The English _William_ is _Guillaume_ in French, _Wilhelm_ in German, and so on. _John_ is _Jean_ in French, _Johann_ in German, and so on, with many other names. But in early times people got their names in a much more interesting way. Sometimes something which seemed peculiar about a little new-born baby would suggest a name. _Esau_ was called by this name, which is only the Hebrew word for "hairy," because he was already covered by the thick growth of hair on his body which made him so different from Jacob. The old Roman names _Flavius_ and _Fulvius_ merely meant "yellow," and the French name _Blanche_, "fair," or "white." Sometimes the fond parents would give the child a name describing some quality which they hoped the child would possess when it grew up. The Hebrew name _David_ means "beloved." The name _Joseph_ was given by Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, to the baby who came to her after long waiting. _Joseph_ means "addition," and Rachel chose this name because she hoped another child would yet be added to her family. She afterwards had Benjamin, the best beloved of all Jacob's sons, and then she died. The name Joseph did not become common in Europe till after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church appointed a feast day for St. Joseph, the spouse of the Blessed Virgin. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Emperor Leopold christened his son Joseph, and this, and the fact that Napoleon's first wife was named Josephine, made these two names as a boy's and a girl's name very popular. We have both Joseph and Josephine in English, and the French have Fifine and Finette as well as Josephine, for which these are pet names. In Italy, too, Joseph, or Giuseppe, is a common name, and Peppo, or Beppo, are short names for it. These pet names seem very strange when we remember Rachel's solemn choosing of the name for the first Joseph of all. Sometimes the early nations called their children by the names of animals. The beautiful old Hebrew name _Deborah_, which became also an old-fashioned English name, means "bee." In several languages the word for _wolf_ was given as a personal name. The Greek _Lycos_, the Latin _Lupus_, the Teutonic _Ulf_, from which came the Latin _Ulphilas_ and the Slavonic _Vuk_, all mean "wolf." The wolf was the most common and the most treacherous of all the wild animals against which early peoples had to fight, and this, perhaps, accounts for the common use of its name. People were so impressed by its qualities that they thought its name worthy to give to their sons, who, perhaps, they hoped would possess some of its better qualities when they grew up. Sometimes early names were taken from the names of precious stones, as _Margarite_, a Greek name meaning "pearl," and which is the origin of all the Margarets, Marguerites, etc., to be found in nearly all the languages of Europe.