Curiosities of Puritan NomenclatureBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, Personal -- English
"1595, April 3. Joane, whome we maye call Yorkkooppe, because she was
ye basterd daughter, as yt is comonlye reported, of one John York and
Anne Cooper."--Landbeach.
Here is a double conjunction; John and Anne forming Jo-ane, and York and
Cooper, Yorkkooppe. The first is neat, the second clumsy: but, doubtless,
the clerk who wielded the goose-quill deemed both a masterpiece of
ingenuity.
The following is interesting:--
"1616, July 13, being Satterday, about half an hour before 10 of the
clocke in the forenoon, was born the Lady Georgi-Anna, daughter to the
Right Hon. Lady Frances, Countess of Exeter; and the same Ladie
Georgi-Anna was baptized 30th July, 1616, being Tuesday, Queen Anne
and the Earl of Worcester, Lord Privie Seal, being witnesses: and the
Lorde Bishop of London administered the baptism."--_Vide_ R. E. C.
Waters, "Parish Registers." 1870.
III. HYPHENED NAMES.
It will be noticed that so far the two names were both (saving in the case
of Aberycusgentylis and Jockaminshaw) from the recognized list of
baptismal names. About the reign of Anne the idea of a patronymic for a
second name seems to have occurred. To meet the supposed legal exigencies
the two names were simply hyphened. We will confine our instances to the
register of Canterbury Cathedral:
"1721, Jan. 20. Baptized Howe-Lee, son of Lee Warner, Esquire, and
Mary his wife.
"1728, July 4. Baptized Francis-Gunsby, son of Dr. William Ayerst,
prebendary of this church.
"1746, Sep. 28. Baptized James-Smith, son of James Horne, and Mary his
wife."
I need not say that at first these children bore the name in common
parlance of Howe-Lee, or Francis-Gunsby, or James-Smith. The two were
never separated, but treated as one name. To this day traces of this
eighteenth-century habit are to be found. I know an old gentleman and his
wife, people of the old school, dwelling somewhat out of the world, who
address a child invariably by all its baptismal titles. The effect is very
quaint. In all formal and legal processes the two or three names have to
be employed, and clergymen who only recite the first in the marriage
service, as I have heard some do, are in reality guilty of misdemeanour.
How odd all these contrivances to modern eyes! We take up a directory, and
every other registration we look on is made up of three names. The poorer
classes are even more particular than the aristocracy upon the point. The
lady-help, describing her own superior merit, says--
"Do not think that we resemble
Betsy Jane or Mary Ann,
Women born in lowly cottage,
Bred for broom or frying-pan."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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