(Vol. vii., pp. 406. 488, 489.)
The opinion of your correspondents, that instances of persons having more
than one Christian name before the last century are, at least, very rare,
is borne out by the learned Camden, who, however, enables me to adduce two
earlier instances of polyonomy than those cited by J. J. H.:
"Two Christian names," says he (_Remaines concerning Britaine_, p.
44.), "are rare in England, and I onely remember now his majesty, who
was named Charles James, and the prince his sonne Henry Frederic; and
among private men, Thomas Maria Wingfield, and Sir Thomas Posthumous
Hobby."
The custom must have been still rare at the end of the eighteenth century,
for, as we are informed by Moore in a note to his _Fudge Family in Paris_
(Letter IV.):
"The late Lord C. (Castlereagh?) of Ireland had a curious theory about
names; he held that _every_ man with _three_ names was a Jacobin. His
instances in Ireland were numerous; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Theobald
Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, John Philpot Curran, &c.: and in
England he produced as examples, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley
{627} Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, Francis Burdett Jones," &c.
Perhaps the noble lord thought with Sterne in _Tristram Shandy_, though the
_nexus_ is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic
bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and
conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus
(_Aulular._ Act II. Sc. 4.):
"Tun' _trium literarum_ homo
Me vituperas? _Fur._"
The custom is now almost universal; and as, according to Camden (_Remaines,
&c._, p. 96.),
"Shortly after the Conquest it seemed a disgrace for a gentleman to
have but one single name, as the meaner sort and bastards had,"
so now, the _tria nomina nobiliorum_ have become so common, as to render
the epigram upon a certain M. L-P. Saint-Florentin, of almost universal
applicability as a neat and befitting epitaph.
"On ne lui avait pas epargne," says the biographer of this gentleman
(_Biographie Universelle_, tom. xxxix. p. 573.), "les epigrammes de son
vivant; il en parut encore contre lui au moment de sa mort; en voici
une:--
'Ci git un petit homme a l'air assez commun,
Ayant porte _trois noms_, et n'en laissant _aucun_.'"