St. Hosanna?

Yes, Hosanna is a name. It’s usually spelled Osanna (Italian) or Osanne (French), and it’s also found as a French surname (Ozanne). There’s also the medieval English spelling of Osenna (although Osanna and Osanne were more popular). In Montenegro, it’s Ozana. The Hebrew is something like Hoshana.

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First, it’s the name of a saintly Saxon princess, Osana or Osanna, of the same royal family as Osred, Oswyth, etc. (So it might not have any relation to “hosanna,” or it might be a deliberate pun.)

The main story about her is from Giraldus Cambrensis (several hundred years later), which just says it was a very bad idea for a priest’s concubine to sit on her tomb in church like it was a bench. Married priests were a thing in the pre-Augustine of Canterbury English church; but concubinage was naughty even then. So the date of the story and marital status of the woman and priest kinda make a difference to how you interpret the story.

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In many Catholic countries, it has been the custom to give a baptismal name to babies after their day of birth (or the day they were found, if they were abandoned or adopted), if that day is a saint’s day or a holy day.

Apparently, in medieval France, babies born on Palm Sunday were sometimes given the name Osanna, which was the medieval spelling of Hosanna. (Because Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem with palm branches and shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David!”)

The name seems to have been used in England only during the 1200’s and 1300’s, and never really caught on. It was more popular in France.

Here’s an Irish legal case dealing with piracy and stealing a whole ship, in which Osanna Berrechoun, one of the French/Breton shipowners, had her case for getting the ship back jeopardized, because people in Dundalk, Dublin, and Wales mistook her given name for “Susanna.”

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In Italy in the 1400’s, a woman with the given name Osanna Andreasi became famous for her visions and locutions (starting at age five) and her stigmata (in the form of swellings not wounds, and received at age 30). Her dad’s noble family was Hungarian, and her mom was a Gonzaga. She was born on January 17, so presumably she wasn’t named that because of Palm Sunday.

Osanna longed to study theology but her father forbid her; so she was miraculously taught to read, and then the Virgin Mary taught her theology in a long series of visions. At the age of 14 (which was considered just barely adulthood for apprenticeship purposes, although one didn’t have full rights for contracts), she took the first set of vows as a Third Order Dominican, took the habit, and then told her dad about it… or rather, she said she had made _a_ vow to wear the habit until she had accomplished what else she had vowed to do. Um. Yeah. Technically true….

Both her parents died young and left a lot of kids, so she acted as mother and father to them until all of them came of age, when she was 37. (At that time, she finally felt able to leave home in good conscience and join a convent of 3rd Order Dominican ladies; and she took final vows.) She also took care of all the family business until the oldest of her brothers came of age. Her cousin Federico I Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, put her in charge of looking after his wife and kids while he was away at the wars. His son, Francesco II Gonzaga (who became duke), and his famous wife Isabella d’Este from Ferrara, also thought highly of her, and took her counsel on religious matters and affairs of state, as well as relying on her prophetic gifts. (Isabella’s dad was a supporter of Lucia Brocadelli, St. Lucia of Narni, and Isabella was sorry that she never got to take Osanna to meet Lucia.)

We have TWO contemporary biographies of her: Beatae Osannae Mantuanae by Sylvester of Ferrara (1505, in Latin); and Libretto de la Vita e Transito (1507, in Tuscan), by Girolamo de Monte Oliveto, one of her close associates. He also wrote a book of Colloqui between them about spiritual subjects, as well as preserving her letters.

(Her house is also open for tours! Scroll down for pics.There’s a museum and garden there, too. They have the surviving bits of her habit on display as relics, and that is one nicely fitted and constructed bodice. Niiiice. Costumers, take note. But boy, her arms were tiny, probably thanks to her ascetic practices, unless that’s a habit saved from her girlhood.)

Bl. Osanna of Mantua died in 1505. Her incorrupt body is in Mantua’s cathedral of St. Peter. Her memorial day is on June 18. (She was made a venerable in 1515, according to Isabella d’Este’s request; and she was beatified in 1694.)

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There’s another famous blessed by the same name — Blessed Osanna of Cattaro, aka Bl. Ozana of Kotor. This lady was from a remote part of Montenegro or Slovenia, and her given name was Katarina (because she was born on St. Catherine’s Day). Her background in older books in English is presented as being just from back in the waybacks… but she was actually from a married Orthodox priest’s family, the Kozics; and her uncle was an Orthodox monk who became bishop of Zeta. She longed for more, and spent a lot of time praying while shepherding her family’s flocks.

Her father, Fr. Pero Kozic, died early when she was 14; and she felt that God wanted to her to go to the big port city of Kotor (owned by Venice, and under the Patriarchate of Venice), where she could “pray better.” Her mother let her go, and she became a houseservant to earn her bread. She came home to Catholicism and learned to read and write. She used her spare means to help the poor. She wanted even more, and became an anchoress. At age 21, after an earthquake destroyed her first anchorhold, she moved to another and became a Dominican nun, and took Osanna as her religious name (after Osanna of Mantua). So many women were interested in joining her that a new Dominican convent was built next to her new anchorhold’s church, and she was their founder without ever setting eye on the convent itself.

