Tag Archives: Latinised names

Famous Name: Roxanne

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

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tumblr_mdn8en8PGI1qa13pro1_1280Ebony at Babynameobsessed has a series called Names From My Childhood, and Abby recently had a post on girls names from 1980s television at Appellation Mountain. So I thought I would cover a 1980s name from my TV-watching childhood.

I was slightly hampered as a young television viewer, because I grew up in a rural area which only had one channel, and my family’s home was in some kind of TV black spot which meant we couldn’t get any television reception at all. However, I had friends and relatives within walking and cycling distance, so rather than get home from school and slump in front of the box, I got home from school, jumped on my bike, pedalled furiously, then slumped in front of the box.

Of course, I had to pretty much watch whatever other people had on, and my young cousins used to tune in to the long-running puppet show Mr Squiggle, where a cheery pencil-nosed man from the moon turned children’s squiggles into recognisable pictures. Mr Squiggle had a human assistant, and as it was on air for fifty years, you can tell someone’s age from the assistant they watched. Baby Boomers loved Miss Pat, Gen Xers were Miss Jane fans, while for my cousins it was Roxanne all the way.

Slightly embarrassing to admit, but while Abby was (apparently) watching Dallas and Dynasty, I was enjoying kiddie puppet shows!

Roxanne is a variant of Roxane, a French form of Roxana. Roxana is the Latinised form of the name Roshanak; a Bactrian name derived from the Avestan language of East Iran, meaning “bright, shining, radiant”. It can be understood as “luminous beauty”, “lovely flame”, or “shining star”, and this is one of the many names which have the meaning of “light” behind them. Roshanak is still a common girl’s name in Iran.

The name has become well known to us due to one woman – a Bactrian princess who became the wife of Alexander the Great. Roxana was from the ancient city of Balkh, now a small town in northern Afghanistan, and she met Alexander when he conquered the fort she was hiding in.

It is said that Alexander fell for Roxana on sight, and according to the Macedonians she was the one of the loveliest women they had seen in Asia. Despite strong opposition from his generals, Alexander married Roxana.

Instead of marrying purely for political ends, Alexander married for love, because he is said to have been infatuated with the beautiful Roxana. For her part, Roxana was pleased that her new husband didn’t force himself upon her at once, but actually made an effort to get to know her as a person (which tells you what marriage in the ancient world was generally like).

After Alexander died, Roxana bore him a posthumous son, also Alexander. To protect her position and that of her son, she murdered Alexander’s second wife Stateira, married for reasons of diplomacy, and probably his third wife as well, who was Stateira’s cousin. Roxana and her son were assassinated themselves in the power struggles following Alexander’s death.

Roxana’s romantic story was told in Nathaniel Lee’s 17th century tragedy, The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great. The play was a huge hit right into the 19th century, and actresses who were jealous of each other were often cast in the lead roles, to add extra spice to the performance.

The name received a further boost from Daniel Defoe’s 18th century novel, Roxana, about a woman who falls into prostitution but gains freedom by marrying for money. Although a murderer and a prostitute/gold digger may not seem like appealing namesakes, they were strong, independent female characters, and Roxana became established as an English name in the 18th century.

The French form became well known through Edmond Rostand’s 19th century play Cyrano de Bergerac, where Roxane is the beautiful woman Cyrano longs for and woos for another, falsely believing she could never love an “ugly” man like himself.

Roxanne first ranked in the charts in the 1950s, after the 1950 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Mala Powers in the role of Roxane; Roxanne debuted at #364 that decade. Roxanne was #282 in the 1960s, sank to #424 in the 1970s, and peaked in the 1980s at #272.

The 1980s put the focus on the name Roxanne for a few reasons. The hit song Roxanne was recorded by The Police in 1978 and re-released in 1979; Sting was inspired to write the song by the prostitutes around the band’s hotel in Paris. An old poster for Cyrano de Bergerac was hanging in the hotel’s foyer, which is where the name Roxanne came from. Not only popular in the charts of 1979-80, the pop classic Roxanne has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was remixed into El Tango de Roxanne in Moulin Rouge.

