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later...25 the list could be easily extended but it’s more important to note that this fashion affected different strata of the society. thus, the name Manasses was popular in the 9-10th centuries among the counts of Dijon, langres and Rethel.26 in the Eastern Christian world the most notorious case is no doubt that of the four brothers who semi-officially ruled Bulgaria from 971 onwards: their names were David, Moses, aaron and samuel.27
Considerably more numerous were of course such Old testament names which in medieval times became the names of saints, sometimes with very significant consequences for the name-stock of certain countries or regions. thus, the great popularity of the name David in the Celtic world had little to do with the biblical king; it was the result of the cult of saint David, the abbot of Minevia (d. 589), perceived later as the patron of Wales. sometimes we can’t be sure whether a person carrying an Old testament name was called in honor of a biblical character or a later saint of the same name. this is, for example, the case of isaac, the name not only of the biblical patriarch but also of two important saints — isaac of Dalmatia (d. 383) and isaac of syria (d. about 700). it was quite popular among the Byzantine elite in the 11th and 12th centuries (there were even two emperors of the period called issac, a Komnenos and an angelos) and not unknown in the West of roughly the same age.28
2. Eastern and Western understanding of what is a Christian name
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later canonized under their pagan names which as a result became Christian.30 One of Vladimir’s sons, Yaroslav (“glory of Yarilo”, the slavic god of spring and fertility), who after a fraternal war became in 1019 the prince of Kiev and came to be known as Ya- roslav the Wise, was baptized as george. numerous other facts prove that this was the norm in medieval Russia. true, we know the baptismal names of only about every fifth Russian prince of the pre-Mongolian period (i. e. before 1237) but this is no doubt due to the condition of the sources. it may be asserted that each prince of importance about whom there is sufficient data is known to us by his baptismal name no matter whether he had or had not also a pagan name.
Until the late 11th c. it was common for the Russian princes to give their sons a dynastic pagan name of slavic or scandinavian origin, and even in those cases when their baptismal names are mentioned in the sources the dynastic name played a much more important role; it was the “real” official public name. starting from the late 11th c. we find princes who are referred to in the chronicles and other sources only by their baptismal names. One of the first examples is Yuri (i. e. george) the longarmed (ca.
1090 - 1157), prince of Vladimir and suzdal, who is traditionally regarded as the founder of Moscow. likewise, his younger brother and his elder son are depicted in chronicles only under the baptismal name — andrei. However Yuri’s younger son, born in 1154, though baptized as Dmitriy, was better known as Vsevolod (“who possesses all”) the Big nest — for having fathered a very large family. the percentage of princes mentioned in the sources exceptionally by their baptismal names grew slowly starting from the 12th c. so that, for example, none of the princes of Moscow (the first, Daniel, died in 1303) seem to have had a pagan name though they are attested in one of the lateral branches of the family, that of the princes of serpuhov and Borovsk. However it was not until the 15th c. that dynastic pagan names totally disappear in the Ruric dynasty. among the last to bear such a name were Oleg of Riazan (ca. 1350 — 1402) whose Christian name was Jacob, and Yaroslav of Borovsk (1388-1426) baptized as athanasius.31 among other noble families as well as among common folk baptismal names triumphed over pagan names more or less in the same time though this question demands more research.32 similar customs of name-giving persisted in Bulagaria well into the 14th century, both in the royal family (theodore svetoslav, ivan sratsimir, etc.) and among common people.33
the idea that baptism presupposes an assumption of a saint’s name was not un- known during the early Middle ages in Western Europe though few authors of the time state this clearly. One of them was Bede the Venerable when commenting is. 65.15,
30. the canonization of saint Vladimir took place probably in the 2nd half of the 13th c. several earlier princes called Vladimir were baptized under other names: Basil, Demetrius, John, Peter, etc. see: андРей ЮРьевич Литвина,
соБоРаво Владимире Успенский, ВыборимениУрУсскихкнязейВ X-XVI ВВ, династическаяистоРиясквоЗьПРиЗму антРоПонимики, м., 2006, с. 494-501.
31. тамже. с. 199. 429.
