One thing that’s really fun about baptismal registers is seeing the incidence of twins being baptised, and what their names are. (A friend once did a study of a number of Welsh registers, and found that male twins were disproportionately baptised Thomas, which is an interesting comment on the transparency of the meaning to ordinary people at that time.) Because readers of this blog are likely to also be iterested in what twinsets are being named, we thought we’d do a short post on the names of twins found in the Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, parish register.
How medieval is “Your Medieval Name”?
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
The highlight of the onomastician’s calendar is always the publication of the babyname statistics for various countries — when the US Social Security baby name data for the previous year is released (usually in May), you can see the excitement sweep across the onomastic portion of the internet. (Even those of us who focus on medieval names rather than modern names will still block out an evening to do nothing but scroll through the new lists!). Yesterday, the BBC reported on data from the Office for National Statistics with the top 10 boys’ and girls’ names in England and Wales for 2016.
But just how long a pedigree do the names in the top 10 for England and Wales have? That’s the focus of today’s post!
Olivia: Olivia reflects the modern tendency to prefer polysyllabic, Latinate, explicitly gender-marked forms of names. The name is often cited as being an invention of Shakespeare, but that is manifestly not true; not only did he not invent it, he was not the instigator of its use in England. Forms of this name have been used in England from at least the 13th C onwards, and this particular spelling can be found in Latin documents in 1296 and 1321. On the continent, the name was used even early, from at least the 9th C in France.
Amelia: Amelia sounds like it follows the same Latinate pattern as Olivia, due to its similarity to the Roman gens name Aemilia, but in fact it derives from Proto-Germanic *amal ‘vigor, bravery’, and could have been used as a diminutive of any of various names beginning with this element (such as Amalhilde, Amalgilde, Amaltrude, or Amalswintha).
Emily: Now this name is the one derived from Aemilia. While the masculine form Emil was moderately popular medievally, Emily was always uncommon. In England, the name is best known, in the Middle English spelling Emelye, as the princess in Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale”.
Isla: Isla as a name, and especially as a feminine name, is distinctly modern. It derives from the name of an island, and the pattern of naming children after geographical regions such as islands, cities, duchies, and states is quite recent (relatively speaking).
Ava: Ava is a strange name in that we have a pretty long history of its usage — particular in the diminutive form Aveline — but other than being able to identify it as Germanic in origin, it is not clear further what its linguistic roots or etymology are.
Isabella: Isabella fits neatly in with Olivia as the Latin form of a common medieval name, Isabel, which itself arose from another common medieval name, Elizabeth. Even as late as the 16th C, one and the same woman could be recorded as Isabel(la) and Elizabeth interchangeably, and hybrid forms like Elsabell can also be found in that era.
Lily: It’s almost overdetermined that Lily would appear in the “most popular” girls’ names of the present era. The name both reflects the penchant illustrated by Isla above to name children after naturalistic elements, and it bears its original usage not from the flower but from a nickname of Elizabeth, and is still sometimes nowadays used to honor relatives named Elizabeth.
Jessica: Jessica is another name, like Olivia, which is thought to be invented by Shakespeare but wasn’t actually. Forms of this name were used by Jewish women living in England before the expulsion in 1290.
Ella: This trim, spare name might hearken to the -bella names, but it is another name of Germanic origin, deriving from Proto-Germanic *allaz ‘all, whole, every’. It was rare, but has been used since at least the 15th C.
Mia: Mia is the one outlier of the entire bunch; it’s use is prettty much purely modern. It can be used as a nickname of various names, including Mary, Amelia, and Emily, and is identical with the Italian and Spanish word ‘mine’, from Latin mea. Mea, now, does have a long history of usage — but as a nickname of Bartholomea.
Oliver: With Olivia number 1 for the girl’s, Oliver might strike many people as simply the masculine equivalent — but the truth is much more complex. It may be a derivative of Latin oliva just as Olivia is, but it could equally well be a form of Olaf developing in Normandy, or a form of Aylward via Alvaro spellings. Whatever it’s origin, the name has a long history, showing in Belgium, France, England, and Ireland by the end of the 12th C, spreading outward from there in the 13th and 14th centuries, and being pretty well established across Europe by the end of the 16th C.
