The Witch of Mind

Feb. 28, 2012 at 2:43pm with 127 notes

Reblogged from flashandthunderfire

in addition to ultimate gravel skiing and kite surf jousting, i’m also an avid fan of anthroponomastics, the study of personal names. naming customs have always been a hot topic around the ganan dinner table—and no group of people has a weirder body of names than those pesky new england puritans.

some names like be-strong philpott and kill-sin pimple sound more like cries at a religious pep rally. others like notwithstanding griswold were the result of selecting a word in the scriptures at random. there was also the curious practice of giving a name—rife with editorial commentary—to a foundling, thus fly-fornication richardson and misericordia-adulterina. and to make things even more confusing, names were assigned without regard to sex resulting in girls named matthew and dennis and boys named maria. here are a few additional oddities:

abuse-not

be-courteous cole

fight-the-good-fight-of-faith wilson

humiliation

if-christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hads’t-been-damned barebone

jehostiaphat star (“the lord judges”)

judas-not iscariot

kerenhappuch (“splendor of color”)

mahershalahashbaz christmas (“haste to the spoil, quick to the prey”)

no-merit

tremble

zaphnathpaaneah (“sorrow of the age”)

revolt morecock

to be fair to those pesky fundamentalists, i should point out that only about 4% of the puritan population held such unusual names. in made in america, bill bryson writes that “most infants were in fact endowed with names that were unimaginative to the point of timidity. just three names—sarah, elixabeth, and mary—accounted for more than half of all females christened in the massachusetts bay colony in the 1600s.”

__

additional peculiarities: here
additional source: the new book of magical names (2003).

what I want to know is what the hell did they call each other.

I mean, they have to have had nicknames, I mean… “Oi, If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hads’t-Been-Damned! If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hads’t-Been-Damned! If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hads’t-Been-Damned, you get back here right now!” It does not work. And if HALF THE WOMEN are Sarah, Elixabeth, or Mary, you’ve gotta have some way to differentiate.