In the mid-1980s, the world of hip-hop went through The Roxanne Wars, where a series of “answer records” were released, inspired by UTFO’s Roxanne, Roxanne. Because of UTFO’s non-appearance at a show, teenager (Lolita) Roxanne Shante brought out Roxanne’s Revenge in answer. There were perhaps as many 100 answer records during the Roxanne Wars, and even a dance, as referenced in Do the Roxanne. So chances are you know at least one 1980s song with Roxanne in the title!

You might not think that a prostitute and a (rather silly and contrived) musical rivalry would be of much help to a name’s popularity, but as we’ve seen, a prostitute and a rather silly and contrived stage rivalry is exactly how Roxana became established in the 18th century. History repeats.

And keeps repeating. Towards the end of the 1980s, the movie Roxanne came out with Daryl Hannah in the title role: a clever rom-com remake of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which gave the tragedy an upbeat ending. In the movie, Roxanne is a brainy astronomer.

After the 1980s, the name Roxanne plummeted, and left the charts completely in the early 2000s. You might say this name is dated, and could claim it as a trendy name, but as Roxanne never became popular, it still seems usable – in fact celebrity parents Toby Allen and Darren Weller chose it as their daughter’s name.

Roxanne has a fashionable X in it, while the -anne at the end makes it seem like one of the many Anne names. I have seen a couple of babies named Roxy, maybe influenced by celebrity mum Roxy Jacenko, and Rocky would make a cool tough-girl nickname.

POLL RESULTS
Roxanne received an approval rating of 51%. 16% of people saw Roxanne as too dated and 1980s, but 15% thought it was strong and sexy.

 

Famous Name: Hugo

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

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Hugo_Throssell

It will be Remembrance Day next Monday, so we are going to look at the name of another First World War hero.

Hugo Vivian Hope Throssell was from the country town of Northam in Western Australian, the son of former Western Australian premier George Throssell, who had also been Mayor of Northam, and the town’s first official citizen. George was prominent in local business and conservative politics, and was known as “the Lion of Northam”.

Hugo was sent to an elite boy’s boarding school in Adelaide, where he was captain of the football team, and a champion athlete and boxer. After leaving school, Hugo became a jackaroo on cattle stations in the north, then he and his older brother Frank Erick Cottrell (“Ric”) bought a farm together in the wheat belt. The brothers had a close bond, and were later described as “David and Jonathan” in their devotion to each other.

When war broke out in 1914, Hugo and Ric joined the 10th Light Horse Regiment, and Hugo was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Hugo arrived at Gallipoli in August 1915, just before the assault on the Nek, which he called “that FOOL charge”. Within minutes, 9 officers and 73 men from his regiment were killed.

Hugo was eager to avenge the 10th Light Horse, and on August 29, the regiment were brought into action to take a trench full of Turkish troops near the summit of Hill 60. The surrounds became a slaughterhouse, with the bodies of the dead piling up so quickly there was no time to bury them.

A fierce bomb fight began, described by Hugo as a sort of gruesome tennis match – it was one of the most intensive bomb fights of the Australians at Gallipoli. During the night, more than 3000 bombs were thrown, with the Western Australians picking up bombs thrown at them and hurling them back.

At one point, Hugo was in sole command of the regiment, and was wounded twice, continuing to yell encouragement to the men with his face covered in blood. For his bravery and inspirational leadership, Hugo received the Victoria Cross; it was the first VC a Western Australian had won during the war.

Promoted to captain, Hugo joined his regiment in Egypt, where he was wounded in April 1917 at the second battle of Gaza. It was here that his brother was killed; the night Ric disappeared, Hugo crawled across the battlefield under enemy fire, searching in vain for his brother amongst the dead and dying, whistling for him with the signal they had used since they were boys. Hugo took part in the final offensives in Palestine, and led the 10th Light Horse guard of honour at the fall of Jerusalem.

Soon after the war’s end, Hugo married an idealistic young Australian writer named Katherine Susannah Prichard, who he had met while in London for medical treatment, and settled on a farm near Perth. Already an award-winning novelist when she married Hugo, Katherine’s career continued to flourish. In 1920, Katherine became a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, with Hugo joining her as a speaker to support the unemployed and striking workers.