Harry: What do you get when you take a Germanic name pronounced by Frenchmen and write it down by an English speaker? Why, Harry of course! Due to the numerous kings and saints named various forms of Henry, it’s no surprise that this is one of the most popular masculine names in all of European history.
George: No doubt about the pedigree of this name; the eponymous saint that slew the dragon and kickstarted the name’s popularity lived in the 3rd-4th C. It was never a hugely popular name in England before the 16th C, but from then on, it has been well-established, getting extra boosts from a couple of kings.
Jack: How Jack developed as a nickname of John is a perennial question, and one we’ve discussed before. In our own data, we have examples from the 14th C onwards.
Jacob: After John, Jacob is probably the most popular medieval man’s name of Hebrew origin — though as with other names of Biblical origin, Jacob was rare before the 12th C. The majority of the few 9th C examples we have were of clerics or people closely associated with the church, where the use of this name instead of a name of Germanic origin was a strong signal of the family’s Christianity. By the end of the 16th C, James was perhaps slightly more popular than Jacob in England, but both remained strong contenders.
Noah: This Old Testament name came into use amongst English and French Protestants in the 16th C, but it was also used occasionally before then, influenced by the medieval mystery plays.
Charlie: This name has a relatively short history in England; before the 16th C, it was quite rare, and many of our pre-1500 examples in England are actually foreign visitors. The name was, however, vastly popular on the continent due to its most famous bearer, Charlemagne. It’s not clear when the diminutive form Charlie developed; we haven’t yet found any pre-1600 examples yet. Thus, of all the names in this list, Charlie can be taken to be the most “modern”.
Muhammad: Muhammad is clearly a name with a long history, but many people probably think that history is almost exclusively Middle Eastern — but that is because people often tend to forget how much Arabic settlement, trade, and migration there was during the medieval period. In the 1510 census of Valencia, seven men named Mahomat are listed; in Italy, a “Saracen” named Machemet is recorded in 1160. And this is to not even delve into the records from al-Andalus, where this name was extremely popular, accounting for over 30% of the men.
Thomas: As with other names of Biblical origin, Thomas first gets its purchase in England in the 12th century; from then on, it was consistently and continuously one of the most popular names in the country.
Oscar: This name has two distinct origins. First, and most commonly, it is a compound of Old English ōs, Old High German *ans, ans-, ansi-, Old Icelandic áss, óss ‘god, deity’ + Old English gār, Old High German, Old Saxon gēr, Old Icelandic geirr ‘spear’. The name was quite popular in France and Germany in the 9th-12th C, but it mostly fell out of use after that. The modern popularity of the name is probably due more to the second origin it has, Irish os ‘deer’ + cara ‘friend’. This name was vanishingly rare in medieval Ireland, but was used by James Mcpherson in The Works of Ossian (1765), through which (via Napoleon and his grandson) the name entered the Swedish royal line. This combination of Irish heritage and Scandinavian foreignness makes it no surprise that the name is as popular in England as it is today, even though there was a centuries-long gap in its usage.
So there you have it! Unsurprisingly, the most popular boys’ and girls’ names in England and Wales last year are strongly rooted in a long historical tradition in which many of these names have been amongst the most popular for millennia.
So, who’s up for another round of everything old is new again, aka “names generated by a neural network on twitter that are actual medieval names”?
Aulia is a feminine name found in Rome in 1527.
Sania is a feminine name found in Iberia between ~1119 and 1150.
Arnall is a Catalan form of Arnold found in the 12th century.
Lys is a Dutch diminutive of Elizabeth found in Leuven at the end of the 16th C.
Vinne is a Middle Low German nickname of Winrich found in Estona in 1592.
Ales is a popular 16th C English spelling of Alice.
Danel is a Dutch form of Daniel found in London at the end of the 16th C.
Sabel is a nickname of Sabine found in 16th C England.
Alsen is a 16th C English nickname of Alice, popular in Cornwall.
The Italian feminine name Laria is found in Bergamo between 1265 and 1339.
The Hebrew name Asa was used by French Protestants in the 16th C.
Ealce: A variant of Alice?
Is Ealce another spelling for the name Alice?
Alice was a popular name in England from the 12th century onwards, appearing in a variety of spellings in Middle and Early Modern English. Quite a few of the vernacular forms drop the second vowel, resulting in spellings such as Alce, Alls, Als, and Alse. Less common are variants which swap the initial A for E, such as Elyce, Ellisone (both in data awaiting processing), Elis, and Ellis; and all of these may be forms of Elizabeth rather than of Alice.
