Almost no names are 'English'

0:00 Did you know there are only about a dozen truly English names?

0:03 If your name is on this list it’s one of them.

0:07 What do I mean by “truly English”?

0:09 Well, you’ll see.

0:11 All the rest of them had to find their way into our language somehow,

0:14 and at some point they meant something literal in a language other than our own.

0:20 So let’s dig into them in another RobWords.

0:25 Names are weird aren’t they?

0:26 They don’t feel like words because because

0:29 unless you’re called something like Hope or Hunter,

0:32 they don’t mean anything, do they?

0:34 Not in English anyway.

0:36 They’re just collections of syllables we use

0:39 to differentiate one human being from the next.

0:43 But those syllables are not random as is going to become apparent.

0:48 So what was I getting at when I was talking about “truly English names”?

0:54 What I meant is that these names have been

0:57 used in England for as long as England has existed.

1:00 They are Anglo-Saxon names that have survived a millennium

1:04 and a half of history and upheaval and remain in use today.

1:10 And what’s more, unlike the vast majority of the names we’re going to cover,

1:14 they can be traced back to English words.

1:17 Specifically Old English, the, admittedly barely recognisable,

1:21 early form of our language.

1:23 When the Anglo-Saxons named someone,

1:25 they often did what we do now when we call someone Grace or Faith or Earnest.

1:32 They named them after the virtues that they hoped they would possess.

1:36 For example, the name Ethel started out

1:39 as the Old English æþele and meaning “noble”.

1:43 The name Athelstan, spelt in Old English like this, meant “noble-stone”, i.e.

1:49 classy and rock steady.

1:51 There’s also an “athel” hiding in Audrey.

1:54 It is a latinized form of the kick-ass

1:58 Anglo-Saxon name Æðelðryð meaning “noble strength”.

2:02 Pretty cool.

2:03 And while we’re on names we actually use:

2:06 Edward is from the Old English for “prosperity guardian”.

2:10 The “ward” is the same as our modern word “ward”, or “warden”.

2:13 And the Ed means wealth or prosperity.

2:16 Someone who was rich or, later,

2:19 just happy used to be described as eady, which comes from that same source.

2:25 And that Ed also shows up in Edmond, Edwin, Edgar, and Edith.

2:31 All left over by the Anglo-Saxons.

2:34 And if you’re a Ted, Ed or Eddie, you now know where your name comes from too.

2:39 Alfie is a very popular baby name right now.

2:42 It’s a pet form of Alfred, which is also having a bit of a moment itself.

2:46 That’s some serious Anglo-Saxon.

2:48 Ever heard of Alfred the Great?

2:51 Well, the Alf in his name is– I

2:54 think surprisingly– an early form of our word “elf”.

2:57 And the “red” is related to our word “read”, which originally meant “advise”.

3:02 So when we read a book, it’s kind of advising us.

3:05 We are taking in its knowledge.

3:06 So “Alfred” often gets translated as “elf counsel”.

3:11 Which sounds mad, but if you think that an elf

3:14 is essentially a divine being to the Anglo-Saxons, it makes a bit more sense..

3:18 The “fred” in Alfred is not the same

3:21 as the “fred” in another Anglo-Saxon name though: Wilfred.

3:25 That’s the Old English friþ, meaning “peace”.

3:28 The Wil is the same as we still use when

3:31 we say “That is my will!” or “Last will and testament”.

3:35 It means “desire” or “wish”.

3:38 So Wilfred meant something like “desiring peace”.

3:43 Nice.

3:44 Meanwhile, Winifred means “friend of peace” or “peace comrade”.

3:49 The “win” is the same as we saw in Edwin.

3:52 Now you might be thinking, “Rob, who the heck has these names anymore?” Well,

3:57 I’m just telling you to keep this information in your back

4:00 pocket because I think they’re going to come back.

4:02 I met a baby Wilfred just the other day,

4:05 and you have to bear in mind that these names

4:08 were really popular about a century ago and naming experts

4:11 talk about a “hundred year rule” because we like to give

4:16 our kids the sorts of names our great grandparents had.

4:19 So if a name was popular in the 1920s,

4:23 there’s a good chance it’s going to popular in the 2020s too.

4:27 Their time is due.

4:29 It’s worth pointing out that the Anglo-Saxons

4:32 weren’t only giving themselves Anglo-Saxon names.

4:34 Some of them had, for example, Celtic names.

4:37 There was an Anglo-Saxon bishop called Chad.

4:40 Which is ridiculous.