She ended up using her prayers for fighting plague; and she was once asked by her bishop to give a speech, successfully urging everyone to defend Kotor from an Ottoman armada.

She died on April 27, 1565, and was beatified in 1927. In 1930, when her body was moved to a new tomb, her body was found incorrupt and flexible of joints, with perfect hands and fingernails, although her feet were totally gone. (Possibly somebody had stolen/collected her feet as relics, at some point in the centuries.) Her day is April 27.

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Finally, there’s also the French surname “Ozanam,” which originally was the Jewish surname “Hosannam.”

Blessed Frederic Ozanam, a professor at the Sorbonne, was one of the founders of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, in 1833. He was a layman, who married Amelie Soulacroix in 1841, and became the father of Marie Ozanam in 1845. He died in 1853. A book by Ozanam about medieval Franciscan poets.

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Ozanam would make a cool name for a boy, especially if you like the nickname Oz but not Oswald, Osred, etc.

If you want to use the name for a girl, Osanna or Ozana is probably better than Hosanna (because the syllable “ho” has unfortunate connotations). It might be confused with Osama, though.

What Tekakwitha Means

It literally means something like “She pushes things” or “She comes toward things with her hands.”

But what the earliest dictionaries show is that it has the connotation of “She puts things in order.” The image is of someone pushing things so that they line up nicely.

It is possible that there was some play on words involved, but “She bumps into things” is an incorrect translation.

Given that one of the meanings of the Greek “Logos” is “order,” “She puts things in order” is a very significant name.

The pronunciation of Kateri and Tegakwitha apparently varied according to dialect of the speaker. There are two main ones:

Gadelli DeGAHkweeta

Kateri TegaKWEEta.

Apparently the damage done by smallpox to the saint’s eyes was not such as to make her nearsighted, but rather, it made her eyes sensitive to light. That is why, from early childhood on, she was accustomed to wear a blanket or cloth in a hood or visor style, so as to shade her eyes.

She doesn’t seem to have been bullied in childhood about this, or much else, according to the earliest sources. She was an adopted daughter of the village chief, after all.

A lot of times, it was believed that people who had misfortunes were watched and protected by spirits, in compensation, especially if they were cheerful and brave about the misfortune. So it would have been considered unlucky to give her a hard time. (And anyway, people liked her.)

Not so much later on, when her family orchestrated the bullying. Punishing the antisocial and recalcitrant, by such permitted bullying, would have been seen as helpful and good. People who didn’t agree would be under pressure not to disagree publicly. (Although tons of people seem to have voted with their feet, at that time. Obviously a chief who tries to get his way by bullying a young girl is no longer a wise or effective chief, and it’s a lot worse when she’s a nice kid and a member of his own household.)

It is possible that her family was under the impression that bullying and starving her would cause the spirits to pity her, and therefore the spirits would send her a vision, and therefore they could get her out of Christianity. But yeah, obviously that didn’t work if that was their idea.

Actually depriving Kateri of food on Sundays and holidays, because she declined to work on those days (even though she did enough work for two on her workdays) was drastically against the principles of the Mohawks and other Iroquois. The general idea was that everyone would eat if there was any food in the village, although it was common for people to be too proud to ask for food (and for their neighbors to find a tactful way to “trade” for it instead of making it a gift).

So basically she was being treated either like a captive, or like a criminal, or like someone being put on a vision quest. (But that was usually guys.)

Shrug. It’s hard to say, since people do break their principles when frustrated or growing toxic. We shouldn’t expect anything different of people in the olden days, or from different cultures.

Anyway, I will again recommend… The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks, by Ellen H. Walworth.

The Iroquois Book of Rites, by Horatio Hale. Tons about clan structure, differences between tribes of the Confederacy, etc.

Another good book if you can find it is The Iroquois Trail: Dickon among the Onondagas and Senecas, by Professor M.R. Harrington. t’s a sequel to Dickon among the Lenape, which is a fictional introduction to the Delaware Indians and to the general beliefs of Algonquin/Woodland tribes.

Equivalent Naming: Lucius among the O’Briens!

MYSTERY SOLVED!!!! I am so happy!!!!

LibraryIreland has an online copy of a VERY USEFUL BOOK called Irish Names and Surnames, which I think I’ve seen referenced but have never seen before. The given name section is divided into names of men and women, and each entry has a separate webpage for easier searching. So good!!!

Anyway, it turns out that Lucius is a common name for O’Briens because of Irish equivalent naming (ie, getting around the stupid idea that Catholics or Anglicans should only be baptized with “official” saint names from the Bible or the Roman martyrology list, instead of allowing all saints’ names from Ireland).

Lucius is being used as a replacement name for “Lachtna,” the name of Brian Boru’s great-grandfather.

(That said, it would be hilarious if Lucius Malfoy were an O’Brien connection. High. Larious.)

