Your 2012 Baby Name Guide: Puritan Edition

by Sarah Marshall

“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 a Charles’s reign … there prevailed, amongst a certain class of English religionists, a practice of baptizing children by scriptural phrases, pious ejaculations, or godly admonitions.”
 — Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, by Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley, pub. 1888

1. Helpless Henley

2. Repent Durant

3. Wrestling Brewster

4. Restore Weeks

5. Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White

6. Kill-sin Pimple

7. Preserved Fish

8. Hope-for Bending

9. Flye-debate Smart

10. Much-mercie Harmer

11. Thankfull Thorpe

12. Safe-on-Highe Hopkinson (Bardsley’s note: “The child was buried a few days later. From the name given the father seems to have expected the event.”)

13. Sin-Deny Outtered

14. Anger Bull

15. Continent Walker

16. Hate-ill Wood

17. Replenish French

18. Called Lower

19. Hope-still Peedle

20. Humiliation Hinde

21. Abuse-not Collyer

22. Faithful Teate

23. Repentance Water

24. Vyctorye Buttres

25. Buried Sence Muschamp

26. Creature Cheeseman

27. Magnyfye Beard

28. If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned (known familiarly as “Dr. Damned”) Barebone

29. Battalion Shotbolt

30. Die-Well Sykes

31. Weakly Ekins

32. Lament Fox

33. Redivivia Mathews

34. Sorry-for-sin Coupard

35. No-merit Vynall

36. Lively Moody

37. Abstinence Pougher

38. Obey Larkford

39. Humble Ward

40. Faint-not Blatcher

41. Wealthy Whathing

42. Unfeigned Panckhurst

43. Clemency Chawncey

44. Vitalis Engaine

45. Love Appletree

Bardsley notes in the epilogue:

“English Puritanism must stand the guilty cause of much modern humour, not to say extravagance, in American name-giving…. Robert New has his sons christened Nothing and Something. Price becomes Sterling Price; Carrol, Christmas Carrol; Mixer, Pepper Mixer; Hopper, Opportunity Hopper; Ware, China Ware; Peel, Lemon Peel; Codd, Salt Codd; and Gentle, Always Gentle. It used to be said of the English House of Commons that there were in it two Lemons with only one Peel…. We have, too, Cannon Ball, Dunn Brown, Friend Bottle (London Directory), and River Jordan, not to mention two brothers named Jolly Death and Sudden Death, the former of whom figured in a trial lately as a witness.”

Previously: The Civil War General Edition.

Sarah Marshall is a graduate student living in Portland, Oregon.

Image courtesy Reed