4:41 He sounds like he should be stealing your lunch money in an American movie.

4:44 But no: his name was Chad and it comes from a Celtic word meaning “battle”.

4:50 He actually became Saint Chad, so talk about a megachad.

4:55 Is that what people say?

4:57 Gigachad?

4:58 Megachad?

4:58 I can’t remember the order of magnitude.

5:01 The Anglo-Saxons’ time in charge ends with the death of King Harold,

5:05 who had a Viking name.

5:07 In the 9th century, the Norsemen, the Danes as they used to call them,

5:11 took control of a large chunk of England,

5:13 and as a result, a lot of names from Old Norse slipped into English as well.

5:22 Harold’s loss and death at the Battle of Hastings

5:25 is the next key historical point in the development

5:29 of our names Because he loses out

5:32 in that battle to William the Conqueror who is… foreign.

5:37 He’s from Normandy just across the channel and he speaks a variety of French.

5:44 What William does, after he’s snatched the throne from Harold,

5:47 is replace almost all of the Anglo-Saxons with any power with his Norman pals.

5:53 Suddenly French names were all the rage.

5:56 Not least, William, which has never gone out of fashion.

6:00 Some of these names wouldn’t have been totally unrecognisable to the English,

6:03 because a lot of them are French takes

6:06 on Germanic names left over by the Franks.

6:09 So they were compounds like Alfred, Edward etc.

6:12 were.

6:13 William itself was from a Germanic

6:15 compound meaning “will” or “desire”, and “helmet”.

6:18 So “desire helmet” …which sounds weirdly filthy now I say it out loud, sorry.

6:24 Anyway, you can see it more easily in the modern German equivalent Wilhelm.

6:29 All the “bert” names that seem so French: Albert, Robert,

6:33 Hubert– Albert, Robert (like me), Hubert are actually Germanic compounds.

6:40 They have a bit at the end meaning “bright”,

6:43 actually related to our word “bright”.

6:45 And then they’ve got something else at the front.

6:49 In my case, Robert means “famous and bright”.

6:53 Not bad.

6:54 Richard is another juicy compound from the time.

6:57 The “hard” does actually mean “hard”.

6:59 Richard means “hard ruler” or “strong ruler”.

7:04 Roger is another one, once meaning “famous spear”.

7:08 And Oliver is thought to be a French adaptation

7:12 of the Middle Low German Alfihar meaning “elf army”.

7:17 There’s that elf again.

7:19 Which means Oliver doesn’t actually have anything to do with olives at all.

7:24 Although it’s likely that the Old French for olive tree,

7:28 olivier, influenced its new spelling.

7:30 During the centuries where England is being ruled in French,

7:33 we get a flood of these Frenchified names,

7:35 which all-but replace the Anglo-Saxon ones.

7:39 It’s why we have so few of those now.

7:41 Instead, we have Germanic-tinged French names like Henry,

7:45 Hugh, Leonard, Ralph, Raymond, Walter, Matilda& Adelaide.

7:51 I have fewer female examples to give, by the way, because of what happens next.

7:58 Around the time all this name-swapping has been

8:01 going on, something else has been bubbling away:

8:05 The Crusades, which saw Christians from Western Europe fighting

8:09 for control of holy sites in the Middle East.

8:11 Most notably, Jerusalem.

8:13 That religious fervour and the enormous power of the Roman Catholic Church

8:18 at the time saw a huge surge in the use of Christian names,

8:25 which still account for a huge proportion of the names that we wear today.

8:29 In a somewhat back-to-front fashion, the New Testament names are popular first.

8:34 The names of the apostles,

8:35 the names of the gospels and other key figures in Jesus’ life.

8:39 Mary is a biggie, of course.

8:42 We take all of these names for granted,

8:45 but they had to come from somewhere, didn’t they?

8:48 Yeah, the New Testament.

8:50 One name is conspicuous by its absence though, isn’t it?

8:53 And that is the name of the guy himself: Jesus.

8:58 That’s because it was thought tantamount to blasphemy to give

9:01 that name to anyone other than the son of God.

9:04 Although, not in all cultures, of course.

9:06 You can come across people with the name

9:10 Jesus or Jesús in Portuguese or Spanish, either as a first name or as a surname.

9:16 Anyway, as well as the New Testament names,

9:18 the names of saints who aren’t featured in the Bible also became popular.

9:23 Names like George, Nicholas, Christopher, Lucy, Helena, Monica.

