Protestant names: Old Testament influences on men’s names (part 3)

https://dmnes.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/protestant-names-old-testament-influences-on-mens-names-part-3/



In this post the DMNES researchers finish up looking at Old Testament names, and whether they can see evidence of correlation between Protestant influence and the use of these names by men in the Middle Ages. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Manasses: This name, the name of a patriarch and a king of Judah, seems almost designed to ruin all of our hypotheses. It is a relatively obscure Biblical name, and yet we have no 16th C citations of it (yet). Instead, the name was moderately common in France in the 12th and 13th C, with a few examples earlier and a few examples later.

Meshach (entry available in next edition): The second of the three brothers who visited the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel (we saw the first one two posts ago, and the third shows up later in this list), Meshach was spelled Misaac and Mysaac in the Wycliffite Bible of 1395, and the former spelling is also the French spelling; we have one instance of Misaac in Caen in 1563.

Mordechai (entry available in next edition): The name of the father of Esther, we have one example of the name in 16th C France.

Moses (entry available in next edition): Moses wasn’t unheard of in England before the 16th C, its use amongst non-Jews attributable to the popularity of the story of Moses in medieval mystery plays. But in the 16th C, all our examples come from Protestant contexts, with one exception — a Swedish citation of Moisze in 1582. Was this Moisze a Jew? Was he a Protestant? Neither? Who knows!

Nathan: The name of a number of Old Testament characters, we have one example of Nathan in 16th C England.

Noah: Bardsley notes (p. 35) that this name was used in England prior to the Reformation as a result of the medieval mystery plays, but we have not yet collected any English examples. The two examples from 16th C Caen clearly reflect the pattern under investigation.

Sampson: This name was moderately common in France and English in the 12th C, due in part to the 6th C Welsh Saint Sampson who travelled from Wales to Brittany. After a period of reduced use, the name shows up again at the end of the 16th C.

Samuel: The name of the eponymous character of two OT books, Samuel was quite popular among Jews, and the 12th C examples of the name in England that we have are likely borne by Jews. The name experienced a resurgence in French, Dutch, and English contexts in the 16th C.

Shadrach: The third brother from the fiery furnace, our single example of this name was not identified as such until we researched how the name shows up in early vernacular Bible. In the Wycliffite Bible of 1395, the name is spelled Sidrac, which our identifictation of the 1583 English citation of Sidrack that we have certain.

Solomon: The son of King David and author of the Proverbs and some of the Psalms, his name was nearly as popular as his father’s name throughout the Middle Ages; in comparison with other Old Testament names, this name saw a reduction in use in England in the 16th C.

Uriah: The name of a number of minor OT characters, this name was spelled in a variety of ways — Urie, Vrie, and Vrye in the Wycliffite Bible, and Ury, Urye, and Urias (like Josias and Elias that we’ve seen earlier) in 16th C England.

Zachary: This name could be treated as either an OT or a NT name, since it shows up in both, the name of a prophet in the former and the father of John the Baptist in the latter. This name was not exclusive to the 16th C, and what is most curious about it is not when and where it was used, but how it was spelled when it was! The early medieval form in England dropped the Z-, leading to Latin spellings such as Acharias and Middle English spellings such as Acris. Not many names have variants at both the beginning and the end of the alphabet!


With this they’ve come to the end of our tour of the influence of the Old Testament on men’s names in Protestant contexts. Next up: The New Testament!

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

Jonathan (entry available in next edition): The name of the beloved friend of King David, Jonathan can be found in Dutch contexts in the 16th C.

https://dmnes.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/protestant-names-old-testament-influences-on-mens-names-part-2/



In this post the DMNES onomasts continue where they left off, with the next installment of Old Testament names and where they show clear influence of the rise of Protestantism in the second half of the 16th C.

Gabriel: The name of one of the archangels, this name was moderately common in France, Italy, and Iberia throughout most of the later Middle Ages, but was rare in England before the 16th C.

Gamaliel (entry available in the next edition): This could be considered an Old Testament name or a New Testament — a minor character by this name appears in each — but either way, this name typifies the pattern that we are investigating. It’s the name of a minor Biblical character, it was essentially unheard of before the end of the 16th C, and in the 16th and 17th C, we can find it used amongst both French and English Protestants.

