say you're a regency era parent about to
welcome a new baby into the world
but what are you going to name this
child well that is the question we're
going to be discussing here today we're
going to be delving into the georgian
and regency mindset behind how they
chose their children's
given christian first names whatever you
want to call that name
that's not your family name and this
will help us understand history better
and then also too for all you people who
like to write
regency-based novels it'll help you name
your characters too because we're going
to be delving into
of course what the parents were thinking
at the time and
likewise you should have the same
thoughts when naming your regency era
characters so that they'll be
time period appropriate my name is ellie
dashwood and this is my channel where i
talk about classic literature and
history if you like
either of those things please subscribe
so let's really delve into the mindset
behind the
late georgian and regency era baby name
choosing
process now parents had two roots
the traditional root and the fashionable
slash romantic root
so first up let's talk about the
traditional root
so where did a lot of traditional names
at this time come from
well the number one source was of course
religion
and history of course the people at this
time period were very religious they
were predominantly protestant
christian of course this is after king
henry broke with a pope so we have the
church of england
in power at the time so a lot of the
names
came from the bible so this is why you
see
novels filled with people named mary
lydia martha matthew because
those are all very traditional
bible-based themes
the next source of christian names were
saint names of course
earlier in history when they were still
part of the roman catholic church
of course naming your children after
saints was much more important than it
now was
however during that time period these
saint names had become
common so now they were just common
names in english society
and there's a lot of saint names that
you
wouldn't even think is actually a saint
name but is
examples include lucy catherine
and dominic dominic of course coming
from the word for
sunday in latin obviously not english
because there's no dominic sunday
connection there and of course
lucy was named after a virgin saint who
had her eyes put out
so all you lucy's out there that's the
origin of your name and then of course
there was
christian qualities like faith hope
joy during this time period these were
only seen in more
non-traditional households maybe if you
were like super religious
you would get one of these names but
they had been much more common
in the 1600s where we have that era
which i think is kind of famous when
people were giving their
children whole sentence long's names
like fight against sin
or were saved by holy salvation you know
something like that
but that was in the 1600s so everyone's
moved away from that
by the late georgian and regency era so
basically
unless these parents were like super
religious and wanted to name their
kid faith or another really super
religious family would only name their
kids something like hezekiah
or one of the lesser known bible names
but more traditionally we have
of course the major bible names like
mary martha and the saint names i've
passed into everyday
use like lucy and catherine now on the
history side of course the norman
conquest
introduced a huge amount of french baby
names
into society such as eleanor
so those are the religious and
history-based baby names they have to
choose from
now of course then there is the royal
names because of course the names of the
royals became popular
in everyday use and this is where names
like william
george charlotte and margaret really got
their
extra boost to everyone wanting to name
their baby that because they were the
name of royals and then of course
as there are the different houses of
royals they would all introduce their
own sets of names
such as the stewarts really made popular
the names like
charles elizabeth mary frances
ann catherine and jane so they made
those like
top baby name pics by having themselves
as royal it's kind of like when
celebrities
name their baby something and then
normal people all start naming their kid
that too
the famous effect of names and of course
a great example of this is victoria
victoria was actually
a anglicized form of her mother's german
name
and so it was not a popular name in
england
at the time until of course queen
victoria became
queen so which was of course after the
regency era so no regencier
parents are naming their kid victoria
okay so those are like the traditional
sets of names and where they come from
the bible saints
royals norman conquest all of that
now the parents of the regency era
though did not just look through a baby
name book if they were traditional
parents
and like pick one what they did is they
start looking at these names
from more traditional family sources the
top one being
relatives so children were very often
named after relatives or their
godparents
in the north of england it was common to
name the first boy and girl
after the father's parents with like the
grandparents
and then the second set of boy and girl
they had
this many kids after the mother's
parents and then after that they would
get more creative
you know that's when it's like oh should
we name this new one henry or charles i
don't know i
i just look at the royal tree who should
we name this one after
no rules do what you want now with
younger kids
but really each sort of region and
family
in england had their own way of honoring
their relatives or
the godparents of course we see jane
austen's own mother cassandra was named
after her aunt who was married to the
first duke of
chandos i think that's how you say it
and then of course
jane austen's older sister cassandra's
named after her mom
so we see how this name is recurrent
throughout family history and that was
very common you had the same names
just going over and over again just like
jane austen herself
had her cousin jane cooper and they were
named after her aunt jane and so these
names
were constantly recycled and likewise
you would be named after a godparent
for example jane austen's cousin eliza
named her son after
her godfather warren hastings she named
him
hastings and of course part of this
naming
your kid after their godparent was this
hope that that godparent would then
thereby be very attached to their
namesake and if this godparent was
rich the godparent would feel like you
know some responsibility
financially towards this child that was
one of the hopes when naming your kid
after their rich god parent
and so like we see too here with eliza
naming her son's first name
of hastings after her godfather's last
name of hastings
that was another common thing which is
where we see a son
getting a last name as a first name and
of course the most famous example of
this
is fitzwilliam darcy of course
fitzwilliam
was his mother lady anne's maternal last
name
so that was another option you could