The saint in question, however, is St. Lactan or Lactali, also spelled Lachtan and Lachtna and Lachtin or Lachteen. There’s one of the Lachtans who lived in the late 500’s, and another who lived in the 600’s. There’s an arm reliquary for the older one (no bone left in it, unfortunately, although the reliquary is now itself a relic), and there are a couple of holy wells. (More about the holy wells. Boy, Ireland really has some nicely maintained holy wells.) The saints’ days are said to be March 19 or March 17, which runs them into St. Joseph and St. Patrick. Oops.

“Lacht” means milk, or anything liquid (and thus milk-like), and -an means “one, person,” and spins out a noun into a name. So Lachtan was probably a religious name meaning “milk-guy,” and probably implied that he was just a student (and needed milk more than meat), or implied that he was a good teacher for beginners (by providing “milk”).

Lachteen would be the same thing, except with an -in/-een diminutive.

However, Lachtna itself means “milk-colored,” which goes all the way to unmilky colors like “gray, mouse brown, dun,” because it also means “the color of sheep” and “the color of unbleached wool.” So maybe it’s a religious name comparing a monk to a sheep, or talking about the color of his monk robes or his very plain cloak.

Anyhoo… the saints are very popular in O’Brien country, and it’s very likely that Brian Boroimhe’s great-grandfather would have been named after them. The connection to milk and sheep would also be connected to fertility and prosperity, so it’s all quite nice. j

“Lucius” is a Roman surname, as well as being the masculine form of Lucia/Lucy. It means “of light, lighted.” But the surname comes from another word, Luscus, meaning “one-eyed.“

Nazis and Commies Love to Burn Things

For example, this church built by an oppressed immigrant minority group in 1878.

St. Colman Catholic Church in Shady Spring, West Virginia. Burned to the ground, apparently by arson. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Services were no longer held there, but there is an associated cemetery.

The local fire department and sheriff would really like to talk to anybody who knows anything, at crimestopperswv.com.

There are several St. Colmans.

St. Colman of Cloyne (Cluain Uamha, Cork) was a pagan fileadh or poet, who was the son of Lenan; his father was also a poet. He was born about AD 522 and was brought up and worked at the court of the kings of Cashel. The kings during his life were Catholic, but Colman remained pagan.

His job as a royal poet was to represent the needs of the people and land and the demands of the law, whenever the king needed reminding; to counsel the king and remind him of history and legend; to be the king’s best friend, eating at his table, entertaining his guests with talk, and even sleeping in the same bed at times; to prophesy what would happen in battle; to maintain historical records and genealogies; to know what was going on with other kings; and to compose any kind of formal poem needed, while his followers recited the poem and provided music.

In the year 570, when Colman was about 48 years old, there was a succession dispute between Aodh Dubh (apparently the same guy as Coirbre Cromm, the crooked) and Aodh Caomh, two king candidates. St. Brendan of Clonfert was called in, and apparently ended up spending a lot of time encouraging Colman to convert. During the deliberations/lobbying for votes, the people providentially discovered the lost relics of St. Ailbe of Emly — and Colman was one of those who did the finding. St. Brendan was much impressed by this, and decided it was a sign that Colman should not just convert (to keep the hands that had touched a holy thing undefiled from now on), but become a priest. Colman must have had some kind of conversion experience, because he finally agreed.

Colman was not his original name, but his baptismal name. It is Col(u)m, dove, + -an, one. So “dove guy” or “Holy Spirit guy.” Or even “Jonah guy,” since Jonah also means dove.

At a fairly advanced age, then, Colman went back to school and learned Christian scholarship from St. Iarlaith of Tuam (aka Jarlath). Afterwards he came back as a priest, and started preaching and teaching. Colman baptized the future St. Declan at this time.

As a Christian, St. Colman continued to write poetry in Irish, and his surviving poetry is some of the earliest Christian Irish literature that we have. He wrote a praise poem about St. Brendan, a metrical life of St. Senan, and all kinds of other stuff.

He founded a monastery at Cluain Uamha, a piece of land given to him by King Coirbre Cromm, and he was buried there. His feast is November 24, and he died in AD 600.

His remains were exhumed and thrown into the sea in the 1700’s by the Anglican bishop of Cloyne, Charles Crowe, in order to prevent the continuation of pilgrimages to his grave.

The other famous St. Colman was St. Colman of Dromore, in Northern Ireland. He was a disciple of St. Coelan, and the teacher of St. Finnian of Moville. He was born about AD 514, so it’s likely that Colman of Cloyne took his name because he was a fan of this earlier Colman. His feast is on June 7.

There’s another famous poet Colman too: Colman nepos Cracavist, who wrote a lot of poems preserved at the Irish monastery at Bobbio, in Switzerland. He wrote the earliest known poem we have about St. Brigid.

St. Digory?

Well…no. Not that you’d notice.

