Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley

“ There were some old English favourites that the Reformation and the English Bible did not immediately crush. Thousands of men were youths when the Hebrew invasion set in, and lived unto James’s reign. Their names crop up, of course, in the burial registers. Others were inclined to be tenacious over family favourites. We must be content, in the records of Elizabeth’s and even James’s reign, to find some old friends standing side by side with the new. ”

“ No book, no story, especially if gloomy in its outline and melancholy in its issues, escaped the more morbid Puritan’s [Pg 63] notice. Every minister of the Lord’s vengeance, every stern witness against natural abomination, the prophet that prophesied ill—these were the names that were in favour. And he that was least bitter in his maledictions was most at a discount. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in every-day request, Shadrach and Abednego being the favourites. Mordecai, too, was daily commemorated; while Jeremiah attained a popularity, as Jeremy, he can never altogether lose. ”

“ The Hebrew name would first have to be turned into a nick form before the diminutive was appended. The English peasantry had added “in,” “ot,” “kin,” and “cock” only to the nickname, never to the baptismal form. It was Wat-kin, not Walterkin; Bat-kin, not Bartholomewkin; Wilcock, not Williamcock; Colin, not Nicholas-in; Philpot, not Philipot. But the popular feeling for a century was against turning the new Scripture names into curt nick forms. As it would have been an absurdity to have appended diminutives to sesquipedalian names, national wit, rather than deliberate plan, prevented it. ”

“ Greek and Latin saints were equally unnoticed.
It is hard to believe the statement I have made. Before many generations had passed, Bartholomew, Simon, Peter, Philip, Thomas, Nicholas, John, and Elias, had engrossed a third of the male population; yet Domesday Book has no Philip, no Thomas, only one Nicholas, and but a sprinkling of Johns. It was not long before Jack and Jill took the place of Godric and Godgivu as representative of the English sexes, yet Jack was from the Bible, and Jill from the saintly Calendar. ”

“ Thus were English people being prepared for the influx of a large batch of names which had never been seen before, nor will be again. The purely Biblical names, those that commemorated Bible worthies, swept over the whole country, and left ineffaceable impressions. The second stage of Puritan excess, names that savour of eccentricity and fanaticism combined, scarcely reached England north of Trent, and, for lack of volume, have left but the faintest traces. ”

“ At this moment Scotland has scarcely any Bible names.
In Yorkshire, however, Puritanism made early stand, though its effects on nomenclature were [Pg 51] not immediately visible. It was like the fire that smoulders among the underwood before it catches flame; it spreads the more rapidly afterwards. The Genevan Bible crept into the dales and farmsteads, and their own primitive life seemed to be but reflected in its pages. The patriarchs lived as graziers, and so did they. ”

“ Thus it will be seen that, in the general rush for places of preferment at the Restoration, there were men and women bearing names of the most marked Puritanism, who did not hesitate to forward their appeals with the Williams and Richards of the world at large. They manifestly did not suppose their sobriquets would be any bar to preferment. One of them, too, had been body-man to Charles in his exile, and another had suffered in person and estate as a devoted adherent of royalty. ”

“ Bible that it revolutionized our nomenclature within the space of forty years, or little over a generation. No such crisis, surely, ever visited a nation’s register before, nor can such possibly happen again. Every home felt the effect. It was like the massacre of the innocents in Egyptian days: “There was not one house where there was not one dead.” But in Pharoah’s day they did not replace the dead with the living. At the Reformation such a locust army of new names burst upon the land that we may well style it the Hebrew Invasion. ”

“ If we are to believe American authorities, there are localities where humour has certainly become grim, and the solemn rite of baptism somewhat burlesqued by a selection of names which throw into the shade even Puritan eccentricity. ”

“ I will not be so ill-natured as to quote the names of all the writers who have denied the existence of Puritan eccentricities at the font. One, at least, ought to have known better, for he has edited more books of the Puritan epoch than any other man in England. The mistake of all is that, misled perhaps by Walter Scott and Macaulay, they have looked solely to the Commonwealth period. ”

“ CURIOSITIES OF PURITAN NOMENCLATURE.
PROLOGUE. THE PET-NAME EPOCH IN ENGLAND.
“One grows too fat, another too lean: modest Matilda, pretty pleasing Peg, sweet-singing Susan, mincing merry Moll, dainty dancing Doll, neat Nancy, jolly Joan, nimble Nell, kissing Kate, bouncing Bess with black eyes, fair Phillis with fine white hands, fiddling Frank, tall Tib, slender Sib, will quickly lose their grace, grow fulsome, stale, sad, heavy, dull, sour, and all at last out of fashion.”—Anatomy of Melancholy. ”

