The fashion of forming names from the original birthplace was
essentially Roman. Many cognomina had thus risen; but a few more must be
added of too late a date to fall under the usual denominations of the
earlier classical names.
The island of Cyprus must at some time have named the family of Thascius
Cyprianus, that great father of African birth, who was so noted as
Bishop of Carthage; but though Cyprian is everywhere known, it is
nowhere common, and is barely used at Rome as Cipriano. In 1811, Ciprian
was baptized in Durham cathedral; but then he was the son of the
divinity lecturer, which accounts for the choice.
Neapolis, from the universal Greek word for _new_, and the Greek πόλις
(a city), was the term bestowed as frequently by the Greeks as Newtown
is by Keltic influence, or Newby and Newburgh by Teutonic. One Neapolis
was the ancient Sychar, and another was that which is still known as
Napoli or Naples.
From some of these ‘new cities’ was called an Alexandrian martyr, whose
canonized fame caused him to be adopted as patron by one of the Roman
family of Orsini, in the course of the twelfth century. Neapolion,
Neapolio, or Napoleone, continued to be used in that noble house, and
spread from them to other parts of Italy, and thence to Corsica, where
he received it who was to raise it to become a word of terror to all
Europe, and of passionate enthusiasm to France, long after, in
school-boy fashion, at Brienne, its owner had been discontented with its
singularity.
The city of Sidon formed the name Sidonius, which was borne by Caius
Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, one of the most curious characters of the
dark ages, a literary and married bishop of Clermont, in the fifth
century, an honest and earnest man, but so little according to the
ordinary type of ecclesiastical sanctity, that nothing is more
surprising than to find him canonized, and in possession of the 23rd of
August for a feast day. It is curious, too, that his namesakes should be
ladies. Sidonie is not uncommon in France; and, in 1449, Sidonia, or
Zedena, is mentioned as daughter to George Podiebrand, of Silesia; and
Sidonia, of Bavaria, appears in 1488.
From the city of Lydia was named the seller of purple who hearkened to
St. Paul at Thyatira, and to her is owing the prevalence of Lydia among
English women delighting in Scriptural names.
To these should be added, as belonging to the same class, though the
word is Greek, Anatolius, meaning a native of Anatolia, the term applied
in later times by the Greeks to Asia Minor, and meaning the sunrise. St.
Anatolius, of Constantinople, was one of the sacred poets of the Greek
Church; and after his death, in 458, his name and its feminine,
Anatolia, became frequent in the countries where his hymns were used.
A Phocian is the most probable explanation of the name of Φοκας
(Phocas), though much older in Greece than the date of most of those
that have been here given. To us it is associated with the monster who
usurped the imperial throne, and murdered Maurice and his sons; but it
had previously belonged to a martyred gardener, under Diocletian, whose
residence in Pontus made him well known to the Byzantine Church; and
thus Phokas is still found among Greeks, and Foka in Russia.
The Romans called their enemies in North Africa Mauri, from the Greek
ἀμαυρός, which at first was twilight or dim, but came afterwards to
signify dark, or black.
Maura was a Gallican maiden of the ninth century, whose name, it would
seem highly probable, might have been the Keltic Mohr (great), still
current in Ireland and the Highlands. She led a life of great
mortification, died at twenty-three, was canonized, and becoming known
to the Venetians, a church in her honour named the Ionian island of
Santa Maura, which had formerly been Leucadia. There was, however, a
genuine Greek St. Maura, the wife of Timothy, a priest, with whom she
was crucified in the Thebaid, under Maximian. She is honoured by the
Eastern Church on the 3rd of May, and is the subject of a poem of Mr.
Kingsley’s. From her, many Greek girls bear the name of Maura, and
Russian ones of Mavra and Mavruscha.
Mauritius was naturally a term with the Romans for a man of Moorish
lineage. The first saint of this name was the Tribune of the Theban
legion, all Christians, who perished to a man under the blows of their
fellow-soldiers, near the foot of the great St. Bernard. To this brave
man is due the great frequency of Maurits, in Switzerland, passing into
Maurizio on the Italian border, and Moritz on the German. The old French
was Meurisse, the old English, Morris; but both, though still extant as
surnames, have as Christian names been assimilated to the Latin
spelling, and become Maurice. The frequent Irish Morris, and the once
common Scottish Morris, are the imitation of the Gaelic Moriertagh, or
sea warrior.
Meuriz is in use in Wales, and appears to be the genuine produce of
Maurice; but it is very difficult to disentangle the derivations from
the Moor, from ἀμαυρός, and from the Keltic _mohr_ (large) and _mör_
(the sea).
The Saxon Moritz, who played a double game between Charles V. and the
Protestant League, was brother-in-law to the great William the Silent,
and thus his name was transmitted to his nephew, the gallant champion of
the United Provinces, Maurice of Nassau, in whose honour the Dutch
bestowed the name of Mauritius upon their island settlement in the
Indian Ocean, and this title has finally gained the victory over the
native one of Cerine, and the French one of the Isle of Bourbon.
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Welsh. │ Breton. │ French. │
│Morris │Meuriz │Noris │Meurisse │
│Maurice │ │ │Maurice │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Italian. │ Spanish. │ German. │ Danish. │
│Maurizio │Mauricio │Moritz │Maurids │
│ │ │ │Morets │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Russian. │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Hungarian. │
│Moriz │Maurycij │Moric │Moricz │
│Mavrizij │ │ │ │
│Mavritij │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Germanus cannot be reckoned otherwise than as one of the varieties of
names from countries given by the Romans. It does indeed come from the
two Teutonic words _gher_ (spear) and _mann_; but it cannot be classed
among the names compounded of _gher_, since the Romans were far from
thus understanding it, when, like Mauritius, it must have been inherited
by some ‘young barbarian’ whose father served in the Roman legions.
St. Germanus was greatly distinguished in Kelto-Roman Church history, as
having refuted Pelagius, and won the Hallelujah victory, to say nothing
of certain unsatisfactory miracles. We have various places named after
him, but it was the French who chiefly kept up his name, and gave it the
feminine Germaine, which was borne by that lady of the family of Foix,
who became the second wife of Fernando the Catholic by the name of
Germana. Jermyn has at times been used in England, and became a
surname.[86]
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Footnote 86:
Cave; Butler; _Revue des deux Mondes_; Le Beau, _Bas Empire_; Liddell
and Scott; Lower; _Les Vies des Saints_.