Hi There. What’s Your Name…Mean…?

A few interesting facts from the past to illustrate a sense of living history.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Names are a particular interest of mine because, like the late great George Carlin, interests cost me nothing…apart from perhaps a few late fees at the public library; but also because they allow for a tangible sense of the threads of history which extend back to before history was a thing. We obviously can’t trace our specific lineages back to the Stone Age as yet, but our names get us close in that they do allow us a sense of continuity and perhaps even a sense of language derivation itself, even if we aren’t readily aware of it.

For instance, the given name Vivian survives from the Roman era where its proper forms, according to Wikipedia were Vivianus for men and Viviana for women. Marcus is also a popular name which descended from the Romans, likely popular because the root of the name associates it with the god Mars, who was a Roman derivation of the Greek War god Ares; and who the hell wouldn’t have wanted to be associated with that kind of presumed power thousands of years ago, when people were so naive to reality that mystical significance could be found virtually EVERYWHERE…? Anyway, from Marcus we derive the feminine Marcia and the name Marcellus, and so on.