Chapter XVI: Section II: Abi

Common to both the Semitic and Indo-European tongues, and traceable through all their branches, is the parental title first uttered by the infant; Abba, Abi, Aba; Atta among the Slavonians, and again among the Goths; Athair among the Irish, the pater of Greece, fondly called at home papa, and apphys the _pater_ of Rome, the German Vater, and our own father—_il babbo_ in Italy, and daddy in English cottages.

In the East a parent is more usually called the father of his son than by his own name. This, however, is probably a late affectation, not applying to the time when the greatest of the patriarchs received his original name of Abram (father of height or elevation), which was changed by Divine appointment into Abraham (father of a multitude), foretelling the numerous and enduring offspring that have descended from him, and even to the present hour revere his name.

No one, however, seems to have presumed to copy it as long as the Israelites dwelt in their own land, and the first resuscitations of it appear to have been among the Christians of the patriarch’s native land, Mesopotamia, towards the end of the fourth century, when a hermit called Abraham, living near Edessa, obtained a place in the Coptic, Greek, and Roman calendars; and about the same time another Abraham was among the martyrs who were put to death by the fire worshipping zeal of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia. Two other Mesopotamian SS. Abraham lived in the next century, and died, one at Constantinople, the other in Auvergne, whither in some unaccountable manner he had been carried between foul winds and man-stealing barbarians when on a journey to visit the solitaries in Egypt.

As one of the patrons of Clermont, this Abraham must have been the means of diffusing namesakes in France, especially on the side towards the Low Countries. Abraham often occurs in the registers of Cambray; and in compliance with the fashion of adapting the name of the father to the daughter, Abra was there formed, though apparently not earlier than 1644. Indeed the Netherlands and Holland are the only countries where this patriarchal name is really national, generally shortened into Abram and Bram; and the Dutch settlers carried it into America, where it is generally called either Bram or Aby.

Many other Scripture names bear this prefix, but it would be contrary to our plan to dwell upon those that have not been in subsequent use or are devoid of peculiar interest.

Abigail (father of joy), strikes us as inappropriate to a woman, till we remember that the eastern nations use this expression for an abstract quality, and that the title would stand for joyfulness. Her ready courtesy to David seems to have recommended her to the earliest readers of the English Bible, for Abigail occurs in registers as early as 1573, and was for many years very frequent. Abigail Masham’s back-stair influence over Queen Anne has been generally supposed to have rendered it a soubriquet for a lady’s maid; but Mr. Bardsley, in his _Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature_, shows it to have been the name of the waiting gentlewoman in Beaumont’s Comedy, _The Scornful Ladie_, played in 1616. And in a play of Killigrew’s, some thirty years later, the term ‘Abigail’ is used for a waiting-maid, when the back-stair influence and supposed arts of Abigail Masham in the bedchamber of Queen Anne gave it a sudden fall. Abigail turned into a cant term for a lady’s maid, and thenceforth has been seldom heard even in a cottage.

Counter to his name was the course of the “Father of Peace.” He is Abishalom, or Absalom in the narrative of his life, a history that one would have thought entailed eternal discredit on the name; but it seems that in the earlier Christian times of Denmark, as well as in some other countries, a fashion prevailed, especially among the clergy, of supplementing the native name with one of Scriptural or ecclesiastical sound, and thus, about the middle of the twelfth century, Absalom was adopted by a distinguished Danish bishop as the synonym of what Professor Munch conjectures to have been his own name of Aslak (reward of the gods), though Danish tradition has contracted it into Axel. This last is a national Danish name, and it seems as if Absalom had been popularly supposed to be the Latin for Axel; since, in a Latin letter of 1443, Olaf Axelsson is turned into Olaus Absalonis.

Before quitting this prefix Ab, it seems to be the place to remark upon a name coming to us through the Tartar stock of languages, from the same source—Ab. Ata, (father, the source of Atalik, fatherlike or paternal,) is to the present day a title among the Usbeks of Bokhara. Thence that regent of the Huns, the scourge of God, who spread terror to the gates of Rome, would have been called Attalik among his own people, and thus historians have written his name of terror Attila.

In the tales of the Nibelungen, the great Hun, whom Kriemhild marries after the death of Siegfried, and at whose court the general slaughter takes place, is called Etzel in the German poem, Atli in the Northern saga, and this has generally been regarded as identifying him with Attila and fixing the date of the poem; but the monarch of the Huns is hospitable and civilized, with few features in common with the savage of Roman history; and if Attalik were a permanent regal title among the Huns, the chieftain may have been any other of the royal dynasty. His occurrence in that favourite poem, sung alike by all the Teutonic race, has rendered Atli very common from early times in the North as well as Etzel in Germany. The Lombards took it to Italy, where it turned into Eccelino, and in the person of the fierce mountain-lord, Eccelino di Romagna, became as fearful as Attila had ever been to the Romans.

The verb to fight or to rule furnished both the names of the wife of Abraham; Sarai (quarrelsome) was thus converted into Sarah (the princess). If we may judge from the example of the bride of Tobias, the daughters of Sarah were occasionally called by her name, and Zara has been, with what correctness I know not, used as an eastern name.

Sarah now and then occurs in England, as with Sara Beauchamp, (_temp._ Ed. I.,) but I suspect that she as well as Sarrota de Multon, who lived in the former reign, were alterations of some of the derivatives of the Teutonic prefix _Sig_—victory, as the masculine Saher or Serlo certainly came from Sigeheri. Sarah was never commonly used till after the Reformation, when it began to grow very popular, with its contraction Sally; and at the same time it was adopted as the equivalent for no less than three Irish names—Sadhbh (pronounced Soyv), Sorcha (bright), and Saraid (excellent). The two first are still in use; but Highlanders make a still stranger use of Sarah, which they use to translate their native More (great), perhaps in consequence of its meaning.