But actually this is probably a Breton name, had some English popularity, and became a popular Cornish first name for centuries. Today, it’s mostly known from C.S. Lewis’ character, Digory Kirke, and from Dowland’s tune, “Captain Digorie Piper His Galliard.” Cedric and Amos Diggory from the Harry Potter books were named after Lewis’ character, and Diggory Island is a real place in Cornwall on the sea coast. There’s also a Thomas Hardy character named Digory Venn, which makes sense because Hardy’s books are set in the south of England, close to Cornwall.

(Btw, Digorie Piper was from Launceston, Cornwall, and Dowland might just have met him at some point. But Piper became a pirate, and was executed in 1586. The galliard wasn’t published until 1604, and it’s a sad one.)

The name “Digory” comes from a medieval romance in the style of a Breton lai, called “Sir Degare,” “Syr Degore,” or “Degarre.” If the “teg/deg” particle were from Breton, it would mean something like “excellent one,” and would be a name in the same family as the Welsh “Tegau/Tegan.” But there’s also the Breton word “digor,” which means “open” or “opened.” That seems more likely. Some claim the name is “D’Esgare.” But the French version of the story says that his name is “D’Egarre,” and means “the lost one.”

Sir Digory was the son of a human princess and a fairy knight, who either raped her, abducted her, or seduced her while she was lost in the woods. Either way, he left her with only one-half of a broken fairy sword to know him by. Scared to keep the resulting baby, his mother dropped the kid off at a holy hermit’s doorstep, along with gold, a letter, and magic gloves that will only fit his mother’s hand.

The hermit got his sister to raise the baby, then educated the child when he got old enough. Then Digory set out to find his family, killed a dragon with a wooden club and saved an earl, was knighted by him and given a horse and armor, and then headed back to Brittany, to fight for the hand of the princess you couldn’t marry unless you beat the king of Brittany in combat. He won, he got married — and it turned out to be his mom.

Luckily his mom recognized the gloves, and Bad Stuff was averted. His mom decides that it’s probably time to ‘fess up to her dad about the teen pregnancy. Digory spares everyone embarrassment and heads out to find his fairy dad, and his mom gives him the broken sword to know his dad by. (Unless it’s a version where the mom left the sword for the baby, along with the gloves.)

So first Digory meets a mysterious lady in a hidden castle in the woods, falls in love with her, is put to sleep magically, and then gets rebuked for not waking up fast enough. The castle is under attack by a wicked knight who wants to marry the lady, and he has just slain all her dead father’s knights. So Digory fights the bad suitor, wins, and is offered the lady’s hand. He says he can’t stay but will be back within a year to collect.

Digory goes off. He runs into a fairy knight, who challenges him to a fight. (In many versions, they fight, equal each other, are both unhorsed, start to fight on foot, and then they pause and talk.) Digory shows the fairy knight the broken sword, and the knight acknowledges Digory as his son, producing the point of the sword as proof. They ride back to Digory’s mom, and the fairy knight marries her. Then they ride to the mysterious lady’s castle, and she marries Digory. Everybody lives happily ever after.

The puzzling part is that we don’t know why the rape, abduction, and/or seduction, and why the fairy knight didn’t just marry the girl in the first place. He doesn’t seem to be cursed, evil, or anything like that. He’s not portrayed as a bad guy. And why does Digory’s mom have magical gloves? Are these like the gloves or cloaks that only fit an honest woman, or what? This is one of those stories that seems to be missing a lot of context. (Not to mention the incest/misunderstood relationships, the Rustam/CuChulainn son as challenger thing, etc.) Clearly the idea is that things need fixing, but why did they go wrong?

In the longer versions, the problem is that the King of Brittany, Digory’s grandfather, is so protective of his teenage daughter that he himself duels all her suitors, and keeps defeating them. So I guess you’d have to be okay with killing your father-in-law in order to woo his daughter. The other problem is that the princess looks too much like her dead mother, and is only allowed to leave the castle to visit her mother’s grave in the woods. The princess’ maidens fall asleep under an enchanted chestnut tree near the grave, and the princess wanders into the woods to seek help or escape. And that’s when the fairy knight grabs her.

So yeah, some kind of curse or taboo, for sure. Very similar to other stories like “Tam Lin,” where the girl doesn’t seem willing or unwilling, and the knight prophesies that she’ll have a fated son, and so on. So whatever is wrong that’s binding the girl, there’s also something wrong with the guy that’s binding him. Why is the sword broken, for instance? And a sword is a Frankish marriage gift or betrothal gift, so what does a broken sword mean? And why is “Degore” sometimes included in lists of Arthur’s knights?

But anyway, this is not anything that most people would know about, so it doesn’t really affect the name of Digory today.

St. Talia?

Talia is an interesting name, because it’s never been a super-popular or super-obscure name. It’s just there.

There is a St. Talia, a female martyr celebrated in Ethiopia on November 11. It’s not clear whether or not this is a different version of a name like “Tatiana,” or not.

“Talia” or “Taliya” is a fairly popular Jewish name, meaning “dew of God.” It refers to various things, but mostly to Micah 5:7, which says that Israel’s remnant dispersed among the nations will be like dew from God, or like rainshowers on the grass, waiting for no man to get moving, and prowling among them like a lion. So it’s an interesting name, because it sounds sweet and peaceful but really isn’t!