Hugo’s experience of war had made him a pacifist and a socialist, but his views on the futility of war outraged many, especially coming from a war hero, and the son of a conservative political figure. His political opinions damaged his chances of employment during the Depression, and he fell into serious debt. At one point he pawned his VC just so he could take his son to the movies.

Believing that he could provide better for his family if he left them a war service pension, he shot himself in 1933, and was buried with full military honours. His wife, who had been on tour in the former Soviet Union at the time, suffered another unbearable anguish on top of losing her husband. She would never know if Hugo had read the manuscript of her unfinished novel, Intimate Strangers, in which an unwanted husband kills himself (Katherine changed the ending to the novel before publication).

Friends blamed Hugo’s depression on an attack of meningitis he had suffered in the trenches of Gallipoli which almost killed him. Depression and disordered thinking can be an after-effect of meningitis, and Hugo had undoubtedly been under severe post-traumatic stress since his arrival at Gallipoli. The tragedy of his war was that it damaged him psychologically to the point where he felt he could not continue.

In 1954 a memorial was built to Hugo outside his home, and a ward at Hollywood Private Hospital in Perth is named after him. In 1983 his son Ric Throssell gave his Victoria Cross to the People for Nuclear Disarmament. The Returned Servicemen’s League bought the medal and presented it to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where it is on display in the Hall of Valour.

Hugo is the Latinised form of the Germanic name Hugh, meaning “mind, heart, spirit”, which was introduced to Britain by the Normans. In medieval times, the name Hugo would have been commonly used in Latin documents, but the person would have been called Hugh in everyday life.

Another famous Australian with this name is actor Hugo Weaving, who has been in several Hollywood blockbusters, as well as many Australian films. The name Hugo has been in the charts since the 1970s, and began ranking in the 1980s at #421 – the same decade that Hugo Weaving’s screen career began, in the 1984 cricketing miniseries Bodyline.

During the 1990s, when Hugo Weaving gained international attention for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Hugo was #248, and by the early 2000s, when Hugo Weaving was starring in The Matrix series as Agent Smith, and The Lord of the Rings as Elrond, it was #143. In the mid to late 2000s, when Hugo Weaving was providing the voice of the villainous Megatron in The Transformers, it had risen to #117.

The name Hugo made the NSW Top 100 in 2009, debuting at #93, and last year was one of the biggest risers for boys nationally, going up eleven places. Currently it is #76 nationally, #67 in New South Wales, #79 in Victoria, #83 in Queensland, #79 in Tasmania, and #76 in the Australian Capital Territory. Hugo went up 10 places in Victoria and 23 places in New South Wales, so it is making significant gains. Based on its current trajectory of popularity, I have picked it to be a Top Ten name by 2028.

Hugo is more popular here than in either the US or the UK, where it is not yet in the Top 100. However, it is extremely popular in Europe, and is a Top Ten name in France, Spain and Sweden, so we are following the lead of European countries rather than English-speaking ones.

This is a handsome name with a touch of European sophistication, and a fashionable OOH sound as well as a trendy O ending. It doesn’t really surprise me that Hugo is rising through the rankings while steady classic Hugh continues to plod along in the mid-100s, where it’s been since the 1980s. Hugo is more stylish and fits in better with current trends. If you love the name Hugo, you certainly won’t be alone!

POLL RESULT: Hugo received an approval rating of 80%, making it one of the most well-liked names of the year. People saw the name Hugo as handsome or attractive (27%), stylish and sophisticated (19%), hip and cool (15%), and cute and quirky (15%). However, 8% preferred classic Hugh, and 5% gloomily prognosticated that Hugo would soon be too popular. Only one person thought it was already too popular.

(Photo of Hugo Throssell from the State Library of Western Australia)

Requested Name: Genevieve

12 Wednesday Jun 2013

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The name Genevieve is in common use because of one woman – Saint Genevieve, one of the patron saints of Paris. Genevieve was born in the 5th century, and embarked on a holy life at an early age, because she was only a little girl when she was consecrated to God. She became a nun while still a teenager, and after the death of her parents, went to live in Paris in a religious community. Genevieve lived an austere and pious life, with frequent visions of heavenly saints and angels, and works of charity.

