Some people have verbs for names. I never thought of this before yesterday. I heard someone talking on the news, and his name was Chase. I wondered how much he had been chased during his life, or perhaps, did the chasing.
Names can be tricky, as I found out with Polly. I guess, as kids, we all get a little razzing about our names. But I would say that some are worse than others.
Back to the verb names. There are all sorts. Hope. Jimmy. Rob. What about Wade, or Drew? All verbs. All names.
Then you start adding in complications. Those verb names that are non-gender names. You know, they can fit both males and females. Like Pat. I haven’t known very many Pats, but I don’t think I’d like being a Pat. Potentially, that could be worse than Polly, what with Patty Cakes, and then the possibility that people would be patting you all the time. Pat the bread. Give a pat answer. Eat a pat of butter.
The confusion continues when you factor in that some names are both verbs and nouns. Grant. Chip. Bill. Lance. Judge. Peg. Dot. Will.
Or the kind that are verbs, nouns, and parts of nature. Like Rose. And Chip.
Or just back to verbs. Skip. Wink.
Names. Every one of us has one. I think most people have some sense of what their own names mean. Polly doesn’t really mean anything if you look it up in a dictionary. It just says, “see Mary.” I’m a variation, it seems.
The study of names is called onomastics, a field that touches on “linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philology,” and much more. I had to consult the dictionary for onomastics. It seems like there is a lot involved, to me, especially when I had to do a double-lookup for philology. Philology is “the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages.” Okey Dokey.
I wonder what they’d have to say about Pat.
When people refer to the “meaning of a name,” they are most likely referring to the etymology. That is described as the original literal meaning.
I looked up a few of our frequent flyers here. Janet is the medieval diminutive of Jane. From there, Jane is the female version of John.
Kathy goes way back to ancient Greek, meaning “each of two.”
Justin is derived from Justus. This was the name of several early saints, including Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher of the 2nd century.
Linda is originally a medieval short form of Germanic names containing the element lind meaning “flexible, soft, mild.”
And then, Polly, comes from Molly, comes from Mary. And Mary leads to lots of bible references, the first of which is the sister of Moses. Talk about clout.
There are a lot of good websites out there to look up meanings like https://www.behindthename.com/. If you are interested.
But most of the people who study names agree that the “history of names” is so ancient, no one knows the true beginning of the story. People have always had names since “written” history began. Oral history too. So it becomes pretty impossible to do more than guess at how the earliest given names were handed out. Most of the early, original names seemed to be descriptive, they suppose.
Which brings me back to the verbs.
Chase.
Chip.
Pat.
Isn’t that true about humans and our absolute nature?
We aren’t necessarily who we say we are. But we sure are defined by what we do.
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“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”
― W.C. Fields
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“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
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“If he be Mr. Hyde” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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More than a name, it could actually be doing something.