There’s also the name “Thalia” or “Thaleia,” which is Greek for “blooming, growing green, flourishing,” and is the name of the Muse of comedy and of pastoral poetry. It was also the name of a Grace, a Nereid, and a Nymph. So yup, there are lots of Christian Thalias too. Thalie is currently a very popular Christian name in France, since the 1990’s, even though it used to be very rare.

In France, girls named Thalie celebrate their nameday on July 27, the day of St. Nathalie, better known as St. Natalia of Cordova. Natalia Sabigotho was half-Moor, half-Visigoth, back in the early days of Spain’s Islamic conquest. She and her husband Aurelius (who was half-Moor, half-Hispanic Roman) were secret apostates from Islam, who knew that they might someday have to become martyrs. After their two kids were old enough, they sent the kids to safety and began living like monks. After seeing a Christian trader flogged to death, they bravely proclaimed their faith too, and were martyred together on July 27, 852.

St. Marisol?

This is a common Spanish name that doesn’t get much pop culture explanation. It’s really “Maria Soledad,” a name honoring the “Virgen de la Soledad,” the “Virgin of Solitude” or “of Loneliness.” This is a title for Mary as she was on Holy Saturday, mourning her Son. One of the interesting Spanish features is that they show Mary wearing a rosary with a prominent cross, so that the rosary draws attention to her long-empty belly. She is alone.

(Our Lady of Sorrows is the more common title in non-Hispanic countries. That’s where the name “Dolores” comes from.)

There’s a lot of devotion to Mary under the title of “Soledad,” especially in France and Spain, and in Mexico. It was associated closely with the women of the royal families, who often survived their sons and husbands. In Madrid, there’s also a miraculous painting on cloth of this version of Our Lady, “la Virgen de la Paloma.”

The Paloma Virgin is a neighborhood miracle. In 1787, some kids found the discarded painting (which is a little smaller than a paperback book) and started tossing it around. One of the neighbor ladies on Paloma St., Isabela Tintero, was scandalized and confiscated the little painting. She took it home, cleaned it, got it framed, and put it on her front door. Then she started using it as her prayer station for saying the Rosary, and other neighbors did too.

And then people’s prayers started getting granted.

Word of the miracles got around, and the little side street got flooded with people praying. Mrs. Tintero gave up her house to be an unofficial chapel for the painting, but they still couldn’t fit everyone into the house. The locals built a real chapel. They founded a big festival on August 15, along with the Feast of the Assumption. There was a famous operetta/zarzuela using the festival as a backdrop. And so on. She is the patron saint of Madrid’s firefighters as well.

But it’s not all funsies, being a shrine. The parish suffered five martyrdoms during the Spanish Civil War, which are currently part of a new sainthood cause. All the martyrs were killed for being part of Catholic Action, a club for supporting Catholic identity and teaching, or the Asociacion Catolica de Propagandistas, an apologetics and teaching club. There were two priests: the Servants of God Fr. Jose Bermudez Tome and Fr. Andres Rodriguez Perdiguero; and three lay members of Catholic Action: Marcelino Panizo Celorio, Marcelino Panizo Rodriguez, and Fernando Estevanez Teran.

Yesterday, tragically, there was some kind of explosion at an adjoining Caritas home for elderly people and for visiting priests, on ground owned by the parish. Four people were killed: two still-unidentified passersby in the street, a 35 year old parishioner named David Santos who leaves behind a wife and four kids, and a 36 year old priest, Fr. Ruben Perez Ayala, the parochial vicar, who had only been ordained for a year. Debris hit the roof of the church and the back courtyard, but it’s otherwise okay. None of the old people were killed. They think it was a gas explosion. Please pray for all the dead and for their families.

St. Taylor?

For all you young men, young ladies, Taylor Swift, and Taylor Marshall — there’s Blessed Hugh Taylor, martyr.

In fact, he was the first person martyred by Bad Queen Bess under the law naming all priests as traitors, as opposed to claiming that specific priests had done specific non-priest traitorous things. We don’t know much about him, but we know he came from Durham, snuck out of England, studied at Rheims, and became a missionary priest. He was caught or betrayed soon after re-entering England. Then he was hung, drawn, and quartered on November 26, 1585, in the city of York. (Blessed Marmaduke Bowes died on the same day.)

But there’s another Hugh Taylor, who is probably a saint, but who doesn’t seem to have had any cause. This Hugh Taylor was a Carthusian monk who entered the London Charterhouse in 1518. He was a “Conversus” lay brother who did the work to help the other monks live their life of strict prayer and silence, as hermits within a monastery. But he was known to be not only charitable, but also a man whose prayers were answered favorably by the Lord, who had visions and dreams, who made true prophecies, and who was consulted by everyone in need, including people who didn’t like him.

One day Brother Hugh was in his room when Jesus came to talk to him, in a full apparition. They talked and talked, and then Hugh remembered that he was supposed to meet one of the other monks in the workroom, and help him with a project. So Hugh begged Our Lord to excuse him until he could come back, and went and kept his promise.

