i was thinking about faith cary and hope middleton at our church --
all we need is a girl named charity, and you'd have it all.

if you ever wondered where the american penchant for naming people
after Abstract Qualities comes from, the Puritans apparently got it
from the Geneva Bible, the quite slantedly protestant translation that
they brought over on the mayflower.

here's nicolson, in one of the funniest things i've ever read about
the puritans.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some Puritans maintained that the names of the great figures in the
scriptures, all of which signify something -- Adam meant 'Red Earth',
Timothy 'Fear-God' -- should be translated. The Geneva Bible, which
was an encyclopaedia of Calvinist thought, ... had a list of those
meanings at the back and, in imitation of those signifying names,
Puritans ... had taken to naming their children after moral qualities.
Ben Jonson included characters called Tribulation Wholesome,
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and Win-the-fight Littlewit [in his works], and
Bancroft himself had written about the absurdity of calling your
children 'The Lord-is-near, More-trial, Reformation, More-fruit, Dust,
and many other such-like'.

These were not invented. Puritan children at Warbleton in Sussex, the
heartland of the practice, laboured under the names of Eschew-evil,
Lament, No-merit, Sorry-for-sin, Learn-wisdom, Faint-not, Give-thanks,
and, the most popular, Sin-deny, which was landed on ten children
baptised in the parish between 1586 and 1596. One family, the children
of the curate Thomas Hely, would have been introduced by their proud
father as Much-mercy Hely, Increased Hely, Sin-deny Hely, Fear-not
Hely, and sweet little Constance Hely.

Bancroft, and this royal translation of the Bible, could give no
credit to that half-mad denial of tradition. It was one that travelled
to America with the Pilgrim Fathers. Among William Brewster's own
children, landing at Plymouth Rock, were Fear, Love, Patience, and
Wrestling.