It may seem rather a paradox to suggest that Janet has nothing to do with Jane, and yet I think that a pretty good case can be made out. We find Geneta as a woman's name in the _Liber Vitæ_ in the thirteenth century, before Jane or Joan or Johanna were in use. And in the two following centuries we have Gennet, Janeta, Janette, and Janet, of common occurrence as Christian names. (One of these cases is a very curious one. It is that of one Willelmus Richerdson and his wife Christina, who having a family of eighteen children, seem to have been so completely at their wits' end for names to give them, that two of the sons are called Johannes, two Willelmus, after their father, two of the daughters Christine, after their mother, and no fewer than three called Janet. Such reduplication of Christian names does not, however, seem to have been unusual at that time.) Now it seems clear that the above name, Geneta, is the same as our Janet, and equally clear that it is not derived from any female form of John. Foerstemann (_Altdeutsches Namenbuch_) has an old Frankish woman's name, Genida, tenth century, from a Codex of Lorraine. And I find also the woman's name, Genitia, in the _Pol. Rem._, one of the old Frankish chronicles before referred to. These old Frankish names might well leave a woman's name behind in France, which in after times might get mixed up with Jean, and from which our name may also have been derived. I may observe that we have also Gennet and Jennett as surnames, and the Germans have also Genett. But these, though from the same stem, must be taken to be from another form of it--viz., from Genad, eighth century, a man's name. From the same stem Foerstemann derives the woman's name, Genoveva, sixth century; whence, through the French, our Genevieve. As to the etymology of _gen_, the Germans are not agreed, Leo suggesting a borrowed Celtic word, with the meaning of love or affection, while Foerstemann seems to prefer Old High German _gan_, magic or fascination. EMMA: _Its Place in the Teutonic System_.