And when he came back to his room, Jesus was there, and told him how pleased He was that Hugh had gone to help his brother — more pleased than He had been with anything Hugh had done before.

Brother Hugh Taylor died on September 30, 1575. Many of his Carthusian brothers would go on to martyrdom, including the Prior, St. John Houghton.

St. Marmaduke?

Obviously I am still in turmoil about the revelations on the last post, so I’m going to write about something funny that came up.

One of the more puzzling English names is “Marmaduke.” It starts showing up in Northumberland in the 1400’s, and then we get several at once. It didn’t die out during the Protestant Reformation (although one Royalist family, with Marmadukes already in it, changed it to the baptismal name of “Duke,” as part of the fashion trend of naming Royalist kids things like Squire and Admiral). It sounds like it could be German, but it’s not German. Nope.

Give up? It’s Welsh. Specifically, it’s Mawr Madog, aka Big Madoc. There are a whole bunch of similar Welsh names (Cadoc, Gorbadoc, etc.), and the last syllable gets all different vowels at different times and places. So it’s not surprising that the English mangled it to their liking! “Madoc” means something like “lucky” or “having good fortune and being charitable.” (I don’t have good sources on this.)

St. Madoc was a son of the combative King Sawyl Penuchel (aka Samuel the Arrogant, who lost his kingdom to the Saxons, and who got his warband drowned in a marsh after attacking St. Cadoc’s monastery). He’s called Madog Ailither, meaning Madoc the Pilgrim, because he traveled to Ireland to visit all the famous monasteries, came back to Wales, and was eventually buried in Ireland.

St. Madoc’s brother was St. Santan, who also founded lots of churches and monasteries, and who wound up a bishop in Ireland.

The most famous Madoc is Prince Madoc, son of King Owain Gwynedd, who allegedly ran off to America with a bunch of settlers. There’s also the legendary Madoc ap Uthyr, brother of King Arthur, whose son Eliwlod could turn into an eagle and was one of the Three Goldentongued Knights of Britain.

But it’s possible that all these Northern English kids were being named for a specific historical Madog Mawr — Madog of Cilsant, who married Sioned/Jonet verch Gruffyd. (Cilsant/St. Clears doesn’t seem to have had a lot of Northumberland connections, though.) I also notice that a lot of early Marmadukes have Percy connections, and they had Welsh connections in their family.

But the earliest Marmaduke seems to be Marmaduke Darell of Sessay, Thirsk, whose son and grandson were named Marmaduke too. His wife’s name was Aseria, which could be some Welsh name, and her dad could have been the Madoc in question.

The surname Maddox, Maddocks, Maddock means something like “descended from Madoc.” You see a lot of Welsh surnames using this format: Evans, Reynolds, Jones, Philips, etc.

So Marmaduke the Great Dane is actually showing his allegiance to a Welsh saint.

UPDATE: But wait, there’s more! Blessed Marmaduke Bowes was a married layman who was martyred at York on November 26, 1585. (Blessed Fr. Hugh Taylor was martyred on the same day.) His crime was sheltering priests, and both he and his wife were arrested for it, on the testimony of a man whom they had brought into their home as a tutor for their children. He was the first person executed under the new law that made helping priests a felony. His wife was released from prison. We don’t know what happened to her and the kids.

Blessed Marmaduke had Catholic beliefs, but he had “conformed” to the established state church, meekly attending rather than being a bold recusant. He raised his kids to be Catholic, which was how the tutor found out something of what was going on. Bowes lived a double life. But after his arrest, he proclaimed his Catholic faith boldly, and managed to confess his sketchy actions and to get fully reconciled to the Church.

So that’s Blessed Marmaduke for you.

If you like this name, you could always name your boy Madoc and then call him Marmaduke as a nickname. “Badi” was also a medieval nickname for Madoc.

Early Breton and Welsh names are similar, since a lot of Celtic Britons fled the island and settled in Brittany, “Little Britain.” So Madoc is a Breton boy’s name, and there’s also a Breton girl’s name, Madouc.

There’s also an Irish/Scottish group of names that sound similar. St. Aodh/Aedan/Aidan of Ferns was one of the many Irish saints who picked up possessives and diminutives from their friends, teachers, or devotees. So he could have been Mo-Aodh or Mo-Aidan, Maidan/Moidan, but they went further and spun out his name with -og (young, or just a noun diminutive). So he’s St. Maedog or Maedoc, which (depending on Gaelic dialect) is pronounced “Mogue.”

And a lot of the time, the functional equivalent name for Sassenach or baptismal fonts was Moses. So if you see a Moses in Ireland, he’s probably a Maedoc/Maedog. (But not a Madoc/Madog/Marmaduke.)

St. Atreus?

No. Don’t do it. Don’t name your kid “Atreus.” Please. And there’s no saint. It’s an ill-omened name, and if you only know the name from the God of War games, you need to figure it out.

