Chapter CXV: Section VIII: Military Names

In the slender thread of connection with which we try to unite names given in the same spirit, we put together those that seem to have accorded with the tastes of the Roman army.

Thus _eligo_ (to choose), which originally caused the title of Legion, was in the participle _electus_, and thus led to words most familiar to us in the state as political terms, to the theological term elect or chosen for salvation.

There is some doubt whether St. John’s third epistle be indeed to a lady called Electa, or to an elect lady, as it is in our version; but when a name from this source next appears, it is among the cultivated Gallo-Romans, when they had gradually worked their way to consideration among the rude Franks, who had nearly trodden out civilization in the conquered country. Eligius was the great goldsmith bishop who designed King Dagobert’s throne, made shrines for almost all the distinguished relics in France, and doubtless enjoyed the fame of having made many more than could have come from his hand. He is popularly called St. Eloy, and some derive from him the Provençal Aloys; but this is far more probably a southern form of Hlodweh, or Louis.

The Roman veterans were termed _emeriti_ (having deserved) from _mereor_ (to deserve). From these old soldiers must have come the name Emerentius, which is to be found as Emerenz in Germany, and Emérence in France.

St. Emerentiana was said to have been a catechumen, who was killed by soldiers who found her praying on the tomb of St. Agnes. Her name (probably her relics) passed to Denmark, and to Lithuania, where it is called Marenze, and Embrance is the old English feminine.

The very contrary, Pacifico (peaceful), is a modern Italian and Spanish name—as Peace is Puritan.

Here, too, we place that which the soldier most esteems—_honos_, or _honor_. Honor was a deity in later Rome, but no old classical names were made from him, and Honorius first appears as one of the appellations of the Spanish father of the great Theodosius; then again inherited by that imbecile being, his grandson, the last genuine Roman emperor; also by a niece, called Justa Grata Honoria, who dishonoured all her three honourable names. Yet some lingering sense of allegiance to the last great family that gave rulers to the empire perpetuated their names in the countries where they had reigned; and the Welsh Ynyr long remained as a relic of Honorius, in Wales. Honorine was a Neustrian maiden, slain in a Danish invasion, and regarded as a martyr; so that Honorine prevails in France and Germany, and one of the favourite modern Irish names, is Onora, Honor, or in common usage, Norah.

Russia has the masculine as Gonorij; Lithuania, the feminine cut down into Arri. There were two Gallic bishops named Honoratus, whence the French Honoré, which has named a suburb of Paris, and we had one early archbishop of Canterbury so called, from whom we have derived no names, though Honor was revived in England in the days of names of abstract qualities, and Honoria was rather in fashion in the last century, probably as an ornamental form of the Irish Norah.[79]

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Footnote 79:

Butler; Smith, _Antiquities_; Le Beau.