turn to Mr. Hottens’ list of emigrants between 1600 and 1700, we find such names to have been of everyday occurrence. In the same family we find such trios as “Love Brewster,” “Fear Brewster,” and “Patience Brewster” quitting our shores. We find a brother and sister registered as “Hopestill Foster” and “Patience Foster;” while such entries as “Perseverance Green,” “Desire Minter,” “Revolt Vincent,” “Joye Spark,” “Remember Allerton,” and “Remembrance Tibbott” greet one at every turn. In such titles as these – “Hope-still,” “Remember,” “Remembrance,” “Desire,” “Patience,” and “Perseverance” – our minds are inevitably thrown back to those days of religious persecution, while we seem to be bidding these travellers God-speed on their distant and uncertain journey from the pierhead as the good ship lifts her anchor; and we can detect in the heart of the emigrant that mingled tide of hope and fear, trust and regret, confidence in the future united with a fond and lingering looking back, which still abides unbanished, – in spite of occasional tall talk, – from the American’s heart. He is proud of his land, but he does not forget the old country. No man so proud of making a name for himself as he; and yet no man so proud of tracing his pedigree back to a name that has been already made for him generations ago on England’s soil! In the twofold title of “Hopestill” and “Remembrance” still lives all that speaks of reverence in America’s past and expectation for America’s future.

If it were necessary, we could easily show how the same thing has happened to the vocabularies of the two countries that has befallen the two nomenclatures. We smile when a Yankee says, “I guess,” “I calculate,” and “I reckon;” but when we read in the Epistle of St. Paul the sentence “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” do we always reflect, as we might do, that our translators and revisers of 1611 were simply putting into the mouth of the apostle a phrase which was then colloquial English, but now survives, in all its familiarity, only in the United States, whither the Puritan Fathers had carried it? This comparison we might easily extend, but it is not our subject.

As for American baptismal nomenclature in general, it is all but entirely Biblical. The only book the refugee took with him was his English Bible. His piety was fed from its pages, his life was likened to its histories, his surroundings had the same cast of primeval simplicity; he discovered a resemblance between his own new life and that of the patriarchs, and it pleased him to stereotype the resemblance by the adoption of their names. From out that Book alone he named his offspring, and thus to this day, – such is the power of tradition, – “Brother Jonathan” and “Uncle Sam” are but representatives of a class of names which well-nigh engrosses every other. A single instance will suffice to show how this great mass of Biblical nomenclature arose. Charles Chauncy died in New England, 1671. He emigrated from Hertfordshire, where the family had been settled for centuries. His children were Isaac, Ichabod, Sarah, Barnabas, Elnathan, Nathaniel, and Israel. All these grew up and settled in New England.

It has been well said, that were it not for our English Bible the two languages of the United States and England would slowly but surely separate themselves into two distinct dialects, possibly tongues. Certainly it is to that book which Wycliffe, – whom we commemorated in 1877, – wrote into English, we owe the fact that in no respect is there a closer bond and deeper sympathy betwixt England and America than in that which concerns the nomenclature of the two countries. In what respect they differ I have shown. While we have dropped some names that marked eccentricity, and restored some of the older and more pagan cognomens from the oblivion that seemed so certainly to await them, they have clung tenaciously to that more quaint and large class of names of Scriptural origin, which their forefathers of Puritan stock bore with them across the ocean in days when America was as yet a portion of the British dominions.

May the twofold offspring of one stock hold fast still, as in days of yore, to that One Name in the Bible which is above every name! Then shall the two great branches of the Anglo-Norman race continue to multiply and be strong, and all the continents of the world shall be blessed through their means.