CURIOSITIES OF PURITAN NOMENCLATURE.* Tums is a book which would

have found much favour with the father of Tristram Shandy. The author accepts the Shandean system" in almost all its integrity. He may not be prepared to admit that "men who might have done exceeding well in the world," have actually had "their characters and spirits totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing." But he assents un- reservedly to Mr. Shandy's argnmentum ad hominern,—" 'tour

• Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. By Charles W. Bardsley. London : Chatto and Windus. 1880.

Billy, Sir,—would you for the world have called him Judis ? Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather proposed the name of your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him ?" It may be said that all the world would go with him, so far as this name is con- cerned; and as a matter of fact, except in the form of "Judas-not- Iscariot," it is not to be found in any register. But had the Books of the Maccabees been included iu the Canon, the name which con- notes treachery might have been borne by some of the trustiest of Cromwell's troopers. Not that Mr. Bardsley would have trusted them ; for he says of " Barabas, sonne of Barabas Bowen," that the would have locked up the spoons, had father or son called upon him. He also opines, in the case of one" Weakly Edkius, citizen and grocer, of London, who was brought by his friends before the Commissioners of Lunacy, on the ground that he was unfit to manage his business, that he, the said W. Edkins, was probably driven into the state specified in the petition by his debilitating name." Of course, too, with these views, he agrees with Wilkes's remark to Johnson about Dryden's would-be rival :—" Elkanah Settle sounds so queer, who can expect much from that name ?" We should have no hesita- tiou to give it for John Dryden, in preference to . Elkanah Settle, from the names only, without knowing their different merits." Now, all jesting aside, there is undoubtedly some- thug, and even much, to be said for the " Shandean system."

To men, no less than to dogs, a bad name cannot be given with impunity ; and the future founder of the Science of Compara- tive Namology,—a grotesque barbarism, which we form on the analogy of Dr. Whewell's Tidology,—will have to reckon with this tendency. But let us be just to the baptismal offender, and not visit upon him the sins of his colleague, the surname. How, if the City poet had been named Elkanah Dryden, and the author of Absalom, and Achitophel, John Settle ? We must, however, for the present, leave these speculations, and turn to the more solid and prosaic results of the author's researches. His book is a really able and useful work, and a very lively one to boot, albeit, Mr. Bardsley's humour is not precisely of the same quality as Mr. Shandy's. It con- sists of two chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, and the title, Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, by no means ade- quately indicates the varied nature of its contents.

The prologue deals with what the author calls "Time Pet- name Epoch in England." There were no Scripture names among our forefathers when William came over from Nor- mandy. With him came Bible names, saint names, and his own Teutonic names. Domesday Book has no Philip, no Thomas, only one Nicholas, and but a sprinkling of Johns, in it.

Yet before many generations had passed after Hastings," Bartho- lomew, Simon, Philip, Peter, Thomas, Nicholas, John, and Elias had engrossed a third of the male population." The Norman name-list, which was really a small one, took possession of the whole of England ; and from 1150 to 1550, four hundred years, in round numbers, the number of English personal names was very much smaller than it hal been for four hundred years before, or than it has been in the four hundred years since. The "Pet-name Epoch" was the result of this circumstance. It would frequently happen that the same family had but one name for the household ; and "we may imagine," says Mr.

Bardsley, "the difficulty, when this name was also popular throughout the village. The difficulty was naturally solved by, firstly, the adoption of nick forms; secondly, the addition of pet desinences. Thus Emma became by this one practice simple _aunt, by the -other, Emmett ; and any number of boys in a small community might be entered in a register as Bartholomew, and yet preserve their individuality in work-a- day life, by bearing such names as Bat, Bate, Batty, Bartle, Bartelot, Batcock, Batkin, and Tolly or Tholy. In a word, these several forms of Bartholomew were treated as so many proper names." These pet-names were, to a great extent, swept away by what Mr. Bardsley calls " the Hebrew Invasion," which followed swiftly upon the publication of the "Vulgar Tongue" Bible. This "Hebrew Invasion" forms the subject of the first chapter, and is thus described by the author :—

" Previous to the Reformation,' 'so far as the Church was con- cerned, there bad been to a certain extent a system of nomenclature. The Reformation abrogated that system, but did not intentionally adopt a new one. Puritanism deliberately supplied a well-weighed and revised scheme, beyond which no adopted child of God must dare to trespass. Previous to the Reformation, the priest, with the assent of the gossip, gave the babe the name of the Saint who was to be its patron, or on whose day the birth or baptism occurred. If it were one of the great holydays, the day or season itself furnished the name. But from the reign of Elizabeth, the Clergy, and Englishmen generally, gave up the practice."

But the nation stood by the old names which bad no popish taint about them. Against Geoffrey, Richard, Robert, and William, they had no prejudice. The Puritans rejected both classes of names, and with what success may be inferred from the fact that while at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, "the great national names of Isabella, Matilda, Emma, and Cecilia ruled supreme ;" under James I., "Priscilla, Damaris, Dorcas, and Phebe stood almost at the head of girls' names in England. Mr. Bardsley notes the curious circumstance that Scotland remained untouched by the wave of this invasion. He attributes this to the clannish feeling of North Britons, and says that at this moment Scotland has scarcely any Bible names. At the time of the Commonwealth, an Englishman had the choice of three methods of selection open to him in this matter of names :

"He might copy the zealot fashion, and select his names from the Scriptures, or from the category of Christian graces; he might rally by the old English gentleman, who, at this time, was generally a Cavalier, and Dick, Tom, Harry, or Dolly, his children ; or he might be careless about the whole matter, and mix the two, according to his caprice."

