What Were Puritan Parents Thinking?
The Wacky Names They Gave their Kids
Summer will be here before you know it, and you may soon be looking for a great beach read. You could do worse than this page-turner from 1888 called Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. No, really, stay with me. The author, Charles W.E. Bardsley, combed the parish registers and death records from 16th and 17th century England and found some, shall we say, eccentric naming practices, mostly among the Puritans.
They sure came up with some doozies. If you’ve ever found yourself pondering how your parents came up with your name, imagine how the Puritan kid called Kill-sin Pimple, or the brothers named Love-well, Fare-well, Do-well, and Die-well felt about their parents’ choices.
Name that Kid!
Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that Puritans saddled their kids with names like “Repentance,” “Humiliation,” “Epiphany,” and “Abstinence.” I mean, they weren’t known for their sense of whimsy. These are the same people who thought nothing of slapping someone in the stockades for a whole day for the crime of nodding off during a seven-hour sermon.
Many Puritan communities in England considered most common names too worldly, and preferred to name their children after characters in the Bible, family members, or dead…