32. вЛадимиР андРеевич никонов, имяиобщестВо, м., 1974, с. 35, 40, 46-47.
33. ПРоф. никоЛай ковачев, българскаономастика, софия, 1987.
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act 4.12 and some other passages from the Bible.34 Facts to prove that such a practice existed are rare but they are available. thus, telling about the baptism of the former Wessex king Cædwalla (685-688) who renounced his throne and desiring to atone for his numerous sins chose to spend what was left of his life in Rome, Bede notices that “in baptism the pope sergius gave him the name Peter, so that by name he could join the most blessed leader of the apostles”.35 there are reasons to believe that the lombard king agilulf (590-616) had a Christian name Paul.36 One of the sons of king Chilperic of neustria (561-584) was baptized as samson and the context seems to point that he had no other name.37 it appears that he was named for saint samson, a Breton bishop died in 565 and revered already in his lifetime, and not for the biblical hero. true, it has been argued that the boy’s name was suggested (also?) by the famous story of the latter’s hair — it is common knowledge that the distinctive feature of the Merovingian lineage was long flock. among the Frankish nobility of the vi-viii centuries we occasionally meet people with undoubtedly Christian names, such as stephen and gregory, and it’s not improbable that they were given in honor of particular Roman pontifics, specifically of stephen ii (752-757), the first pope to have visited gaul who had perhaps person- ally baptized some of his younger namesakes.38 We know of course hundreds of men and women who lived at that time in the Frankish kingdom and had normal Christian names but they were mostly either clerics who took a new name together with the cloak or gallo-Romans for whom at least some of these names could have been ethnical and not necessarily baptismal. For example gregory of tours mentions a certain ambrosius, from tours, and a Desiderius from Bordeaux.39 this does not in any way dismiss the problem of pagan names of ancient origin (such as aprilis and others derived from the denominations of the months; they were often given to slaves)40 which continued to be used in the early Middle ages and their correlation with the baptismal names of the
“Romans” of this period.41 However the most indicative are cases of coexistence of a pagan and a baptismal name among former barbarians. some of them are quite explicit.
34. Beda venerabiliS, Homilia, ii, 108-110: “si percepta in Christo purificatione baptismi salutaris derivatum a nomine Christi gaudeant mutuasse cognomen...”
35. Beda venerabiliS, Historia ecclesiastica, v. 7: “Caedualla rex Occidentalium Saxonum... Cui etiam tempore baptismatis papa memoratus Petri nomen imposuerat, ut beatissimo apostolorum principi, ad cujus sacratissimum corpus a finibus terrae pio doctus amore venerat, etiam nominis ipsius consortio jungeretur...”
36. gregorius TuronenSiS, Historia Francorum, X, 3: calls king authari’s successor Paul where as Edictus Rothari (Prologus); Paul deacon, Historia gentis Langobardorum, iii, 35: speak of him as agilulf.
37. gregorius TuronenSiS, Historia Francorum, V, 22: “Samson, filius Chilperici regis iunior, a disenteria et febre conpraehensus, a rebus humanis excessit”.
38. Régine le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (vii-xsiècle). Essai d’anthroponymie sociale.
Publications de la sorbonne, Paris, 1995, p. 189-190.
39. gregorius TuronenSiS, Historia Francorum, Vi, 13; iX, 6.
40. Marie-thérèse MorleT, Les noms des personnes..., vol. ii, p. 20.
41. see a good case study: ake bergh, Etudes d’anthroponymie provençale. Les noms de personne du polyptyque de Wadalde (a. 814), Elanders Boktryckeri aktiebolag, göteborg, 1941.
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a good example is given by the Vita of saint aldegundis (vii c., Hainaut) which men- tions a certain “Madelgarius known as Vincentius”.42
similar data is available for later centuries. Combinations of a vernacular name of germanic or Romanic origin with a biblical name or a name of a martyr are not uncom- mon in the French Midi (which i know better than other regions) as well as elsewhere in south-West Europe.43 true, only few of these examples are really transparent and watertight; the best i can give today comes from 10th c. Rodez.44 Yet i would rather make emphasis on three very particular cases referring to the southern French nobility which are relatively well documented.