give your son a last name
as a first name and so if you were a
very traditional
family in regency england you would be
looking
at your relatives for names and of
course they would be more than likely
these very traditional names based off
of
the bible saints royalty or history
and using those for your children's
names and of course you
had a lot more leeway in younger
children so if you had 10 children
by the last child you can start getting
more creative because you've
ran out of people to name them after but
still this huge
attachment to tradition of so many types
did result in a very limited number of
names being reused over and over again
oh by the way
i always forget to ask this in my videos
but if you are enjoying this video
please gently press the like button to
show your approval
of this message now if you're like a
more adventurous
romantic untraditional family you have
the second pathway
for naming your child which i am calling
the romantic
fashionable mindset so in the upper
classes of the late 1700s up through
around 1820
there was this interest in having more
pretty
romantic names for your children and
these were drawn from a few different
sources one was of course
literature major novels of the time gave
us some great girls names like clarissa
pamela belinda that people were starting
to name their daughters
then there was this move towards using
french versions or italian versions of
very common names to sort of like spice
them up
because names like amelia and ophelia
just sounded
so romantic and poetical of course
french was giving these upper classes
names like those
also names like cordelia and sylvia and
chloe meanwhile they started also using
the very poetic
italian versions of names so instead of
naming their daughter plain old alice
she would become alicia olive would
become olivia
and lucy would become lucinda there was
a lot of adding like this
a or i a because of this onto a lot of
very common names so you got these more
like
refined versions of them and of course
there was this
house of hanover now in power
at the monarchy and they were inspiring
some very popular names
where even though the names from other
royals
had become popular because these were
the new royals it was like more
fashionable right like this is names of
today
royalty so there of course we have stuff
like
augustus earnest frederica frederick
louisa sophia and amelia so these names
were
also becoming popular because they were
the new happening royal names
and then of course we saw this trend of
having double names like jane austen's
nephew
james edward had two names james edward
of course
it wasn't uncommon for the higher
classes to have
multiple middle names per se but james
edward was literally called
james edward in everyday life it was
like a compound
first name so really this fashionable
romantic trend
among the higher classes of having these
very flowery names was super
popular again at the end of the 1700s
and up through
1820 but then like all trends the exact
opposite happens and
after 1820 there started to be this
pullback
from these flowery names where it was
like no that's like affected
that's like too much we need simple
names
it's very interesting how there was this
shift from like yes flower is good to
almost flowery is
bad and we see that how it was viewed in
this negative light in
wives and daughters by elizabeth gaskell
so if you're familiar with that novel
the main character's name is molly which
is
a form of mary she was named after her
mother so here we have
super traditional happening now her dad
decides to marry this new woman and her
name is hyacinth
claire and her daughter's name is
cynthia so can you get more
flowery than that not in the victorian
times
this is really interesting the words
they use when reacting to these names
when talking about cynthia the dad of
the family says
cynthia seems to me such a out of the
way name
only fit for poetry not for daily use
so again we see like this like not so
much flowery names anymore
in the victorian era and then it's
interesting too when the dad breaks it
to molly that her new stepmom's name is
hyacinth
she's like hyacinth said molly entirely
bewildered
she's bewildered by hyacinth here and he
says
yes hyacinth it's the silliest name i've
ever heard but it's hers then i must
call her by it
i just think it's so funny how they're
reacting to these flowery names but it
does go along
with this reverse trend after 1820 back
to more simple names
so those are the two major schools of
thought parents had while naming
their kids in the georgian and regency
era did they want to go the traditional
religious and family root or do they
want to go with the poetical romantic
fashionable trend that was happening at
the time so if you are
per se writing a regency novel and
you're naming your characters it would
be good to really think out
what are their families like what's the
parents
mindset are they traditional are they
more romantic
because i think sometimes there's this
trend for people just to be like i'm
gonna name everyone mary and jane
and catherine that's it super safe here
but not everyone really was named those
things back in time of course they were
very common
you name someone jane no one's gonna be
like this is historically inaccurate
but you do have a wider set of names you
can
name people and you can use this to
express things
about them for example like do they have
a rich
rich godparent they're named after are
their parents all romantic and poetical
are they a younger child because
remember again after they get
so many godparents and parents and
grandparents named after
and they're like the 10th kid who knows
what name they're getting at that point
they get really creative then
another thing to keep in mind if you're
writing a regency novel is to check
the name usage at the time of whether it
was a boy's name or girl's name
and then of course just one other thing
to pay attention to is the spelling
there were a lot of different ways to
spell common names of course if you look
at eleanor
dashwood in since insensibility she
spells her name differently
than eleanor tilney in north anger abby
so here even jane austen is using two
different
versions of eleanor in different novels
and of course you just would want to
avoid
like super modern crazy spellings
of names so that is what was going
through the minds of
all those regency parents when they were
picking out names for the adorable
little new baby
let me know in the comments below what
you would want your name to be
if you lived in regency times thank you
so much for watching my video my name is
ellie dashwood and this is my channel
where i talk about classic literature in
history if you like either of those
things please subscribe
bye let me know in the comments below
what you would want
your name to be if you lived in regency
times
i think i would want to be i actually
have no clue
this is such a hard question what is the
answer for some reason amelia is coming
to mind and i don't even know why
but apparently i'm gonna be amelia if i
lived in regency times