In 451 Attila and his Huns were sweeping over Gaul, and the inhabitants of Paris prepared to flee in terror. Genevieve encouraged them to trust in God, and urged them to pray, telling them that if they did so, Paris would be spared. Apart from anything else, this was sensible advice, because it restored calm to the city, and of course Paris would have been taken at once if its citizens had evacuated. Attila turned his hordes towards Orléans, leaving Paris untouched. (Fortunately Orléans didn’t come to any major harm, and the Huns were eventually defeated).

Some years later, Paris was taken by the Frankish leader Childeric. During the siege, Genevieve distinguished herself through many acts of self-sacrifice, and because of her diplomatic efforts, Childeric, and his successor, Clovis I, showed unusual clemency towards the citizens of Paris. Clovis I made the city his capital, which was the start of Paris becoming one of the great capital cities of the world.

A hill on the city’s Left Bank where Saint Genevieve prayed is still known as the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, and on top of it is the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the main reference library for students from the nearby Sorbonne, which inherited the writings and collections of a medieval abbey where St Genevieve is said to have been buried. It has been at the heart of French culture and education from the beginning. One of the library’s directors in the 20th century was Geneviève Boisard, so the saint’s name lived on in many ways.

Another famous French namesake is the legendary Genevieve de Brabant, a noblewoman falsely accused of infidelity who lived in a cave with her young son, fed by a helpful deer, until her husband found her after discovering her accuser’s treachery. The story is based on the true story of Marie de Brabant, wife of the Duke of Bavaria, who was suspected of adultery due to a mix-up in the mail, tried, and beheaded in 1256. When it was proved that the verdict had been invalid, the duke had to do penance. The change of name from Marie to Genevieve is almost certainly due to the cult of Saint Genevieve (the deer seems to be borrowed from the legend of Saint Giles).

The meaning of the name Genevieve is obscure. In medieval times the saint’s name was recorded as Genovefa (Latinised as Genoveva), a Gaulish name which may come from the ancient word for “tribe, family”, related to the word for “born”, and thus a distant relative of the word Genesis (which comes from Latin, but from the same ancient roots). Suggestions that Genevieve is a Gaulish form of Guinevere or Jennifer are persistent but most likely fanciful (for a start, Guinevere is already a French form of a name – it doesn’t make much sense a name would two different French forms).

The French spelling of the name is Geneviève, and in English, we remove the accent mark over the name, which also changes the pronunciation to JEN-uh-veev. I won’t attempt to reproduce the French pronunciations, which differ  depending on someone’s accent – a Parisian will say Geneviève differently to a French-speaker from Brussels or Montreal.

Genevieve has charted in Australia since the 1930s, entering the charts at the same time as Jennifer. I suspect that Genevieve was seen as a slightly more exotic version of Jennifer, but while Jennifer went straight into the Top 100 from nowhere, Genevieve debuted at the more modest #306. I think in some ways Genevieve has had the advantage, because while Jennifer peaked in the 1950s and enjoyed a lengthy afterglow of popularity lasting many decades, Genevieve has never been higher than #214. Currently Genevieve is #279 in New South Wales, where it is still out-performed by Jennifer at #260. In Victoria, Genevieve is #179, and Jennifer #206.

Genevieve is an elegant French name, which has remained in constant use here for many decades, without ever becoming popular. It’s pretty and feminine, but not in the least frilly – in fact, it sounds quite intellectual because of its importance to French culture. Its saintly namesake was a woman of brains and courage, and its legendary namesake part of a romantic fairytale which corrects the cruel injustice of real life.

In the past, the most common nicknames for Genevieve were Gen, Genna or Genny (still influenced by Jennifer), but you could also use Ginny, Genie, Gigi, Neve, Eva, Eve, Evie, Viv, Viva or Vivi.

Thank you to Brooke for suggesting the name Genevieve to be featured on Waltzing More Than Matilda

POLL RESULT: Genevieve received an approval rating of 83%, making it one of the most admired names of the year. People saw Genevieve as intelligent and sophisticated (21%), beautiful and romantic (20%), pretty and elegant (18%), and not overused (10%). However, 9% preferred the French spelling and pronunciation of the name. Nobody thought that Genevieve was “too French”.

(The photo shows a view of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, which is
in one of the oldest parts of the city. In the distance you can see the dome of the Panthéon,which was built over a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, and according to legend, where her relics were kept)