Date: Fri 09-Jul-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Oldham-Barney-Genealogical-BGR

Full Text:

NANTUCKET SECTION: What's In A Name?

w/4 cuts

By Elizabeth Oldham

From time to time, at the beginning of a new year, newspapers publish a

rundown of what has been determined to be the most popular names given to

newborns during the preceding year. The names follow fads: for boys, Michael

has been up near the top for a long time; Christopher, Nicholas, David, Peter

and John, however, don't show up so frequently now as, for instance, the

trendy Jason, Jared and Jareb. For girls, Jennifer has been around for a

while; Ashley is a comer, and of course there have been lots of little girls

named Chelsea of late.

A study for the Barney Genealogical Record (hereafter referred to as BGR)

reveals that faddish names for newborns is not an entirely new phenomenon. Our

forebears, however, displayed an uncanny range of educated sophistication in

the naming of their babies. As a newly fledged onomastician (onomastics is the

science or study of the origins and forms of proper names of persons or

places), I have elected to categorize the naming of Nantucket babies in the

Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries thus:

Biblical

Classical/Romantic-Poetic

Quaker

Yankee/Victorian

Imaginative

Novelistic

Zoological

Biblical

The obvious biblical names occur in almost every family recorded in the BGR --

Sarah, Jesse, Ruth, Rebecca, Ezra, Jacob, Reuben, Nathaniel, Elihu, Ebenezer,

Bathsheba, Mehitabel, Obed, Zenas, et al. -- but those people really read

their Bibles. However else would they have come up with these names for their

boys: Benoni, Shubael, Zebulon, Achsah, Bazaleel, Barachiah, Asenath, Cephas

(Jesus' name for Peter, cephas being the Aramaic word for "rock," Peter from

the Greek petros), Barzillai (meaning "made of iron"). And the girls' names:

Apphia, Tamar, Merab, Percis (which may be an alternate spelling of Persis).

We find many little girls named after poor old Job's first two daughters,

Jemima and Kezia, but none after the third daughter, Kerenhappuch; why? We're

glad Eldad Tupper had a brother, whom his pa named after his good friend

Bildad. Thomas and Dinah Starbuck had six sons and named them after six of the

twelve tribes of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah -- leaving out Zebulun,

Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher and Naphtali -- and picking up again with Joseph and

Benjamin. Triplets born to John Barker and his missus in 1859 were named

Shadrach, Mershach and Abednego; unhappily they did not survive for even a

day.

Classical/Romantic-Poetic

We know that pre-TV Nantucketers were extremely well read; Greek and Latin

texts were ubiquitous in home libraries of the educated. The Romantic poets --

Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge -- were household icons. We are

properly grateful to David Joy and his chums for establishing in 1820 the

Nantucket mechanics Social Library Association, which evolved into our

Atheneum. So it is not surprising that classical and literary monikers such as

Horatio, Telemachus, Orlando, Leander, Electa (but no Electra... too racy?),

Lysander, Lucretia, Ginevra, Minerva, Niobe, Lydia and Clarissa popped up in

the baptismal registers.

Quaker

The Compact Bible Dictionary (Zondervan Publishing House, a Division of

HarperCollins) tells us that Patriarchal times (i.e., before the time of

Moses) "saw names as indicators of character, function, or destiny." Perhaps

the Friends saw names in the same light when they called their little baby

boys and girls Provided, Wealthy, Content, Prudence, Endowed, Love,

Temperance, Pleasant, and Desire. Ben Franklin's mum, Abiah Folger, had two

older sisters named Patience and Experience. In 1778 Zaccheus Coffin married

Thankful Joy of Martha's Vineyard. And what did life hold for the young man

named Pardon Tinkham?

Yankee/Victorian

The BGR, as we know, begins to thin out toward the last quarter of the

Nineteenth Century, and the names recorded, say, after the Civil War, tend to

be bland, Yankee-ish: Huldah, Avis, Harriet, Gertrude, Clara, Adeline, Etta,

Herman, Emeline, Arthur, George, Frank. However, those up-front Americans Milo

and Maria Stanton named four of their six children California, Texas,

Minnesota, and Florida May.

Imaginative

Neither the above-mentioned Bible dictionary nor the Oxford Classical

Dictionary or Companion Guild To English Literature come up with a source for

Desclamia, Elthina, Delphia, Zulema, Musidora, Alvaretta, or Verlinda (all

girls); I shall continue to search, but I prefer to believe the girls' parents

were simply being creative and poetic and romantic. Barzillai and Mary

Gardner's firstborn child was Delphina, but their second daughter must have

been a real beauty: they named her Flora Dulcibella.

Novelistic

Can we imagine these names turning up anywhere except in a bad novel?

Belvidere Plane, Wickliffe Chadwick, Powhattan Bagnell, Marmaduke Coffin.

Also, not found in the Grand Army of the Republic, 1891-92, were Orestes

Augustus Bronson Tracy and Dusenburg Rancour, neither of them born on

Nantucket, but residents here after the Civil War.

Zoological

Mary Pigeon is sweetly evocative. And it is to be hoped that one fine day in

about 1804, Mr Thomas Mackerel may have strolled down to the wharf to greet a

visiting friend from Rhode Island: Preserved Fish.

Elizabeth Oldman is research associate in the NHA library and a freelance

writer and copy editor.