“ Lord Coke, of course, was aware that Charles I.’s queen was Henrietta Maria, the late king Charles James, and his son Henry Frederic. It is possible, nay probable, that he was not ignorant of Thomas Maria Wingfield’s existence, or that of Thomas Posthumus Hobby. But that these double baptismal names should ever become an every-day custom, that the lower and middle classes should ever adopt them, that even the higher orders should ever go beyond the use of “Maria” and “Posthumus,” seems never to have suggested itself to his imagination. ”

“ The poorest and the most abject creatures that bring a child to the font will have their string of grand and high-sounding titles; sometimes such a mouthful, that the parson’s wonder is excited whence they accumulated them, till wonder is lost in apprehension lest he should fail to deliver himself of them correctly. The difficulty is increased when the name is pronounced as the fancy or education of the sponsor dictates. When one of three names is “Hugginy,” the minister may be excused if he fails to understand all at once that “Eugénie” is intended. ”

“ All came through the Church. All, too, were in the full tide of prosperity—with the single exception of Jordan, which was nearly obsolete—when the Bible, printed into English and set up in our churches, became an institution. The immediate result was that the old Scripture names of Bartholomew, Peter, Philip, and Nicholas received a blow much deadlier than that received by such Teutonic names as Robert, Richard, Roger, and Ralph. But that will be brought out as we progress. ”

“ But if any one will visit the shires of Dorset, and Devon, and Hampshire, he will find the same result. The Hebrew has won the day. Just as in England, north of Trent, we can still measure off the ravages of the Dane by striking a line through all local names lying westward ending in “by,” so we have but to count up the baptismal names of the peasantry of these southern counties to see that they have become the bondsmen of an Eastern despot. In fact, go where and when we will from the reign of Elizabeth, we find the same influence at work. Take a few places and people at random. ”

“ From Yorkshire, about the close of the seventeenth century, the rage for Scripture names passed into Lancashire. Nonconformity was making progress; the new industries were already turning villages into small centres of population, and the Church of England not providing for the increase, chapels were built. If we look over the pages of the directories of West Yorkshire and East Lancashire, and strike out the surnames, we could imagine we were consulting anciently inscribed registers of Joppa or Jericho. ”

“ V. The Influence of Foundling Names upon Double Baptismal Names.
One circumstance that contributed to the adoption of two baptismal names was the christening of foundlings. Having no father or mother to attest their parentage, being literally anonymous, there sprang up a custom, about the year 1500, of baptizing these children with a double title; only the second one was supposed to be the surname, and not a baptismal name at all. This second name was always a local name, betokening the precise spot, street, or parish where the child was found. Every old register has its numerous instances. ”

“ The Presbyterian clergy had another objection to the New Testament names. The possessors were all saints, and in the saints’ calendar. The apostolic title was as a red rag to his blood-shot eye.
“Upon Saint Peter, Paul, John, Jude, and James,
They will not put the ‘saint’ unto their names,”
says the Water-poet in execrable verse. Its local [Pg 60] use was still more trying, as no man could pass through a single quarter of London without seeing half a dozen churches, or lanes, or taverns dedicated to Saint somebody or other. ”

“ Thus Emma became by the one practice simple Emm, by the other Emmott; and any number of boys in a small community might be entered in a register as Bartholomew, and yet preserve their individuality in work-a-day life by bearing such names as Bat, Bate, Batty, Bartle, Bartelot, Batcock, Batkin, and Tolly, or Tholy. In a word, these several forms of Bartholomew were treated as so many separate proper names. ”

“ Some call their sons Emanuel: this is too bold. The name is proper to Christ, therefore not to be communicated to any creature. It is no less than presumption to give a subject’s son the style of his prince. Yea, it seems to me not fit for Christian humility to call a man Gabriel or Michael, giving the names of angels to the sons of mortality.
“On the other side, it is a petulant absurdity to give them ridiculous names, the very rehearsing whereof causeth laughter. There [Pg 184] be certain affectate names which mistaken zeal chooseth for honour, but the event discovers a proud singularity. ”

“ We have only to pitch upon a minister who came under the archbishop’s or Lord Treasurer’s notice as disaffected, seek out the church over which he presided, scan the register of baptisms during the years of his incumbency, and a batch of extravagant names will at once be unearthed. In the villages of Sussex and Kent, where the personal influence of the recalcitrant clergy seems to have been greatest, the parochial records teem with them. ”

