Say you're a Regency Era parent about to
welcome a new baby into the world, but what are you going to name this child? Well, that is the question we're
going to be discussing here today. We're going to be delving into the
Georgian and Regency mindset behind how they chose their children's
given/Christian/first names, whatever you want to call that
name, that's not your family name. And this will help us understand
history better and then also too, for all of you, people who like to
write regency based novels, it'll help you name your characters too. Cause we're going to be delving
into, of course, what the parents were thinking at the time. And likewise, you should have the
same thoughts when naming your Regency Era characters so that
they'll be time period appropriate. My name is Ellie Dashwood and this
is my channel where I talk about classic literature and history. If you like either of those
things, please subscribe. So let's really delve into the mindset
behind the late Georgian and Regency Era baby name choosing process. Now parents had two routes,
the traditional route and the fashionable slash romantic route. So first up, let's talk
about the traditional route. So where did a lot of traditional
names at this time come from? Well, the number one source was
of course, religion and history. Of course, the people at this
time period were very religious. They were predominantly
Protestant Christian. Of course, this is after King Henry
broke with the Pope, so we have the church of England in power at the time. So a lot of the names came from the Bible. So, this is why you see novels filled with
people named Mary, Lydia, Martha, Matthew. Because those are all very
traditional Bible based names. The next source of the Christian
names were Saint names. Of course, earlier in history when
they were still part of the Roman Catholic Church, of course, naming
your children after saints was much more important than it now was. However, during that time period,
these St names have become common. So now they were just common
names in English Society. And there's a lot of saint names
that you wouldn't even think is actually a Saint name, but is. Examples include Lucy,
Catherine and Dominic. Dominic of course, coming
from the word for Sunday. In Latin, obviously not English
cause there's no Dominic /Sunday connection there. And of course, Lucy was named after a
Virgin Saint who had her eyes put out. So, all you Lucy's out there,
that's the origin of your name. And then of course there was Christian
qualities, like Faith, Hope, Joy. During this time period, these were only
seen in more non-traditional households. Maybe if you were like super religious
you'd get one of these names. But they had been much more common
in the 16 hundreds where we have that Era, which I think is kind of
famous when people were giving their children whole sentence, longs names. Like Fight Against Sin, or
We're Saved by Holy Salvation. You know, something like that,
but that was in the 16 hundreds. So everyone's moved away from that
by the late Georgian and Regency Era. So basically, unless these parents
were like super religious and wanted to name their kid Faith or another really
super religious family would only name their kids something like Hezekiah or
one of the lesser known Bible names. But more traditionally we have, of course
the major Bible names like Mary, Martha and the Saint names that've passed and
everyday use like Lucy and Catherine. Now on the history side, of course,
the Norman conquest introduced a huge amount of French baby names
into Society such as Eleanor. So those are the religious and history
based baby names they have to choose from. Now, of course, then
there is the Royal names. Because of course the names of the
Royals became popular in everyday use. And this is where names like William,
George, Charlotte and Margaret really got their extra boosts to everyone
wanting to name their baby that because they were the name of Royals. And then of course, as there are the
different houses of Royals, they would all introduce their own sets of names. Such as the Stuarts really made popular
the names like Charles, Elizabeth, Mary, Francis, Anne, Catherine and Jane. So they made those like top baby name
picks by having themselves as Royals. Its kind of like when celebrities name
their baby something and then normal people all start naming their kid that to. The famous effect of names. And of course, a great
example of this is Victoria. Victoria was actually an anglicized
form of her mother's German name. And so it was not a popular name
in England at the time until of course Queen Victoria became Queen. So. Which was of course after the Regency
Era, so no Regency Era parents are naming their kid Victoria. Okay. So those are like the traditional sets
of names and where they come from. The Bible, saints, Royals,
Norman conquest, all of that. Now the parents of the Regency Era
though did not just look through a baby name book, if they were a
traditional parents and like pick one. What they did is they started looking at
these names from more traditional family sources, the top one being relatives. So children were very often named
after relatives or their godparents. In the North of England, it
was common to name the first boy and girl after the father's
parents, so like the grandparents. And then the second set of boy
and girl, if they had this many kids, after the mother's parents. And then after that they would
get more creative, you know. That's when it's like, "Oh, should we
name this new one Henry or Charles? I don't know. I, I.. just look at the Royal tree, who
should we name this one after? No rules! Do what you want now with younger kids." But really each time sort of
region and family in England had their own way of honoring their
relatives or the godparents. Of course we see Jane Austen's own mother
Cassandra was named after her aunt who was married to the first Duke of Chandos. I think that's how you say it. And then of course, Jane Austen's older
sister, Cassandra is named after her mom. So we see how this name is
recurrent throughout family history. And that was very common. You had the same names and
just going over and over again. Just like Jane Austen herself had
her cousin Jane Cooper and they were named after her aunt Jane. And so these names were
constantly recycled. And likewise, you would be named
after a godparents, for example, Jane Austen's cousin Eliza named her son
after her godfather, Warren Hastings. She named him Hastings. And of course, part of this naming your
kid after their godparent was this hope that that godparent would then thereby
be very attached to their namesake. And if this godparent was rich,
the godparent would feel like, you know, some responsibility
financially towards this child. That was one of the hopes when naming
your kid after their rich godparent. And so like we see too here
with Eliza naming her son's first name of Hastings after her
godfather's last name of Hastings. That was another common thing,
which is where we see a son getting a last name as a first name. And of course the most famous
example of this is Fitzwilliam Darcy. Of course, Fitzwilliam was his mother Lady
Anne's maternal *I mean maiden* last name. So that was another option. You could give your son a
