Christian Names in England

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 259, 1 November 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

Christian Names in England

Everybody must have noticed that there were no ' English ' Christian names, aa we would call them nowadays, anywhere in English history, before the Battle of Hastinga. John, Robert, Henry, Thomas, Richard Roger, Guy, and Peter—in fact, the common assemblage of English society generally—all came over, as might naturally have been expected, from gentlemen of such high respectability with William the Conqueror. Before the Conquest, the true born Englishman bore withoub exception those uncouth and unpronounceable crackjaw names which we now condescendingly describe as Anglo-Saxon. To be sure, these are the only true English names in existence —tho only ones formed directly from English roots and smacking of tho soil, where those roots grow as naturally as dandelions or daisies, while all the rest that we hear nowadays are in the lump High German or else Hebrew by origin, as much aliens in the land as the Carolines and Augustuses, tho Alexanders and Dagmars, thab have come over in later times with Teutonic or Scandinavian Princes and Princesses. Most of these true old English names were ugly enough in all conscience. Take j_Elftbryth, for example, as fche charming title for the heroine of a novel, or Godgifu as the original of our modern LadyGodiva. Bub, pretty or ugly, they all wenb down together as soon as bhe Normans came. The native Englishman, with genuine British snobbery, no sooner felt bhe heel of the Williams and bhe Henrys pressed firm upon his neck than he took his revenge—how ? Why, by christening his own ignoble Saxon brats William and Henry, just like their Norman overlords. Even co fche despiser of our bloated aristocracy in the East End ab bhe presenb day aenb Percy and Bertie to fche board school around the corner, while 1 Gwendoline takes out Leopold in fche broken go-cart, and , Gladys stops at home in the general living | room to mind Algernon and peel the I potatoes.—' The Cornhill Magazine.'