Gideon: The judges were a popular source for names, and Gideon is another example of this. Our examples are spread across all three of our sources, from the 1560s on.


Hezekiah: The major and minor prophets were another popular source. Our single example of the name, Esechias, shows the typical medieval spelling of names which in modern English are often spelled with -iah (for example, as seen with medieval Elias as compared to modern Elijah) — we’ll see this quirk of spelling again below.

Isaac: The name of the son of the great Hebrew patriarch, Isaac shows up in the medieval mystery plays, so the name was not unheard of in England prior to the 16th C, and outside of England it can be found in the 12th and 13th C, but in the 16th C, it is especially associated with the Protestant contexts that we’ve been investigating.

Isaiah: The name of another prophet, perhaps one of the most important in the Old Testament, we find it in a variety of French spellings in the registers from Caen.

Israel: The name given to the Biblical patriarch Jacob, after he wrestled with God. Unlike the name

Jacob itself (which was, throughout the Middle Ages and after, so popular that there is no plausible way we can appeal to it as evidence for our pattern! A similar story can be told of John, so we will be omitting both from consideration in the present context.), Israel was never so popular, but we have a handful of examples in English and Dutch at the end of the 16th C.

Job (entry available in next edition): Another eponymous character of one of the Old Testament books, Job’s story of perseverance in the face of adversity made it a popular choice after the Reformation for parents seeking meaningful names. However, prior to the 17th C, it still remained rare.

Jonas (entry available in next edition): Better known in modern English in the form Jonah, the medieval form Jonas reflects the Greek spelling of the name. While the name was used rarely in Germany and Switzerland in the 12th and 13th C, in the 16th C, our examples all come from Protestant contexts.


Josaphat: The name of one of the kings of Judah, we have a single example from Caen in 1565.

Joseph: A curious name in that there is no clear time of context in which it was ever especially, or ever especially rare. It, unlike many of the other names that we’ve considered, was not especially taken up by the Protestants.

Joshua: This name is the same in origin as Jesus, but the two names were almost uniformly treated as distinct. The name was never popular, but the handful of instances that we have are all from Protestant contexts.

Josiah: Like Hezekiah above, the medieval spelling of Josiah was generally -ias rather than -iah, and we can see this spelling appearing in Dutch, French, and English.


That’s enough of the list for now, they’ll return to it again in our next post!

Protestant names: Old Testament influences on men’s names (part 1)

https://dmnes.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/protestant-names-old-testament-influences-on-mens-names-part-1/

Having looked at women’s names from the Old Testament in the DMNES researchers' previous post, in this one they turn to the men!



Except, first, the rectification of an omission — because they forgot a rather important name in their previous post! She’s a Hebrew girl turned Persian princess, she’s the cause of one of the most important Jewish festivals, she’s the eponymous character of one of the OT books…how could we forget to mention Esther? Spelled Esther, Ester, Hesther, or Hester, the name sprang into popularity in England and amongst Dutch and French Protestants in the second half of the 16th C, being virtually unknown in other linguistic, geographic, and temporal contexts. We have quite a large number of citations, but the entry for the name is not yet ready for publication because the etymology of the name is proving difficult to ascertain. There are plenty of theories — from the Median word astra meaning ‘myrtle’, from the Latin word astra meaning ‘star’, or related to the goddess name Ishtar, ultimately deriving from a root meaning ‘star’ — but we prefer good hard evidence rather than speculation when we can get it. Sometimes, though, conclusive data cannot be found, and we may simply end up having to present what information we have, and its relative merits. I suspect that it will be awhile before we have a satisfactory solution for this name.

Digression aside, let’s look at the men’s names drawn from the Old Testament! There are so many of them, the onomasts are going to have to slit this up into multiple Posts.

Aaron: The name of the brother of Moses and the first high priest, this name is curious because it doesn’t provide much evidence for the “Old Testament names became more common in the second half of the 16th C” hypothesis — not because it was already in use before then, but because, unlike so many other OT names, it never became common. We have two 16th C English examples and one from the Protestant Church in Caen, but this name was nowhere near as popular as some of the other more “mainstream” OT names. It was occasionally used in England, and elsewhere, earlier, but often by Jews rather than Christians. One exception to this is Wales, where the form Aron was not uncommon in the 15th C. The cause of this is unknown.


