With this edition of the Wayfarer I have no wisdom to dispense, no great insight to share -- just a question:
Why are so many of the so-called "virtue names" -- the top ones being Faith, Hope, and Joy -- given almost exclusively to females?
Is there something particularly feminine about possessing any of these qualities?
You could also ask the converse question: why do the words justice, courage and bravery have a masculine connotation in our culture?
Some initial research showed me that 400 years ago, the Puritans chose names their children with all manner of qualities they hoped would be associated with their offspring. As one minister put it, “a good name is as a thread tied about the finger, to make us mindful of the errand we came into the world to do for our master.”
So not only did you find lots of Faiths, Hopes and Joys, as well as names of Biblical characters, but also names like Perseverance, Abstinence, Prudence, Temperance, Humility, etc. But they were apparently gender-neutral.
Somewhere in the timeline of the English-speaking world (and I am talking primarily about us anglophones here), someone decided faith, hope, joy, charity, and serenity were female qualities. Seems the men got the short end of the stick, with very few virtue names attributed to them. (How many guys do you know named Courage or Bravery?)
There are of course other cultures who are less constrained by such norms. I have an Indian friend who goes by Joy among his friends. Many African cultures draw from a wide range of virtue names for their children. I've known Africans named Dieudonné ("God-given"), for example. My Syrian friend Muhannad's name means "sword". Another Middle Eastern family who are friends of ours named their three children Bnyad, Yad, and Shad -- all rhyming but also specific, even every-day meanings.
What are your thoughts? Should we stick to the status quo and ascribe names like these cardinal virtues to one gender or the other? Or should we free ourselves of these cultural constraints?
As always, your thoughts are welcome. Just leave them below.