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A family story · All four branches line · 2026-09-24

New Curious names in the tree

Fear, Preserved, Loammi, Numidia, Zéolide - where the family's strangest first names came from, and who bore them.

Our family tree, collaterals included, has some first names that look strange today: a woman called Fear, three men called Preserved Fish, a boy called Loammi, which is Hebrew for “not my people”, and a Louisiana girl called Zéolide. Almost all of them come from one of a handful of naming traditions. The meanings below are what each name means in general; the records rarely say why a particular child was given it.

Puritan virtues and providences

English Puritans of the late 1500s and 1600s rejected saints' names and named children for virtues, for pious commands, or for God's hand in the birth. The fashion crossed on the Mayflower and lasted in New England for two centuries.

Fear

The fear of God, the beginning of wisdom. A daughter of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower; she married Isaac Allerton.

Patience

A virtue name. Fear's elder sister, who married Thomas Prence, later governor of Plymouth.

Love

One of the rarest Puritan names, given to a boy. Love Brewster came over on the Mayflower as a child.

Wrestling

Wrestling against sin, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. Elder Brewster gave it to a son, and the family kept it for a grandson.

Preserved

A providence name: the child, or the mother, was thought preserved by God through a dangerous birth. It ran for three generations of the Quaker Fish family. The New York merchant Preserved Fish (1766–1846) was a different man, a kinsman descended from the same Thomas Fish who settled at Portsmouth in 1643.

Deliverance

Deliverance from danger, usually a hard birth. A Windsor, Connecticut favourite.

Remembrance

Remembering God's mercies. Here it was given to a boy as well as a girl.

Wait / Waite

From "wait on the Lord" (Psalm 27). Used for both sexes, and still in use in upstate New York in 1809.

Honor

A virtue name. Honor Treat married John Deming of Wethersfield, one of that town's founders.

  • Honor Treat · 1616–1705 · Wethersfield, Connecticut

Experience

The "experience" of God's grace in conversion.

Desire

The soul's desire for God. It turns up twice among Pilgrim families, and also once in Louisiana, where it is really the French Désiré ("longed-for"), a boy's name.

Mercy · Hope · Prudence · Faith

The better-known virtues, all here. Faith is a modern revival.

Deep-cut Bible names

Once saints were out, New England parents mined the Old Testament for names no one else was using. Some come from very obscure verses.

Loammi

Hebrew "not my people": the name the prophet Hosea gives his son as a sign of God's rejection. A startling choice that was nonetheless used in 18th-century Connecticut.

Meribah

Not a person at all but a place: Meribah, "quarrelling", where the Israelites complained in the desert (Exodus 17). Given to a child who died at ten.

Peleg

"Division": a great-grandson of Shem, "for in his days was the earth divided" (Genesis 10).

Jabez

"He makes sorrow"; his mother bore him in pain (1 Chronicles 4).

Jahaziel

"God sees": a Levite on whom the spirit came (2 Chronicles 20).

Abishai

A nephew of King David and one of his captains.

Abiah · Abijah

"The Lord is my father"; used for girls and boys alike.

Elnathan

"God has given."

Elihu

The young man who answers Job last.

Shubal

Shubael, a Levite of David's time.

Amasa

Absalom's commander, later killed by Joab.

Gad · Asher · Zebulun

Sons of Jacob, heads of three of the twelve tribes.

Bathsheba

King David's wife and Solomon's mother.

Bethiah · Bithiah

"Daughter of the Lord": the Pharaoh's daughter in 1 Chronicles 4.

Huldah

The prophetess consulted by King Josiah.

Jedidah · Jerusha

Two queen mothers of Judah: Jedidah ("beloved") of Josiah, Jerusha of Jotham.

Keziah

"Cassia", a spice: one of Job's three daughters, born after his trials.

Thirza

Tirzah, one of the five daughters of Zelophehad who won the right to inherit.

Mehitable

Mehetabel, "God makes happy", a single line in Genesis 36. Hugely popular in colonial New England.

Dorcas · Damaris

New Testament women: Dorcas ("gazelle") raised from the dead by Peter; Damaris converted by Paul at Athens.

Laban · Micah · Eleazer · Enoch · Job

More Old Testament men, rarer then than now.

Rome, Greece and the romances

From the 1700s educated families on both sides reached for antiquity and for the heroes of plays and novels. Louisiana's French families took to it especially.

Numidia

The ancient Berber kingdom of North Africa, Rome's ally and later a Roman province: a place name used as a boy's first name. His middle name is his father's.