Abednego (entry available in next edition): The name of one of the three brothers thrown into the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel (his brothers’ names show up further down in the list!). When we first found the name Abdenago in France in 1565, given the context and the spelling our first thought was of Abednego, but the difference between bed and den seemed difficult to explain — until a bit of sleuthing revealed that in the Wycliffite translation of 1395, the Middle English form of the name was Abdenago. We are not sure when the den form switched to the bed form in English, but this is one of the questions that our investigations into early vernacular translations of the Bible will hopefully illuminate!

Abraham: The name of the patriarch of Israel, this name can be found as far afield as Hungary, yet it was always rare in France before the 16th C, and almost unheard of in England or the Low Countries before then.


Absalom: The name of the son of king David, this name is a curiosity as the only Protestant uptake of it that we have evidence for is in France; yet, the name was used sporadically before the 16th C across Europe, with most examples found in the 12th-14th C.

Adam: Like the name of his wife (see previous post), Adam was commonly in use throughout Europe before the Reformation. There is little need to explain the universal popularity of this choice!

Adiel: You can be forgiven for not recognizing this name, it was borne by a handful of unremarkable characters recorded in 1 Chronicles (27:25 4:36; and 9:12). The Adiel recorded in London in 1593 can be nothing other than a witness to the Protestant penchant for indiscriminate choice. Obscurity is not an issue, here!

Balthasar: Better known as one of the names of the three wisemen, Balthasar was common outside of England, France, and the Low Countries prior to the 16th C (often in conjunction with forms of
Casper and Melchior — either two or three brothers with these names, or father/son(s) pairs), within our area of focus, there is a clear jump in the uptake of this name in the second half of the 16th C.

Benjamin: While our data doesn’t yet reflect this, the name Benjamin was in use in England througout the Middle Ages, albeit sporadically. It was popular enough to give rise to a surname found as early as the 12th C [1]. Outside of the second half of the 16th, the name was rare throughout Europe.

Caleb: The name of a minor character, this name was rarely used in 16th C England.

David: The name of one of the most important Biblical kings, David can be found quite early throughout Europe in ecclesiastical contexts; the popularity of the 7th C Saint David in Wales is the reason for the popularity of the name in Wales throughout the Middle Ages, and as the name of two kings of Scotland, its use there was also assured. The name was spread widely throughout Europe; this name’s use in the 16th C cannot be attributed exclusively to Protestant influences.

Daniel: The case of this name of an eponymous character of one of the prophetic books is similar to that of David, though here it is clearer that its popularity in England certainly increased in the second half of the 16th C.

Eleazar: This name could be classified as either an OT name (in this form) or a NT name (in the Latinized form Lazarus). While Lazarus and variants are not uncommon in Italy, the specific OT-influenced form Eleazar shows its face in England and France in the second half of the 16th C (the two 12th C instances in the Dictionary are from records relating to the Crusades in the Holy Land, and may be the names of Jews).

Elias: Elias (this spelling reflecting the influence of Greek) was one of the most popular Biblical names in the Middle Ages [2]. We cannot look to the use of this name as evidence for a Protestant pattern, but we can look to something more nuanced: In the 17th C, the spelling Elijah became specifically taken up by the Puritans in England (and the New World) [2]. We have yet to see an example of this spelling in the pre-1600 scope of the Dictionary.

Enoch: The name of an ancestor of Noah who walked with God and “then he was not”: He was taken up to heaven without ever having suffered earthly death. We have one example of it, from the Dutch Reformed Church in 1589.

Ezekiel: The name of a Biblical prophet, we have one example of this from the Protestant Church at Caen in 1561.



The remainder of the alphabet will be covered in future posts, but what we can see from these names alone is that the correlation between the use of OT names and Protestant influences is much lower among men’s names than among women’s names. However, if we look beyond the names of well-known, popular Biblical characters, like Adam, David, Elias etc., it is clear that there is a correlation between the use of obscure Old Testament names and English, Dutch, and French contexts from the second half of the 16th C.

References

[1] Reaney & Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames, s.n. Benjamin.
[2] Withycombe, Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, s.n. Elias.