Naming Children in Early New England

Charitable like Abigail: The History of an Epitaph

“…52 During the early modern period, Abigail gained tremendous popularity among Protestants, especially in Puritan circles, where she was viewed as a wise and industrious wife. 53 In his famous poem about twelve meritorious biblical women, Der Ehren-Spiegel der Zwølf Durchleuchtigen Frawen des Alten Testaments, first published in 1553, Hans Sachs depicted Abigail as having good sense (die Vernufftig), a quality reflected in other contemporaneous works, including artistic images. 54 These Christian perspectives on Abigail do not directly correspond to the Jewish portrayals of her.…”

“…Irving A. Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry: The Jews of Germany and France of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, the Pioneers and Builders of Town-Life,Town-Government, and Institutions, 2 vols. (New York, 1969), 1:256-419, contains sources that discuss economics and key roles held by women in business matters; Jordan, ''Jews onTop,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, Gray, ''Married Women.'' 30.…”

Studying the Impact of Religion on Fertility in Nineteenth-Century Canada

“…Many parents continued to choose biblical names and may not have attributed much religious significance to their choices. Some names, such as Elizabeth, John, Mary, and Thomas, remained so popular that it is unlikely that they held any religious meaning (see Main 1996;Smith-Bannister 1997). To prevent the measurement error that would result from biblical names without religious meaning, Hacker estimates his models both with and without these ''secularized'' names in his calculation, as do I in the regressions presented later.…”

“…Hacker's hypothesis about the social significance of names is well grounded in a large body of literature that elevates names as a bellwether of cultural mores. Since forenames say much about popular culture, they have become informational oases for those interested in identifying the beliefs and sentiments of an era (Lieberson 2000;Main 1996;Smith 1984Smith , 1985Smith , 1994b. Main (1996) has used them to argue that parents in New England considered naming their female children to be exercises in creativity, whereas she found that the naming of sons remained a much more serious matter (see also Lieberson and Bell 1992).…”

“…Since forenames say much about popular culture, they have become informational oases for those interested in identifying the beliefs and sentiments of an era (Lieberson 2000;Main 1996;Smith 1984Smith , 1985Smith , 1994b. Main (1996) has used them to argue that parents in New England considered naming their female children to be exercises in creativity, whereas she found that the naming of sons remained a much more serious matter (see also Lieberson and Bell 1992). Smith (1985) has argued that the declining popularity of biblical names in the northeastern United States coincided with a decline in Puritanism.…”