Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature

In an era when most English children received saints' names or family inheritances, a radical sect chose to name their children after scripture itself. Merciful. Accepted. Truth. Temperance. Pardon. These were not surnames or nicknames but the actual given names that Puritan parents bestowed upon their infants, drawn from biblical phrases, pious ejaculations, and godly admonitions. Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley's 1872 study excavates this peculiar corner of religious history, tracing how the Reformation's emphasis on scripture led English Puritans to transform sacred texts into personal nomenclature. Using church records from Warbleton and beyond, Bardsley documents over a hundred such names, revealing a community that believed a child's name could mark them as one of the "truly godly and renewed portion of the community." The book also follows these naming customs across the Atlantic, showing how they took root among the first generation of native-born Americans. What emerges is more than a catalog of eccentric nomenclature: it is a window into a community's anxieties about salvation, identity, and belonging, rendered in the most intimate possible way through the names parents chose for their children.