Numa

Numa Pompilius, the wise second king of Rome.

Fortunatus

Latin "fortunate"; also a 6th-century Latin poet and saint.

Caesar

The Roman title, given to a boy of an Acadian family in Spanish Louisiana.

Sallust

The Roman historian of Catiline's conspiracy.

Leonidas

The Spartan king of Thermopylae.

Orestes · Orestine

Agamemnon's avenging son, from Greek tragedy.

Ériphile

A princess in Racine's tragedy Iphigénie (1674).

Clorinde

The warrior maiden of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.

Uranie

Urania, the Muse of astronomy.

Némorin

The shepherd hero of Florian's pastoral novel Estelle et Némorin (1788).

Bélizaire

Belisarius, Justinian's general, the hero of a famous 1767 novel by Marmontel.

Cléandre · Hermogène

Greek names from French classical plays.

Arthémise

Artemisia, the queen of Caria who built the Mausoleum.

Palmyre

Palmyra, the Syrian desert city of Queen Zenobia.

Minerva

The Roman goddess of wisdom.

Sophronia · Calista · Diantha · Electa

Greek-sounding coinages beloved of 19th-century New England: "prudent", "most beautiful", "divine flower", "chosen".

Leander · Rodolphus · Erasmus

Leander swam the Hellespont for Hero; Rodolphus is Rudolph in Latin dress; Erasmus the Dutch scholar.

Old French saints

French Catholic families named children for the saint of the day or of their home region, and some of those saints are little known outside France.

Amatus

Latin for Amé (Saint Amatus of Remiremont), "loved". Carried by Floyd Amatus Delahorne himself.

Chrysostome

Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), the "golden-mouthed" archbishop of Constantinople: a Byzantine saint in an Acadian farming family. Father and son; the son was born on Belle-Île-en-Mer, where Acadian exiles were settled after the deportation.

Radegonde

Saint Radegund, a 6th-century Frankish queen who became a nun at Poitiers, the heart of Acadian France.

Paterne · Rieul · Ferréol

Early bishops of Vannes, Senlis and Limoges: local saints.

Scholastique · Pétronille

Saint Benedict's twin sister; a Roman virgin martyr.

Anaclet · Télesphore

Two of the earliest popes.

Sosthène · Ulgère · Ludivine

Sosthenes, a companion of Paul; Ulger, a bishop of Angers; Lidwina of Schiedam.

Balthazar · Dieudonné

Balthazar is one of the three Magi, the Three Wise Men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus; Dieudonné means "God-given".

Louisiana fancy

In the 19th century Creole and Acadian Louisiana invented names freely: ornate feminine forms, sound-alikes and borrowings found nowhere in France.

Osite · Ozite · Ozéa

A Louisiana favourite with no clear French source; sometimes explained as a pet form of Rosalie or Josèphe.

Zéolide

An invented name of the period.

Thélismar

A Louisiana coinage, perhaps built on Télesphore.

Cidalise · Doralise · Ordalie

Romantic feminine forms fashionable around 1800-1830.

Félonise · Philomène

Philomena, a saint newly famous in the 1830s; Félonise is a local variant.

Solidaine · Dulcide · Léadore · Udora

One-off inventions of the kind Louisiana registers are full of.

Béloni · Belzire · Azélia · Émérite · Marcelite

More of the same fashion.

Duralde

A surname as a first name: the Duralde family were prominent in colonial Louisiana (Martin Duralde was commandant of the Attakapas and Opelousas posts).

Places and presidents

American parents named children for their state, for towns and for the great men of the day.

Louisiana

The state itself, as a girl's name.

Lucerne · Leamington

The Swiss lake city; the English spa town.

Presidents

Washington and Jefferson; Ulysses probably for General Grant (1870); Cleveland and Roosevelt in 20th-century Louisiana.

Puzzles

Names that are unexplained, or probably misread somewhere along the way.

Begat

Almost certainly Bagot, an English surname used as a first name. Bagot Eggleston was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut. "Begat" is a spelling that reads as a Bible joke.

Orcus

Orcus was the Roman god of the dead. An odd choice for a baby; possibly a misreading of another name.

Tetit

Perhaps "Petit", or a family nickname taken down as a name.

  • Tetit Serrette

Boh

Probably Bo, a Danish name, in a transcriber's spelling.

Egra · Zal

Unexplained middle names.

Left out: anyone who may be living, and ordinary names in unusual spellings. Some "names" in the tree are record-keepers' stand-ins, such as Infant son, Miss and (unnamed), and are not listed.

Updated 2026-09-24

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