Chapter CCXXII: Section X: Life

Life played its part among Teutonic names. One old word conveying this sense was the Gothic _ferchvus_, Saxon _feorh_, and Northern _fiorh_. The Anglo-Saxon _feorh_ also meant youth, and thus passed on to mean a young man.

There are not many names from thence, but one of the few has been a great perplexity, and has been explained in many ways, _i. e._ the Gothic Ferhonanths, the last syllable being _nanth_, daring, so that its sense would be, ‘adventuring his life.’ It was the Spanish Goths who used this gallant name, and made it with their Romance tongues into Fernan and Fernando. San Fernando, king of Castille, and father of our own Eleanor, made it a favourite for his royal line; and a younger son of Castille so called, being heir of Aragon, carried it thither, and thence it passed to southern France, where the grandson of old King René was Ferrand or Ferry. Aragon again bestowed it upon Naples; but it was there prolonged into Ferdinando, whilst Spanish elisions had at home turned it to Hernan, as the conqueror of Mexico termed himself. It was bestowed upon the second son of Juana la Loca, who was born in Spain, and long preferred there to his brother, though it was to the imperial throne that he was destined to succeed, and to render his Spanish name national through Germany, where Ferdinand has long been a sore puzzle; sometimes explained by _fart_, a journey, and sometimes by _fried_, peace, but never satisfactorily. The contraction Nandel was the shout of the mob in the ears of Ferdinand, the obstinate, narrow-minded man who won his cause by mere force of undivided aim. It is so popular in Spain and Germany as in each to have a feminine, Fernanda and Ferdinandine.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │
│Ferdinand │Ferdinand │Fernando │Ferdinando │
│ │Ferrand │Hernando │Fernando │
│ │Ferry │Hernan │Ferrante │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Polish. │ Lettish. │ │
│Ferdinand │Ferdynand │Werlands │ │
│Nandl │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Ferahbald and Ferahmund were forgotten old German forms, and Fjorleif was known in the North.

This is, probably, relic of life, as otherwise the word would be a reduplication; but the termination _leif_ or _lif_ is sometimes used, being our very word life.

There are two words which may be said to form names of progress, the German _gang_, from to go, sometimes commencing as in Gangolf, but more usual at the end of a word; and the Northern _stig_, from the universal root _stig_, found in the Greek ἔστιχον, and in our step and stile, also stairs, for the usual sense of the word implies mounting upwards; and the name of the semi-Danish archbishop of Canterbury who crowned Harold, and was one of the Conqueror’s lifelong captives, was the participle Stigand, mounting, and was long extant in the North, as well as the Danish Styge and Stygge.