If I Have To Look This Word Up Then So Do You
Few biblical names failed to be bestowed on one new England baby or another. Some parents cultivated a spirit of scriptural uniqueness. One unfortunate child was named Mahershalalhasbaz, the longest name in the bible. Another, the son of Bostonian Samuel Pond, was baptized Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin Pond. There is evidence that parents sometimes shut their eyes, opened the good book and pointed to a word at random, with results such as Notwithstanding Griswold and Maybe Barnes.
[...]
[By contrast,] Sussex Puritans made heavy use of hortatory names such as Be-courteous Cole (in the parish of Pevensey), Safely-on-high Snat (Uckfield), Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White (Ewhurst), Small-hope Biggs (Rye), Humiliation Scratcher (Westham), Kill-sin Pemble (also Westham), and Mortifie Hicks (Hailsham). A classic example was an unfortunate young woman named ffly fornication Bull, of Hailsham, Sussex, who was made pregnant in the shop of a yeoman improbably named Goodman Woodman.
-- David H. Fischer, Albion's Seed
Fischer has a footnote, it should be mentioned, that makes it clear that the doubled lowercase f at the beginning of ffly fornication Bull is in the original. For myself, I have to remember that as with White Wolf, the craziest-seeming bits of Terry Pratchett are more likely to be lifted from history than invented from whole cloth. I'm specifically thinking of the onomastics of Good Omens.
The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there.
[...]
[By contrast,] Sussex Puritans made heavy use of hortatory names such as Be-courteous Cole (in the parish of Pevensey), Safely-on-high Snat (Uckfield), Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White (Ewhurst), Small-hope Biggs (Rye), Humiliation Scratcher (Westham), Kill-sin Pemble (also Westham), and Mortifie Hicks (Hailsham). A classic example was an unfortunate young woman named ffly fornication Bull, of Hailsham, Sussex, who was made pregnant in the shop of a yeoman improbably named Goodman Woodman.
-- David H. Fischer, Albion's Seed
Fischer has a footnote, it should be mentioned, that makes it clear that the doubled lowercase f at the beginning of ffly fornication Bull is in the original. For myself, I have to remember that as with White Wolf, the craziest-seeming bits of Terry Pratchett are more likely to be lifted from history than invented from whole cloth. I'm specifically thinking of the onomastics of Good Omens.
The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there.