(And the only reason the hero of Dune is named Paul “Atreides” (ie, descendant of Atreus) is so that you will know right away that his entire family is going to be dysfunctional in the extreme.)

Pelops, the legendary founder/settler of the Peloponnese peninsula, started out life being a beautiful young man who was a grandson of Zeus, and a son of the human king Tantalos and the Titaness Dione. Tantalos had the gods over for dinner, and decided to prove that they were just as stupid as humans by killing and cooking his son Pelops and serving him up to them. (This may have been a power move, because making the gods break an important taboo would make them lose their power, and possibly allow that power to be usurped.)

As soon as the meat was served, the gods figured it out and refused to eat — except for Demeter, who was depressed about Persephone and not paying attention, and therefore chowed down on Pelops’ shoulder. Hermes (or Rhea) put all the pieces back in the cauldron, and then used his (or her) power to resurrect Pelops from the cookpot, and Hephaestus made an ivory shoulder prosthesis for him. All his descendants were then to have one discolored ivory shoulder, lighter than the rest of them. Tantalos was punished in Hades by never being allowed to eat but always having food dangling in his face.

(Interesting comparisons to both the Welsh cauldron-born and to the pickled boys resurrected by St. Nicholas.)

Anyhow, Pelops ended up getting out of Phrygia and settling the Pelopponese, and his sons Atreus and Thyestes got involved in a struggle for the throne with both their half-brother Chrysippus (either murdered by his brothers or by Pelops’ wife Hippodamia, or both) and with each other. Atreus married Aerope, who was in love with Thyestes. Thyestes and Aerope cheated on Atreus, and Aerope gave her husband’s kingship claim object to Thyestes. Atreus killed a bunch of Thyestes’ sons and successfully got Thyestes to eat them at a banquet, and Thyestes slept with one of his daughters to conceive a son who could depose Atreus. It was ugly.

So of course all their kids were cursed. Menelaus married Helen, which was nothing but trouble, and started the Trojan War; Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter to get favorable winds for the war, stole Achilles’ woman and nearly lost the Trojan War, raped a Trojan princess who correctly prophesied his death and her own, and then got murdered by his wife for the whole sacrificing his daughter thing. And then Agamemnon’s son Orestes had to avenge him by killing his own mom, although this would have meant he would have to kill himself. The gods stepped in and saved Orestes, but there was lots of killin’.

Atreos means “not-shiver, not-tremble” which is probably what led the God of War people to think of linking Greek and Norse mythology, as well as Norse fairytales. The implication is “fearless,” but “not-fear” would be Aphobos (which is a Biblical and Gospel word and has good connotations all over the place!). “Not tremble” possibly implies also that one is not afraid of the gods or of doing things that are shameful or wicked, things that a sensible man would never do.

There’s a famous set of Norse fairytales about “the lad who could not shiver,” because he was both fearless and very literal, and possibly not all that bright. He finally learns to shiver by having his wife stick ice down his back, IIRC. These are connected to similar stories about Ashenlad, who can be depicted as stupid or as very wise and tricky, and with other seeking your fortune stories. Loki and Thor’s stories are very similar, so connecting Loki/Atreus to “the lad who could not shiver” is a nice tie-in.

(It doesn’t totally work, because actually, it turns out that most of Norse mythology seems to post-date Norse contact with the Roman Empire, and a lot of the Norse gods are actually deified late Roman historical figures from Burgundy and the Lombards, or various Germanic tribes. Which is freaky and weird, but there you go. And to be fair, deified founders or ancestors weren’t unusual in world religious history.)

Overall, the character in the God of War series is positive, but not everybody plays God of War; and everybody generally does know about the whole multiple-cannibalization-incest-and-kinslaying curse of the House of Atreus.

The ancient Greeks did not use Atreus as a given name. For good reason. The Christian Greeks didn’t name their kids Atreus either.

So please don’t name your kid Atreus. Especially not your Catholic kid.

(Oh, and btw, “Thyestes” means something like “sacrificer.” So his parents initially meant him to be pious and to appease the gods, but he wasn’t.)

St. Blythe?

Yes!! Yes, it’s a real saint’s name! Hahahahahah! I am really delighted to find this out!

St. Blitha of Martham (also known as St. Blyth, Blythe, or Blida) was a laywoman in East Anglia. She was a kinswoman of the illfated King of the English, Aethelred the Unready, and of his son, King Edmund Ironside. She was married to a wealthy nobleman named Benedict. He had at least one son, St. Walstan, who moved to Taverham at the age of twelve and became an ordinary farm laborer, albeit a pious one.

Benedict and Blitha seem to have lived in either Blythburgh, Suffolk (which may have been her property, or may have changed its name in her honor) or in Bawburgh, Norfolk. But at the time of her death, after Benedict died, she was living in Martham, which is a lot further inland and somewhat closer to Taverham. A chapel was built in her honor in Martham.

The Old English word “blithe” or “blythe” meant friendly, agreeable, cheerful, kind, merciful, pleasing, gentle, pretty — basically, a lot of pleasant qualities. Its ultimate root means something like “shining.” It’s a great name — and now we know it’s a saint’s name! Great stuff!

