What's in a name? by H.M. Castor

The dreadful Story of Stephen and his Aunt Matilda (or Maud)

The moment Stephen came to the throne it was realised that he was a mistake and had been christened wrong; thus everything was thrown into confusion.

            Stephen himself felt quite uncalled for, and even his Aunt Matilda was able to take him in when she began announcing that she was the real King. Stephen, however, soon discovered that she had been malchristened, too, and was unable to say for certain whether her name was Matilda or Maud…

- from 1066 And All That by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman

Empress Matilda (or possibly Maud)

I remember the moment when, in my student days, a friend informed me that Maud and Matilda were essentially the same name. I was fascinated. But why should it have been so significant to me? I wasn’t even studying the Empress Matilda (or Maud). The answer is that Maud (or possibly Matilda - no, no, Maud) was at that time my favourite name. And names – first names, that is; ‘given’ names or Christian names, as they are often called – had long been a particular interest of mine. 

As a child, I planned to have six daughters – principally for the pleasure (or power?) of naming them. I made lists, repeatedly, of what these girls would be called. I remember that after reading the very brilliant Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones I decided that my eldest daughter would be called Gwendolen, even though she’s not an awfully nice character in the book. It didn’t matter – I liked the name.

(Gwendolen, lovely though it is, didn’t stick at the top of my list. Maud – when it arrived several years later – did, and my eldest daughter bears the name with, I’m relieved to say, pleasure and pride.)

As for exactly how and why Maud and Matilda are the same name, I’m not enough of a linguistic expert to give you my own explanation, and explanations I’ve found elsewhere come in slightly different (and no doubt overlapping) forms. I've read that Matilda is the Latin form of the Saxon name Maud, and I've read that Matilda comes from the Germanic name Mathilidis, of which one shortened form was Mahald and another was Mahaut… which brings us very close to Maud. On a subtley different tack George Redmonds, in his excellent book Christian Names in Local and Family History, explains the connection as follows:

"[In some cases] a name may have been revived in relatively recent times and given what has been called a ‘learned’ spelling, one that is far removed from the medieval pronunciation. That is true of Matilda and Agatha which are familiar to us now only in these learned forms. The evidence for their earlier pronunciation is in such vernacular spellings as Mald or Maud or Matill for Matilda and Agace or Agass for Agatha."

…although it strikes me that this question of pronunciation must surely be muddied by the difficulty of telling, in some cases, what is a vernacular spelling of the full name and what is a diminutive, especially since medieval documents seem often to have called people by their diminutives. (There seems a bit of a gulf, for example, between Mald and Maud on the one hand, and Matill on the other.)

Notwithstanding my inevitable desire for more detail on the name Maud George Redmonds’ book is absolutely fascinating, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of first names. Though it discusses names right up to the present day, and contains material covering the whole of Great Britain, its particular focus is on England in the period 1200-1700. 

It is tantalising to think we might be able to hear spoken words from the past, and so I’d like to venture beyond vernacular pronunciations of Matilda (or Maud), and look at some more of the examples Redmonds offers. He says (and I've read this elsewhere too) that the likely pronunciation of the name Agnes, for example, is represented by spellings such as Annis or Annas - lovely, I think! And they are, not surprisingly given the post-Conquest Norman influence, much closer to the modern French pronunciation for Agnès. Similarly, the name Henry seems to've been pronounced Herry (not far from the French Henri). Reynold was a vernacular version of Reginald and Pers of Peter (or Piers, essentially the same name). Sander or Saunder were shortened versions of Alisander or Alisaunder, spellings which Redmonds says give us the medieval pronunciation of Alexander. The spelling Wauter, too, gives an indication of the pronunciation of Walter (which makes the short form Wat, as in Wat Tyler of Peasants’ Revolt fame, more understandable).

Pet names, or diminutives, are a fascinating topic in themselves. Some of those that Redmonds discusses are familiar to the modern reader and some are not. In the medieval period Alison was pet form of Alice, Marionof Marjory (or possibly Mary) and Dickor Diccon of Richard. So far, so recognisable. But Philot was a common pet name used for a person called Philip (who could be of either gender – Philippa was simply the name Philip rendered into Latin, with a feminine ending indicating that this was a woman called Philip; the equivalent of Ricardus for Richard). Using the same -ot ending, much as we might put an -ie or -y on a name today, Magot was a pet version of Margaret, Annot was a diminutive of Anne or Agnes, and Mariot another version of Marjory or Mary. Using a different pet-name ending, Jenkinwas one of several common diminutives of John (this particular one, Redmonds says, was often used to denote the younger of two siblings when both were named John – but more of that intriguing situation in my next post), and Perkin or Parkin was a nickname for Peter.

Since many surnames derive from first names (Johnson – John’s son – for example), it’s interesting to realise that many diminutives that are no longer in use have been preserved in surname form, such as Jenkins, Perkins, Parkinson, Saunderson, Watkin and Philpot.