“ Where names of evil repute come—and they are many—we do not expect to see their duplicates in the flesh. Graceless, Love-lust, Live-loose, Hold-the-world, and Talkative were not names for the Puritan, but their contraries were. Grace meets the case of Grace-less, Love-lust may be set by “Fly-fornication,” and Live-loose by “Live-well” or “Continent.” Hold-the-world is directly suggested by the favourite “Safe-on-high;” Talkative, by “Silence.”
[Pg 201] That John Bunyan is under debt to the Puritans for many of his characters must be unquestionable ”

“ Without entering into a deep discussion, we may say that the great mass of the old English names had gone down before the year 1200 had been reached. Those that survived only held on for bare existence. From the moment of William’s advent, the names of the Norman began to prevail. He brought in Bible names, Saint names, and his own Teutonic names. ”

“ The two names that were foremost before the middle of the twelfth century stand at this moment in the same position. Out of every hundred children baptized in England, thirteen are entered in the register as John or William. The Cavalier, too, can boast that “Charles,” [28] although there were not more of that name throughout the length and breadth of England at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign than could be counted on the fingers of one hand, now [Pg 113] occupies the sixth place among male baptismal names. ”

“ As the seventeenth century progressed the state of things became still more changed. There had been villages in Sussex and Kent previous to Elizabeth’s death, where the Presbyterian rector, by his personal influence at the time of baptism, had turned the new generation into a Hebrew colony. The same thing occurred in Yorkshire only half a century later. As nonconformity gained ground, Guy, and Miles, and Peter, and Philip became forgotten. The lads were no sooner ushered into existence than they were transformed into duplicates of Joel, and Amos, and Obediah. ”

“ In a “Directory of Church Government,” found among the papers of Cartwright, and written as early as 1565, there is the following order regarding and regulating baptism:—
“They which present unto baptism, ought to be persuaded not to give those that are baptized the names of God, or of Christ, or of angels, or of holy offices, as of baptist, evangelist, etc., nor such as savour of paganism or popery: but chiefly such whereof there are examples, in the Holy Scriptures, in the names of those who are reported in them to have been godly and virtuous.”—Neale, vol. ”

“ The Laureate was right to select for this rebellious Protestant a name that was to be popular throughout Elizabeth’s reign; but poetic license runs rather far in giving this title to a full-grown man in any year of Mary’s rule. Sanders might have had a young child at home so styled, but for himself it was practically impossible. So [Pg 41] clearly defined is the epoch that saw, if not one batch of names go out, at least a new batch come in. Equally marked are the names from the Bible which at this date were in use, and those which were not. ”

“ We should have no hesitation to give it for John Dryden, in preference to Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without knowing their different merits”?
And Sterne, as the elder Disraeli reminds us, in one of his multitudinous digressions from the life of “Tristram Shandy,” makes the progenitor of that young gentleman turn absolutely melancholy, as he conjures up a vision of all the men who
“might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed, and Nicodemas’d into nothing.” ”

“ The Reformation epoch had seen the English middle and [Pg 119] lower classes generally adopting the proper names of Scripture. Thus, the sterner Puritan had found a list of Bible names that he would gladly have monopolized, shared in by half the English population. That a father should style his child Nehemiah, or Abacuck, or Tabitha, or Dorcas, he discovered with dismay, did not prove that that particular parent was under any deep conviction of sin. This began to trouble the minds and consciences of the elect. Fresh limits must be created. ”

“ All this, as will be readily conceived, has tended to give a marked character to New England nomenclature. The very names of the children born to these religious refugees are one of the most significant tokens to us in the nineteenth century of the sense of liberty they felt in the present, and of the oppression they had undergone in the past. ”

“ The nick forms saw themselves reduced to straits. The new godly names, [Pg 83] I have said, were not to be turned into irreverent cant terms. From the earliest day of the Reformation every man who gave his child a Bible name stuck to it unaltered. Ebenezer at baptism was Ebenezer among the turnips, Ebenezer with the milk-pail, and Ebenezer in courtship; while Deborah, who did not become Deb till Charles I.’s reign, would Ebenezer him till the last day she had done scolding him, and put “Ebenezer” carefully on his grave, to prove how happily they had lived together! ”

“ Here once more we are reminded of two pretty baptismal names that have gone the way of the others. It makes one quite sad to think of these national losses. Amice, previous to the Reformation, was a household favourite, and Colet a perfect pet. Won’t somebody come to the rescue? Why on earth should the fact that the Bible has been translated out of Latin into English strip us of these treasures?
Turn once more to our church registers. Few will recognize Thurstan as a baptismal name ”