The Restoration practically put an end to this confusion. The Hebrew, after the conflict was over, could show most trophies. The English yeoman had lost more, because he had more to lose. But John and William, the two names that were fore- most before the middle of the twelfth century, are foremost still ; and the Cavaliers' "Charles "—a name almost unused in England at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign—now occupies the sixth place among our male baptismal names. Moreover, the "Hebrew invaders" were, for a time, assailed, and their

supremacy threatened, so to speak, by a motley band of in- surgents, the so-called "Puritan Eccentricities." As the chapter which treats of these is perhaps the most important, and is certainly the most original portion of Mr. Bardsley's volume, it seems just to quote his view somewhat in &dens° :— " There are still many people," he says, "who are sceptical about the stories told against the Puritans in the matter of name-giving. Of these, some are Nonconformists, who do not like the slights thus cast upon their spiritual ancestry ; unaware that while this curious phase was at its climax, Puritanism was yet within the pale of the Church of England. Others, having searched the lists of the Pro- tector's Parliaments, Commissioners, and army'officers, and having found but a handful of odd baptismal names, declare, without hesita- tion, that these stories are wicked calumnies. But there is the most distinct evidence that during the latter portion of Elizabeth's reign, the whole of James's reign, and great part of Charles's reign, in a district roughly comprising England south of the Trent, and having, say, Banbury for its centre, there prevailed, amongst a certain class of English religionists a practice of baptising children by Scriptural phrases, pious ejaculations, or godly admonitions. It was a practice instituted of deliberate purpose, as conducive to vital religion, and as intending to separate the truly godly and renewed portion of the community from the world at large. The Reformation epoch had seen the English middle and lower classes generally adopting the proper names of Scripture. Thus the sterner Puritan had found a list of Bible names that he would gladly have monopolised shared by half the English population. That a father should style his child Nehemiah, or Habakkuk, or Tabitha, or Dorcas, he discovered, with dismay, did not prove that that particular parent was under any deep conviction of sin. This began to trouble the minds and consciences of the elect. Fresh limits must be created. As Richard and Roger had given way to Nathaniel and Zerubabel, so Nathaniel and Zerubabel must now give way to Learn-wisdom and Hate-evil."

Who inaugurated this movement, with what success, and how it slowly waned, are duly set forth in the chapter to which the above extract is the exordium. Want of space prevents us from doing more than refer the reader to that chapter. Justice for- bids us to omit saying that it is admirably written, and will carry conviction to the minds of those who have doubted the sound- ness of the author's position. It appears, in fact, that no doubt could have arisen about the matter, if the proper series of regis- ters had been consulted. The practice of giving these strange Christian names was on the wane before the King raised his standard at Nottingham ; and proofs of the prevalence of that practice are to be looked for in registers varying from 1580 to 1640, instead of from 1640 to 1680.

We return now, for a moment, to Mr. Shandy and his theories. In 1594, the Vicar of Berwick, in Sussex, baptised his daughter by the name of "Continent." Mr. Bardsley thinks that the father ought to be whipped in the open market, who would in- flict such a name upon his infant daughter. We doubt if Mr. Shandy would agree with him. We go further: and would say a word in favour of the "Dinah," which our author would fain

put in an iltdex expurgatoritte. He fails to allow for the subtle and potent influence of association on such a name as this, for Dinah, unless we have just come fresh from Adam. Bede, is more suggestive of merriment and (Christy) minstrelsy than of sin and sorrow and the Shechemites. Neither do we feel ourselves at all aggrieved by Immanuel Kant or Emanuel Swedenborg,— we mean, of course, so far as their font-names are concerned.

The epilogue treats of double Christian names—luxuries, if we may so call them—originally started by kings and other royal persons. But the commonalty have bettered their instruc- tors, and have made Gatling guns and mitrailleuses out of the original double-barrel. Zaphnaphpaaneali Isaiah Obededom Nicodemus (powerless here, Mr. Shandy?) Francis Edward Clarke was baptised in Beccles Church in 1804, and in 1876, in the revision of the Parliamentary list at Preston, a claimant appeared bearing the name of Thomas Hill Joseph Napoleon, Horatio Bonaparte Swindlehurst Nelson. Such mastodons as these are rare, but treble and quadruple names are common enough among those whom our author calls "the poorest and most abject creatures who bring a child to the font." Often enough, too, the residuum fly at higher game than Victor Hugo did in the case of his immortal lord "Tom-Jim-Jack ;" Mr. Bardsley very justly observes that when one of its selec- tions is " Hugginy," the minister may be excused if he fails to understand all at once that " Eug6nie " is intended. "Such an incident," he adds, occurred about six years ago, and the flustered parson, on a second inquiry, was not helped by the woman's rejoinder,—" Yes, Hugginy,—the way ladies does their 'air, you know." We have only now to express our thanks to Mr. Bardsley for his painstaking, amusing, and instructive volume, and to recommend it very heartily to all who take an interest in its subject,—a subject, we repeat, which is very inadequately indicated by its title.