But to date, we have found only one variant of the name which starts with Eal-, and that not until the early 17th century (the spelling Eales is found in a parish register from Chester-le-Street in 1616). The combination of the dropping of the second vowel along with the extremely rare conversion of the initial vowel make it unlikely that Ealce is a form of Alice (though, knowing what we do about names and variant spellings, we are hesitant to discount the possibility entirely).
So, it is a name, albeit not clearly the name of an actual person, as opposed to a mythical god, and likely not a variant of Alice.
[1] J. E. B. Gover, A. Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-names of Nottinghamshire: Their Origin and Development, English Place-Name Society (Cambridge University Press, 1940), p. 6.
July 1: Feast day of Saint Aaron.
July 2: Elizabeth Tudor was born in 1492.
July 3: Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks in 987.
July 4: Saint Ulrich of Augsburg died in 974.
July 5: Joan of the Tower, queen consort of Scotland, was born in 1321.
July 6: Richard the Lion-Heart ascended the throne of England in 1189.
July 7: Madeleine of Valois died in 1537.
July 8: Saint Grimbald died in 903.
July 9: Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg was born in 1511.
July 10: Emperor Hadrian died in 138.
July 11: Martin Frobisher sights Greenland in 1576.
July 12: Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle is printed in 1493.
July 13: Alexander III is crowned king of the Scots.
July 14: Louis VIII became king of France in 1223.
July 15: Saint Bonaventure died in 1274.
July 16: Saint Clare of Assisi was born in 1194.
July 17: Count Baldwin VI of Flanders died in 1070.
July 18: Godfrey de Bouillon, crusader knight, died in 1100.
July 19: Philipa of Lancaster died in 1415.
July 20: Claude, queen of France, died in 1524.
July 21: Feast day of Saint Victor of Marseilles.
July 22: William Wallace is defeated at the Battle of Falkirk.
July 23: Saint Bridget of Sweden died in 1373.
July 24: Mathilda of Tuscany died in 1115.
July 25: Casimir I the Restorer was born in 1016.
July 26: Pope Celestine died in 432.
July 27: Conrad II of Italy died in 1101.
July 28: Rodrigo de Bastedas, conquistador and explorer, died in 1527.
July 29: Olaf II of Norway died in 1030.
July 30: Italian painter Giorgio Vasari was born in 1511.
July 31: Ignatius of Loyola died in 1556.
June 1: Anne Boleyn was crowned queen of England in 1533.
June 2: Richilda of Provence died in 910.
June 3: Peter Abelard was condemned as a heretic in 1141.
June 4: Adela of Champagne died in 1206.
June 5: Saint Boniface was murdered in Frisia in 754.
June 6: Gustav I of Sweden was elected king in 1523.
June 7: Robert the Bruce died in 1329.
June 8: Italian poet Gabriello Chiabrera was born in 1552.
June 9: Irish saint and missionary Columba died in 597.
June 10: Frederick Barbarossa drowned crossing a river in 1190.
June 11: Blessed Yolanda of Poland died in 1298.
June 12: Cosimo dei Medici was born in 1519.
June 13: Wat Tyler led the Peasant’s Revolt into London in 1381.
June 14: Orlande de Lassus, Flemish painter, died in 1594.
June 15: Lisa del Giocondo was born in 1479.
June 16: Saint Lutgardis died in 1246.
June 17: Bolesław I the Brave died in 1025.
June 18: Painter Rogier van der Weyden died in 1464.
June 19: Saint Juliana Falconieri died in 1341.
June 20: Blessed Margareta Ebner died in 1351.
June 21: Leonhard Rauwolf was born in 1535 and Leonardo Loredan died in 1521.
June 22: Saint Alban was martyred, in an uncertain year between around 209 and 304.
June 23: Saint Æþelðryþe died in 679.
June 24: Philippa Hainault was born in 1314.
June 25: Eleanor of Provence died in 1291.
June 26: Roman emperor Julian died in 363.
June 27: The martyrdom of Crescens is celebrated.
June 28: Charlotte queen of Cyprus was born in 1444.
June 29: Abel, king of Denmark, died in 1252.
June 30: Saint Theobald of Provins died in 1066.
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