In my next post I’d like to come on to which names were most popular in medieval and Tudor times (there may be a few surprises), plus the historical version of celebrity name choices. Yes, while Brooklyn (eldest son of David and Victoria) Beckham was reportedly named after the place where he was conceived, Castilian Morris was named during a Roundhead siege of Pontefract Castle, where his father was a colonel in the defending Royalist army. Oh, and then there’s the 15^th-century lord who named his sons Tristram, Rainbrown and Troilus…

Christian Names in Local & Family History, by George Redmonds, is published by The National Archives.

H.M. Castor's novel VIII - a new take on the life of Henry VIII - is published by Templar in the UK and by Penguin in Australia. It is now available in paperback, hardback & ebook format.

H.M. Castor's website is here.

She-Wolves: a review by Mary Hoffman

Not the speediest of reviews since Faber published the hardback of this fine book in 2010 and the paperback came out last year. But at that time my "history" shelves were bulging. Books on the history of medieval and Renaissance Italy, books on Shakespeare, books on the Plantagenet period of English history were beginning to engulf my study and I couldn't accommodate one more volume.

So I commissioned a new bookcase! (We live nowhere near an IKEA) When it came, after many false starts and alarums, books were collected up from every corner, shelf and box in my study (each book I am writing or planning has its own box, but that's another story) and installed in the new bookcase.

Then, and only then, could I buy She-Wolves but it was nearly my birthday and a daughter wanted to give it to me so I had to wait. And then like all writers, researchers and reviewers, I had to add it to the tottering heaps of the tbr.

Finally, I was able to open Helen Castor's book and from then on resented every moment I had to close it again. It is one of the most readable history books I have ever read.

It begins, unexpectedly, with the death of fifteen-year-old Edward the Sixth. But you soon see the relevance. All his possible heirs were female and England had never had a female monarch before.  But from here we go back to Matilda, the daughter of Henry the First and granddaughter of William the Conqueror and  see how close we came to it nearly four hundred years earlier.

It might seem extraordinary to us new Elizabethans, who are still fascinated by the first ruler of that name and live with the knowledge of the sixty-year+ reign of Victoria, but in 1135, it was by no means certain that the oldest son would inherit the crown, let alone a daughter. The conqueror was succeeded by his second son, William Rufus, even though his oldest, Robert "Cuthose" still lived. Robert was given the duchy of Normandy instead and for the next several hundred years the history of England and France are entwined.

Henry, the third son, when William Rufus was killed by a stray arrow while out hunting in the New Forest, nipped in quickly and got himself crowned king of England. But Robert and his son continued to contest his claim.

Oh, I must stop! It's all so fascinating. Matilda was gazumped by her cousin Stephen, who wasn't even the oldest son of the Conqueror's youngest son, but it was her own child who became Henry the Second when Stephen died.

And so on through the other medieval queens: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France and Margaret (Marguerite) of Anjou, who exercised what power they had through their husbands (respectively Henry the Second, Edward the Second and Henry the Sixth) and their sons.

The strangest is Isabella, who married at twelve a man twice her age and at their wedding banquet had to witness him giving away their rich wedding presents to the man sitting next to him, his favourite Piers Gaveston.  When Gaveston came to the inevitable sticky end, he was replaced in the king's affections by Hugh le Despenser but Isabella was older then and had produced a son, the jack in the pack that gave all these women a trump card to play with.

(Matilda's epitaph had been the "daughter, wife and mother" of kings).

From BBC website

By the time I read the book, I had already seen the associated BBC TV series. And if you saw and enjoyed that, you will get even more from the book. It's always great to get the visual references but I find all TV documentaries tend to re-iterate their points many times (a policy decision I'm sure) while an author is not so restricted in her text.

The TV series didn't use the framing device but Helen Castor brings us back very elegantly to Edward the Sixth's deathbed, after the story of the saddest queen, Margaret (Shakespeare's "she-wolf") who loses everything: husband, son and any hope of her descendants ruling England.

Edward's next heir should have been Mary Tudor but she had been declared illegitimate when Henry the Eighth divorced Catherine of Aragion and married Anne Boleyn.

Even more importantly, she remained attached to the Old Religion (since the New had robbed her and her mother of their rights) so Edward and his councilllors had come up with the bizarre Device that made poor Lady Jane Grey queen for just over a week and later led to the execution of this blameless political pawn.

Jane Grey was the granddaughter of Henry the Eighth's youngest sister Mary and her mother was still alive, but she was a Protestant and that made her the most acceptable of the possible female heirs.

But Mary was having none of it and it was she who became the first female monarch of England crowned in her own right. Because of the shortness of her reign, the lack of an heir in spite of two phantom pregnancies and most of all because of the bloodiness with which she pursued the short-lived restoration of her religious denomination, this important fact about her has sunk into neglect.

It doesn't help of course that she was succeeded by her brilliant, charismatic half-sister Elizabeth!

But I am grateful to Helen Castor for reminding me of this among many other important points about the history of women and the English throne.