last name as a first name. And so if you were a very traditional
family in Regency England, you would be looking at your relatives for names. And of course they would be more
than likely these very traditional names based off of the Bible,
saints, royalty, or history and using those for your children's names. And of course you had a lot
more leeway in younger children. So if you had 10 children by the
last child, you can start getting more creative cause you've ran out
of people, the name them after. But still this huge attachment to
tradition of so many types did result in a very limited number of names
being reused over and over again. Oh, by the way, I always forget to
ask this in my videos, but if you are enjoying this video, please
gently press the like button to show your approval of this message. Now, if you're like a more adventurous,
romantic untraditional family, you had this second pathway for naming
your child, which I am calling the romantic- fashionable mindset. So in the upper classes of the late
17 hundreds, up through around 1820, there was this interest in having more
pretty romantic names for your children. And these were drawn from
a few different sources. One was of course, literature. Major novels of the time gave us
some great girls names like Clarissa, Pamela, Belinda, that people were
starting to name their daughters. Then there was this move towards
using French versions or Italian versions of very common names
to sort of like spice them up. Because names like Amelia and Ophelia
just sounded so romantic and poetical. Of course, French was giving these upper
classes names like those also names like Cordelia and Sylvia and Chloe. Meanwhile, they started also using the
very poetic Italian versions of names. So instead of naming their daughter plain
old, Alice, she would become Alicia. Olive would become Olivia and
Lucy would become Lucinda. There's a lot of adding like
this "a" or "ia", because of this onto a lot of very common names. So you've got these more like
refined versions of them. And of course there was this
House of Hanover now in power at the monarchy, and they were
inspiring some very popular names. Where even though the names from
other Royals had become popular because these were the new Royals
that was like more fashionable, right? Like this is names of today royalty. So there, of course, we have stuff
like, Augustus, Ernest, Frederica, Frederick, Louisa, Sophia and Amelia. So these names were also becoming
popular because they were the new happening Royal names. And then of course we saw this trend of
having double names like Jane Austen's nephew, James Edward had two names, james Edward. Of course it wasn't uncommon
for the higher classes to have multiple middle names per se, but
James Edward was literally called James Edward in everyday life. It was like a compound first name. So really this fashionable romantic
trend among the higher classes of having these very flowery names was
super popular again at the end of the 17 hundreds and up through 1820. But then like all trends,
the exact opposite happens. And after 1820, there started to be
this pull back from these flowery names. Where it was like, "no. That's like affected. That's like too much. We need simple names." It's very interesting how there was
this shift from like, "Yes, flowery is good" to almost "flowery is bad." And we see how it was viewed in
this negative light in Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. So if you're familiar with that
novel, the main character's name is Molly, which is a form of Mary. She was named after her mother. So here we have super
traditional happening. Now, her dad decides to marry this new
woman and her name is Hyacinth Clare and her daughter's name is Cynthia. So can you get more flowery than that? Not in the Victorian times. And it was really interesting, the words
they use when reacting to these names. When talking about Cynthia, the dad
of the family says, "Cynthia seems to me, such an out of the way name, only
fit for poetry, not for daily use." So again, we see like this,
like, "not so much flowery names anymore" in the Victorian Era. And then it's interesting too. When the dad breaks it to Molly that
her new step-mom's name is Hyacinth. She's like, "Hyacinth!" said Molly, entirely bewildered. She's bewildered by Hyacinth here. And then he says, "Yes, Hyacinth is
the silliest name I've ever heard. But it's hers and I must call her by it." I just think it's so funny how they're
reacting to these flowery names, but it does go along with this reverse trend
after 1820 back to more simple names. So those are the two major schools of
thought parents had while naming their kids in the Georgian and Regency Era. Did they want to go to the traditional
religious and family route or do they want to go with the poetical
romantic, fashionable trend that was happening at the time? So if you are per se, writing a Regency
novel and your naming your characters, it would be good to really think
out: what are their families like? What's the parents' mindset? Are they traditional? Are they more romantic? Because I think sometimes there's
this trend for people just to be like, "I'm going to name everyone, Mary
and Jane and Catherine, that's it." Super safe here. But not everyone really was
named those things back in time. Of course they were very common. You name someone Jane no,
one's going to be like, "this is historically inaccurate." But you do have a wider set
of names you can name people. And you can use this to
express things about them. For example, like, do they have a rich,
rich godparent they're named after? Are their parents all
romantic and poetical? Are they a younger child? Because remember again, after they
get so many godparents and parents and grandparents named after, and
they're like the 10th kid who knows what name they're getting at that
point, they get really creative then. It's another thing to keep in
mind if you're writing a Regency novel, is to check the name
usage at the time of whether it And then of course, just one other
thing to pay attention to the spelling. There were a lot of different
ways to spell common names. And of course, if you look at Elinor
Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, she spells her name differently than
Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey. So here even Jane Austen is
using two different versions of Eleanor in different novels. And of course you just would
want to avoid like super modern, crazy spellings of names. So that is what was going through the
minds of all of those Regency parents when they were picking out names
for the adorable little new baby. Let me know in the comments below
what you would want your name to be if you lived in Regency times. Thank you so much for watching my video. My name is Ellie Dashwood and this is
my channel where I talk about classic literature and history if you like
either of those things, please subscribe. Bye!!! Let me know in the comments below
what you would want your name to be if you lived in Regency times. I think I would want to be... I actually have no clue. This is such a hard question
.What is the answer?! For some reason, Amelia's coming to mind. And I don't even know why. But apparently I'm going to be
Amelia if I lived in Regency times.
