Here’s What You Need: Some Super Weird 17th Century Baby Names

According to the Social Security Administration’s list of baby names, which goes back to the late 1800s, my son’s name — William — has ranked among the Top 20 that entire time. It does not stand alone, particularly among boy names. “James” has proven even more consistently popular. For girls, well, I’m sure any Millennial woman gathered around a camp fire can tell of the 30-year reign of Jennifers.

But now, it seems, less traditional names are overtaking a lot of centuries-old classics. A quick look at the SSA list shows that “Maverick” is a far more popular name than “Nicholas.” “Nova” outranks “Mary” by 100 places. And it turns out that we 21st century parents aren’t the first to give our babies unusual names. Take, for example, 17th century Quakers.

On her TikTok account (@history_with_amy), historian Dr. Amy Boyington discusses unusual names among Quakers, Puritans, and Evangelicals of the 17th century. Often, these names were hortatory, meant to inspire a child to live in a manner in keeping with said name.

“Some of these names have actually survived to the present day, such as Felicity or Prudence,” she explains.

Other names, however, we haven’t seen in a long time and reasonably so. Boyington references the work of fellow historian Dr. Isabella Rosner, who specializes in textile history. Her doctoral thesis is on Quaker textiles.

“During the course of her research, she came across a whole host of amazing Quaker names,” Boyington explains.

We start with some basics — “Charity” and the less popular but not extinct “Comfort.” There also seems to be a trend among Quakers that we’re seeing a resurgence of today, which is last names serving as first names.

But some of them are truly... well, you tell us if you would pick these for your babies...

• Constant (not Constance; Constant)
• Corn (bonus if your last name is Flakes or Muffin)
• Ermine (for particularly weasel-faced babies, perhaps...)
• Experience
• Fountain
• Hallelujah
• Hester... which is familiar to fans of The Scarlet Letter and maybe doesn’t seem too weird except for the fact that this particular Hester’s last name was Chester. So... Hester Chester.
• Humble
• Jesus Christ (go big or go home, I guess)
• Love and Loveday
• Marvellous
• Obedience
• Old (a choice for a baby, for sure, though I guess in an age of high infant mortality rates it’s a wish, which makes it kind of bittersweet)
• Prevents (... prevents what?)
• Return and Returned
• Revolution (Rihanna and Rocky, I’m just saying I think Revolution goes really well with RZA and Riot. Promise me you’ll think about it.)
• Sentence
• Silence (clearly, this is wishful thinking for a parent of a newborn)
• Squire (not gonna lie: I think building a title into your kid’s name is funny. It’s like naming your kid “Doctor” or “Senator.”)
• Temperance
• Thank and Thankfull

“Clearly, the 17th century Puritan and Quaker was an odd sort of fellow,” Boyington concludes. “But I think this is an amazing subject and how fascinating to have found these in the archives.”

Clearly, we love talking about baby names around here. While I do think there could be a future for names like Hester (little old people names are big and getting bigger!), Temperance, and Love, I sort of doubt we’ll be seeing Old or Sentence any time soon... though I don’t put it past certain celebrities.

Personally, when it comes to odd 17th century names, I don’t think anyone did it better than the Barebone family. Immediately, we’re starting with a badass last name. But that might be hard to even wrap your head around as you spend your time marveling over some of their first names: Praise-God Barebone, Fear-God, Damned (I think we know who the black sheep of the family was...), Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world- to-save, and of course, If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. That last Barebone he changed it to Nicholas Barbon. Smart move, Nick.