Curiosities of Puritan NomenclatureBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, Personal -- English
But let us now notice some of the more disastrous effects of the great
Hebrew invasion. The most important were the partial destruction of the
nick forms, and the suppression of diminutives. The English pet names
disappeared, never more to return. Desinences in "cock," "kin," "elot,"
"ot," "et," "in," and "on," are no more found in current literature, nor
in the clerk's register. Why should this be so? An important reason
strikes us at once. The ecclesiastic names on which the enclytics had
grown had become unpopular well-nigh throughout England. It was an
English, not a Puritan prejudice. With the suppression of the names proper
went the desinences attached to them. The tree being felled, the parasite
decayed. Another reason was this: the names introduced from the Scriptures
did not seem to compound comfortably with these terminatives. 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. If it was irreverent, too, to curtail Scripture names,
it was equally irreverent to give them the diminutive dress. To prove the
absolute truth of my statement, I have only to remind the reader that,
saving "Nat-kin," not one single Bible name introduced by the Reformation
and the English Bible has become conjoined with a diminutive.[19]
The immediate consequence was this; the diminutive forms became obsolete.
Emmott lingered on till the end of the seventeenth century; nay, got into
the eighteenth:
"Emmit, d. of Edward and Ann Buck, died 24 April, 1726, aged 6
years."--Hawling, Gloucester.
But it was only where it was not known as a form of Emma, and possibly
both might exist in the same household. I have already furnished instances
of Hamlet. Here is another:
"The Rev. Hamlet Marshall, D.D., died in the Close, Lincoln, in 1652.
With him dwelt his nephew, Hamlet Joyce. He bequeaths legacies in his
will to Hamlet Pickerin and Hamlet Duncalf, and his executor was his
son, Hamlet Marshall."--_Notes and Queries_, February 14, 1880.
It lasted till the eighteenth century. But nobody knew by that time that
it was a pet name of Hamon, or Hamond; nay, few knew that the surname of
Hammond had ever been a baptismal name at all:
"1620, Jan. 3. Buried Hamlet Rigby, Mr. Askew's man."--St. Peter,
Cornhill.
"1620. Petition of Hamond Franklin."--"Cal. S. P. Dom.," 1619-1623.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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