Elsewhere the name is occasionally used without the _h_ that our biblical translators gave it. It is not, however, very popular, though the French have used it enough to make it Sarotte; in Illyria its diminutive is Sarica; in Lithuania it is Zore.[6]

When the first glad tidings of the Child of Promise were announced, Sarah laughed for very joy and wonder, and Laughter (Yizchak) became the name of her son; known in Greek as Ἰσαὰκ, in Latin and to the European world as Isaac.

It was not revived among the early Jews; but, like Abraham, it was used by the eastern Christians, and St. Isaac, bishop of Beth Seleucia, was put to death with other Christian martyrs by Sapor II. of Persia. Another eastern Isaac was a hermit at Spoleto, in the sixth century, and Isaak has always been a favourite name in the Greek Church. Several of the family of Comnenus, both at Constantinople and Trebizond, rendered Isaak a royal name; and Isaak or Eisaak, whose feast falls on the 30th of May, is the patron of the cathedral at Petersburg. The name is frequently used in Russia and the other Greco-Slavonic countries, though not much varied.

It had not much favour in the West, though it appears once in Domesday Book, and occurs in the Cambray registers. Mr. Bardsley thinks that it, with some other Patriarchal names, became familiar through Mystery plays. But its chief popularity was after the Reformation, when it is continually to be found among the Huguenots, and it seems to have passed from them to other French families, since it is sometimes found in pedigrees, and the noted de Sacy, a grandson of the Arnauld family, was thus christened long after his forefathers had conformed to the Roman Catholic Church.

With us Izaak, as our ancestors spelt it, is just so prevalent among us as to have a recognized contraction, Ike or Ikey.

Isaac’s wife was called from _rabak_ (to bind). The word Ribkâ meant a cord with a noose, and probably was given as conveying the firmness of the marriage bond. The Septuagint and Latin gave Rebecca; the authorized version Rebekah; and both spellings are adopted by those bearing the name, who are generally called Becky.

Here too should be mentioned the faithful nurse of Rebekah, who was so lamented that the tree beneath which she was buried was known as the oak of weeping. Her name of Deborah came from a verb meaning to hum or buzz, and signified a bee, or, in after times, eloquent.

Deborah found no favour as a name except among English Puritans, and has acquired a certain amount of absurdity from various literary associations, which prevent ‘Deb.’ from being used except by the peasantry.

Of Rebekah’s two daughters-in-law, Rachel signified a ewe.

Dante made _l’antica Rachele_, with her beautiful eyes, the type of heavenly contemplation, ever gazing at the mirror that reflected heavenly glory; but her name was not popular, although the Manx princess, otherwise called Affrica, assumed it upon her marriage with Somerled, Lord of the Isles, somewhere about the eleventh century.

But Puritan days loved the sound of the word, and “that sweet saint who sat by Russell’s side” has given it a place in many an English family. Polish Jews call it Rahel; in which form it was borne by the metaphysical lady who became the wife of Varnhagen von Ense.

┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
│ English. │ German. │ Bavarian. │
│Matthias │Matthæus │Mathies │
│Mathies │Matthew │Mahe │
│Mat │Matthes │Hies │
│ │Matthis │Hiesel │
│ │ │Mathe │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Swiss. │Swedish. │ Danish. │
│Mathias │Mathias │Mathias │
│Thies │Mats │Mads │
│Thiesli │ │ │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Friesland. │ French. │ Italian. │
│Matthies │Matthieu │Matteo │
│Hise │Macé │Maffeo │
│Hisse │ │Feo │
│ │ │Mattia │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Spanish. │ Russian. │ Polish. │
│Mateo │Matfei │Mateusz │
│ │Matvej │Maciei │
│ │ │Maciek │
│ │ │Matyas │
├──────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Hungarian. │ Slovak. │ Esthonian. │
│Matyas │Matevz │Maddis │
│Mate │Tevz │Mats │
│ │Mattija │ │
└──────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘

Rachel’s less beloved and less favoured sister had a name that came from _lawah_ (hanging upon, dependence, or, as in her case it is explained, weariness)—Leah, in French Lea, in Italian Lia, under which title Dante makes her the emblem of active and fruitful, as is her sister of meditative, love. It was from the same word that she named her third son Levi, when she hoped that her husband would be more closely united or dependent on her. Levi’s name was carried on into the Gospel times, and belonged to the publican who was called from the receipt of custom to become an Apostle and an Evangelist. His Aramean name was, however, that by which he calls himself in his own narrative, or more correctly speaking, by its Græcized form. The old Hebrew Mattaniah (gift of the Lord) was probably the origin of both the names that we have in the Greek Testament as Ματθαῖος and Ματθίας, Matthæus and Matthias as the Latin renders them. Some, however, make the first mean a faithful man; but it is not possible to distinguish between the various forms that have risen out of the two among persons who, probably, had no idea that the Apostle who supplied the place of Judas was a different person from the Evangelist. The Emperor Charles V. was born on St. Matthias' day, and the text “The lot fell on Matthias” was regarded as a good augury, whence Matthias came into favour in Austria and its dependencies. The name has been more popular in Germany and its dependencies. Matteo heads the Milanese Visconti, who were mostly named after the Evangelists.

Apostolic names are particularly common in Bavaria, probably from the once frequent representations of the Mystery of the Passion. In Germany, SS. Matthew and Matthias have produced the surnames Matthies, Matys, Thiess, and Thiessen, Latinized after a queer scholarly fashion into Thysius.