St. Denver?

Nope. Denver in Colorado was named after a politician with the last name Denver. His family was probably named after the town of Denver in Norfolk — “Dena faer” or Dane ford, Dane passage.

Another girls’ name that the Social Security Administration says is increasing in popularity. It’s not a bad name; it’s just not a saint’s name.

There is a Servant of God from Denver, Colorado, who is being submitted for the process of being named a Venerable. Julia Greeley was an ex-slave who moved west, worked as a housekeeper, and used her small wages to help others. She only had one eye, because it was whipped out by her ex-master, and she towed a little red wagon full of needful things like food, coal, and clothing, giving them out to anyone of any race who needed them. When she died, the bishop laid her in state in the cathedral, and thousands of people came to say goodbye to this saintly woman.

Servant of God Julia Greeley, pray for us!

Denver, Norfolk was a very small village until the fens were drained a bit, and it’s still pretty small. So there don’t seem to be any local saints.

There are tons of saints from the general Norfolk area, both missionaries (St. Felix the bishop from Burgundy, Ss. Fursa and Foillan from Ireland) and royal laypeople (Edmund, Etheldreda, and Sexburga). There are also martyrs killed by the Danes.

The most unusual saint was Walstan, a nobleman with royal kindred and wealthy parents (his mom was St. Blitha, aka St. Blythe), who decided he was called by God to become an ordinary farmhand. He left home at age twelve, moved inland from Blythburgh to Taverham, and got a job, vowing celibacy but otherwise living a normal life. He died in 1016, but the oxen drawing his body on a wagon took him to Bawburgh, and that’s where his shrine was built. His feastday is May 30. In the Middle Ages in the area, many farmers visited his shrine on his day.

St. Navy?

“Navy” is an up and coming name for girls in the US, according to the Social Security Administration.

Um. Well. I don’t want to be too negative, because it’s certainly patriotic. But you do realize that there are certain traditional connotations about young women vs. young military men, right? If you are naming a girl after the color, maybe you should pick another shade of blue? (Indigo, Azure, stuff like that. But those probably make better middle names.)

There’s an Indian name, Anavi (“kind to people”), that has the nickname form “Navi.” Other names from India include Navya, Navita, and Navistha. Some of them refer to the Sanskrit for “new.”

There’s a Hebrew girls’ name, Navi, which apparently means something like “named.” I don’t know if it’s an allusion to the Name of God, but normally that would be Shem.

The Hebrew word for “prophet, seer, one who sees” is pronounced “Na-BEE” and usually spelled “nabi.” (So if that is the name you want for your kid, please spell it that way.)

The feminine form (“prophetess”) is “nebiah” (nuh-BE-ah) or “hannebiah” (HA-nuh-BE-ah).

That said, there is a traditional connection between the Church and St. Peter’s fishing boat, and hence with the Church as a ship or as Noah’s Ark. So yes, there was a St. Navida (martyred in Africa) and a St. Navigia (at St. Etienne d’Auxerre).

Nautica would be an okay name, although everybody who speaks English would call the girl “Naughty.” Also, it’s a clothing brand.

Nausicaa is a pretty name, if you want to go all classical. She was the (probably a fairy) princess who found Odysseus shipwrecked on the shore, and kindly helped him out. (Although what her name means is “burner of ships.”)

Other pretty names come from devotion to Our Lady of the Snows (Aug. 5), like “Nieves” (Spanish). There’s also the related names “Nova,” (Latin for “new”), “Novita,” and “Novella” (although that’s a literary form now, so probably not a good plan).

St. Briar?

According to the Social Security Administration, this name is growing in popularity for girls in the United States. I think it’s a bad idea. I don’t know about the rest of the US, but in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, “Briar” is a slur term for poor rural Appalachian people. So if you wouldn’t name your little girl “Hillbilly,” don’t name her “Briar,” either.

If it’s one of your family surnames… well, make it a middle name, that’s all I can say. Alternately, call the kid Briar-rose, like Sleeping Beauty. (But in that case, why not just call her Rose?)

It’s also not a good name, because it associates the kid with the bad effects of the Fall cursing the plants of the earth. You know, “and thorns infest the ground”? Briars are also associated biblically with the ‘crackling’ sound of fools talking, with abandoned settlements and fields, and with all sorts of dire prophecies against the wicked and the pagan nations being burned up. The only positive association is the Crown of Thorns, and that’s an awfully sad name for a kid; or the “lily among the thorns,” which is a comparison of the Beloved to other women. And your kid would be the “other women,” not the Beloved.

If you want a Bri- or Bree- name, there are tons of those.

That said, there is a St. Spinella (“thorn”), who was martyred in Rome with St. Felix and her seven brothers (feast: June 27), and a Bl. Spinela who was a Cistercian nun in Arouca, Portugal (Nov. 1).

I suppose you could go with Bruyere, the French version, if you really really wanted to inflict this name on your kid. It means “heather” and “moorland” as well as “briar,” so at least your munchkin will have some positive associations.