9:29 Medieval saints also get a look-in as well, like Francis,

9:32 Benedict, Gregory– the names of Popes for example– Catherine, Margaret, Clare.

9:38 Actually, religious names are thought particularly appropriate for women,

9:42 which is one of the reasons so few

9:44 of the French feminine names are still around.

9:47 And then, thanks to this guy,

9:50 Martin Luther, the Protestant Church gains influence,

9:53 and it stresses the importance of the whole Bible,

9:56 not just the New Testament, and Old Testament names become the order of the day.

10:01 For the men, Adam, Noah– hugely popular at the moment– Abraham,

10:06 Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Aaron, Benjamin, David, Solomon, Samuel,

10:10 Daniel– my class at school was full of Daniels.

10:14 And for the ladies, Eve, Sarah– there were a lot of Sarahs as well– Rebecca,

10:20 Rachel, Hannah, Deborah, Judith, Naomi.

10:23 All holy names Some hugely popular names in there.

10:28 And what I would love to do is tell you the history of each of them,

10:31 but we’d be here all day.

10:33 And it’s really cold.

10:34 A good chunk of them, though, come from Hebrew.

10:37 For example, Jacob is from Ya’aqov,

10:38 said to mean “supplanter” or “one who takes by the heel”.

10:42 An apparent reference to him being born holding his twin brother Esau’s heel.

10:47 John is from Hebrew Yochanan,

10:49 said to mean “god is gracious” and Mary is from Miryam,

10:53 which some claim meant “rebellion”, although no one seems to be certain.

10:58 I probably don’t need to tell you also

11:00 that the name Miriam comes from the same source.

11:03 But so does Marie, Maria and Maia.

11:07 You see, the wide spread of Christianity means these names have

11:11 lots of versions from different parts of the world and sometimes,

11:14 we’ve taken to using several of them.

11:17 Just look at the other two examples I gave: Yochanan gives us John, yeah,

11:21 but also its multilingual equivalents Jan, Jean,

11:24 Johannes, Johan, Giovanni, Ivan, Ewan and Ian.

11:30 And Ya’aqov is the source of Jacob, but also James.

11:34 It’s ultimately the same name, along with Iago, Diego, Hamish and Seamus.

11:41 Actually, a very cool fact is that Seamus

11:43 and Hamish are quite literally the same name.

11:45 In Scottish Gaelic, you would refer to your friend

11:48 Seumas as “Seumas” if you were talking about him,

11:51 but if you were addressing him directly- in what’s

11:53 called the vocative case- you would say “A Sheaumais”.

11:57 Get an English person who’s overheard that to write it down,

12:00 and you get the name Hamish.

12:02 One person: two names.

12:05 Actually, spotting related names is quite a fun pastime if you’re sad, like me.

12:10 I only just found out that Liam– the most popular

12:13 name for baby boys in the USA at the moment,

12:16 by the way– is an Irish shortened form of William.

12:20 So not only have you got Will, Willy,

12:22 Bill and Billy, you’ve got Liam in the William family too.

12:26 But that is just the start of it.

12:27 I recently came across this brilliant book.

12:30 “A list of Christian Names, their derivatives,

12:33 nicknames and equivalents in Several Foreign Languages.” Now,

12:36 this was prepared for the US War Office in the 1920s,

12:39 so it’s over a hundred years old, but it is a goldmine of related names.

12:44 For example, did you know that the names Lewis, Luigi, Louie,

12:50 Ludwig, Ludovic, and Clovis, bizarrely, are all variations of the same name?

12:55 Or that Stephen, Esteban and Etienne are the same?

12:59 How about Geordie, George, Georg and Jörg?

13:02 They’re all the same.

13:03 The names Geoffrey and Godfrey are the same name.

13:07 And Walter and Gaultier, as in Jean-Paul Gaultier… they’re the same name.

13:14 I absolutely love this stuff.

13:15 We’ve just swept up so many names, haven’t we?

13:18 From so many different languages.

13:20 And Biblical names just remain so enormously fashionable, especially in the US,

13:25 where Old Testament names– shared between

13:27 Jewish and Christian traditions– are particularly popular.

13:30 Names like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Caleb, Elijah and Elias.

13:34 Actually, those two last ones are variants of the same name as well.

13:39 But let’s move on because I now want to talk about

13:41 the next big historical event that changes our naming culture: The Renaissance.

13:49 Renaissance literally means “rebirth”,

13:51 and it’s so called because of a rebirth of classical culture:

13:56 namely appreciation of Ancient Greek and Roman culture.

