Complexion of the English contradictory to their historical Theories.—Christian Names, and their Diminutives.—System of Surnames.—Names of the Months and Days.—Friday the unlucky Day.—St Valentine.—Relics of Catholicism. The prevalence of dark hair and dark complexions among the English is a remarkable fact in opposition to all established theories respecting the peoplers of the Island. We know that the Celts were light or red-haired, with blue eyes, by the evidence of history; and their descendants in Wales, and Ireland, and Scotland, still continue so. The Saxons, and Angles, and Danes, were of the same complexion. 275How is it then that the dark eyes and dark hair of the south should predominate? Could the Roman breed have been so generally extended, or, did the Spanish colony spread further than has been supposed? Climate will not account for the fact; there is not sun enough to ripen a grape; and if the climate could have darkened the Danes and Saxons, it would also have affected the Welsh; but they retain the marked character of their ancestors.
The proper names afford no clue; they are mostly indigenous, and the greater number of local derivation. Of the baptismal names the main proportion are Saxon and Norman; John, Thomas, and James, are the only common apostolical ones; others indeed occur, but it is rather unusual to meet with them. The Old Testament has furnished a few; Hagiology still fewer. Among the men, William and John predominate; Mary and Anne, among the women. In the northern provinces I am told that the Catholic names 276Agnes and Agatha are still frequent; and, what is more extraordinary, our Spanish Isabel, instead of Elizabeth.
Even these little things are affected by revolutions of state and the change of manners, as the storm which wrecks an Armada turns the village weathercock. Thus the partisans of the Stuarts preferred the names of James and Charles for their sons; and in the democratic families you now find young Alfreds and Hampdens, Algernons and Washingtons, growing up. Grace and Prudence were common in old times among the English ladies; I would not be taken literally when I say that they are no longer to be found among them, and that Honour and Faith, Hope and Charity, have disappeared as well. The continental wars introduced Eugene, and Ferdinand, and Frederick, into the parish registers; and since the accession of the present family you meet with Georges, Carolines, and Charlottes, Augustuses and Augustas. The prevailing appetite for novels has had 277a very general effect. The manufacturers of these precious commodities, as their delicate ears could bear none but vocal terminations, either rejected the plain names of their aunts and grandmothers, or clipped or stretched them till they were shaped into something like sentimental euphony. Under their improving hands, Lucy was extended to Louisa, Mary to Marianne, Harriet to Henrietta, and Elizabeth cut shorter into Eliza. Their readers followed their example when they signed their names, and christened their children. Bridget and Joan, and Dorothy and Alice, have been discarded; and while the more fantastic went abroad for Cecilia, Amelia, and Wilhelmina, they of a better taste recurred to their own history for such sweet names as Emma and Emmeline.
The manner in which the English abbreviate their baptismal names is unaccountably irregular. If a boy be christened John, his mother calls him Jacky, and his father Jack; William in like manner 278becomes Billy or Bill; and Edward, Neddy or Ned, Teddy or Ted, according to the gender of the person speaking: a whimsical rule not to be paralleled in any other language. Mary is changed into Molly and Polly; Elizabeth into Bessy, Bess, Betty, Tetty, Betsy, and Tetsy; Margaret into Madge, Peggy, and Meggy; all which in vulgar language are clipt of their final vowel, and shortened into monosyllables. Perhaps these last instances explain the origin of these anomalous mutations. Pega and Tetta are old English names long since disused, and only to be found in hagiological history; it is evident that these must have been the originals of the diminutives Peggy, and Tetty or Tetsy, which never by any process of capricious alteration can be formed from Margaret and Elizabeth. The probable solution is, in each case, that some person formerly bore both names, who signed with the first, and was called at home by the second,—thus the diminutive of one 279became associated with the other: in the next generation one may have been dropt, yet the familiar diminutive preserved; and this would go on like other family names, in all the subsequent branchings from the original stock. In like manner, Jacques would be the root of Jack; Theodore or Thaddeus, of Teddy; Apollonia of Polly; and Beatrice of Betty. A copious nomenclature might explain the whole.
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