14:00 And in England, names got swept up in it too,

14:04 with people giving their kids names derived from Latin and Greek Like Alexander:

14:10 from Greek Alexandros, literally “defender of men”.

14:14 Alexandra is just a feminine version of it.

14:17 That “andra” at the end of Kassandra likely means “of men” too,

14:23 but no-one is certain what the Kass- bit means.

14:26 Maybe it means “shine” or something like that.

14:29 Nicholas is another good Classical name, also popular because of St Nicholas.

14:33 Greek Nikolaos means “victory people”.

14:36 The Nik is the same as in Nike, the sports brand and goddess of victory.

14:42 This all goes for Nichola too.

14:44 Now, if you’ve ever met a Theodore who thought they were god’s gift,

14:49 well, they were sort of right.

14:51 At least, that’s the meaning of the Greek Theodoros.

14:54 Theodora is therefore also a gift of God.

14:57 But check this out: swap those two elements around,

15:01 and if you join the Dots– or indeed,

15:04 follow the yellow brick road– you get Dorothea, aka Dorothy.

15:10 Another of God’s gifts.

15:13 Helen had a face that launched a thousand ships,

15:15 but her name– and that of Helena,

15:18 of course– likely comes from the Greek helenos meaning “bright one”.

15:22 Similarly shiny is Phoebe, the Titaness associated with the Moon.

15:27 Her name is from the Greek phoibos, also meaning “bright”.

15:31 Her granddaughter is Artemis, goddess of the Moon,

15:35 whose Roman equivalent was Diana.

15:38 That has an ancient root meaning– guess what?

15:41 “Shine”.

15:42 That same Proto-Indo-European root also gives us words like “divine”,

15:47 “deus”, “Zeus” and “Jove”.

15:49 Julius Caesar claimed his name meant “descended from Jove”.

15:53 Jove as in Jupiter.

15:55 But that might just have been a bit of megalomaniac myth-making.

15:59 Now, there’s a word for names that invoke the name of a god.

16:02 They’re called theophoric.

16:05 And annother one is Marcus.

16:07 It means “of Mars”, Mars being the Roman god of War.

16:13 And there’s another “of Mars” name: Martin.

16:17 Which means the same as Martian.

16:19 So all Marcuses and Martins are Martians.

16:23 FACT.

16:24 Gods aren’t the only Roman representatives in our names.

16:27 We’ve also got names that refer specifically to Roman virtues.

16:31 Or rather, Latin words for those virtues.

16:33 Victor is the Latin word for conqueror, whence victory and the name Victoria.

16:39 Felix and Felicity are from the Latin for happiness.

16:43 Serena is the Latin for tranquil, from which we get the word serenity.

16:47 And Justin and Justine/Justina are from Iustinus,

16:52 Latin for “fair” or rather, “just”.

16:57 And just one more point here: someone who caught the Renaissance classical

17:01 naming bug was a certain William Shakespeare,

17:04 who used plenty of them in his plays.

17:06 Indeed, some of these hadn’t appeared

17:08 in an English context before Shakey came along.

17:11 He was a great importer of names.

17:14 Names that appear first in his works include Jessica,

17:19 Cordelia, Miranda, and Olivia.

17:21 Olivia was a popular name elsewhere, of course.

17:24 It just means olive, but do remember when I said this earlier?

17:29 “Oliver doesn’t actually have anything to do with olives

17:33 at all!” Meaning the names Oliver and Olivia aren’t related.

17:38 One means “elf army” and the other means “fruit that looks

17:42 like a grape but couldn’t taste any less like one”.

17:44 Isn’t that mad?

17:46 One more from Shakespeare:

17:47 he’s often credited with inventing the name Imogen but the story

17:51 goes that he only did so because he misread another name: Innogen.

17:57 That one’s debated, but it’s worth a mention.

17:59 So I’ve covered the origins of the vast majority

18:00 of what we might consider to be English language names,

18:04 but of course we encounter people with many more names than those day-to-day.

18:09 That’s partly because of the way people have been able to move

18:12 around the planet over the past couple of centuries or more,

18:15 and also a more creative naming cultures.

18:18 But I think I’ve shown that your name almost certainly isn’t English.

18:24 It might be French, Frankish, Latin, Greek,

18:28 Celtic or Hebrew but unless it's Edward or Ethel, it probably ain’t English.

18:34 Why not share this video with an Oliver, Alexander,

18:37 Olivia or Kassandra and I’ll see you in whatever you choose to watch next.

18:43 Until next time, take care.