'Twas Ever Thus...

As there has been some talk in the blogosphere about the recently released list of banned names in New Zealand, this 'Twas Ever Thus goes back to the 1880s when it appears a few French parents were banned from deviating away from names in the Gregorian calendar. 

 

COMMUNISTIC NAMES FOR CHILDREN Among the liberties claimed by French communists is, it appears, the right to saddle their offspring with the most outrageous Christian names. Madame Paule Mink, the favourite disciple of Louise Michel, has lately given birth to a son, for which she and her husband, M. Negro, have selected the names of Lucifer Blanqui Vercingetorix. The mayor of their district, however, refuses to register the child as desired, on the ground of a law passed in 1803, which forbids the employment of other names than are to be found in the Gregorian Calendar.  The parents have addressed a complaint to the Council of State, insisting that the refusal is a violation of the freedom of the father of a family. -- Paris Correspondent.   The Dundee Courier & Argus and Northern Warder (Dundee, Scotland), Friday, June 16, 1882

 

FRENCH BABIES AND THEIR NAMES There is certainly a change of legislation needed in the matter of French names. A few days ago a man in Chartres appeared before the registrar of births in the Mayor's office and said he wanted to call his son "Arnold Dubois." "You can't call him Arnold," said the registrar, with the vindictive leer of a red-tapeist; "'tis against the law of the twenty-first Germinal, year eleven, that says that 'children can only receive surnames culled from the calendars of the saints' days or from personages in ancient history.'"  The countryman was "obfuscated" by so much law and learning, and went away to look for another name. The law in question was really promulgated in the interests of the Empire and against the Republic in April, 1803. Republicans, it must be confessed, had been rather extravagant in the nomenclature of children before then: but in any case the law of the "year eleven" did not mend matters, for a man might call a girl Messalina and a boy Sardanapalus, but he was prevented from using names from modern history. A child could also be called, as M. Vacquerie amusingly points out, "Melon" as there was a saint of that name, but he could not be called "turnip-top," "cauliflower," or "peas-blossom," because the law also forbade appellations of a leguminous kind.    The North-Eastern Daily Gazette (Middlesbrough), Friday, January 13, 1888

 

It seems that the revolutionary M. and Mme. Negro made the news again after their second son was born; this time in Australia:

THE writer of "Continental Gossip" from Paris in the S & M Herald says:- "While the American colony has been interesting itself in the admission of the favourite young primadonna, Mlle. Nevada (who has taken the name of her native State as her stage appellation) into the Catholic Church, with Mrs. Mackay for her godmother, Madame Paule Mink, the prominent orator of the most violent revolutionary meetings, has been again a victim of French registration officers, from which she and her husband suffered so angrily two years ago. Having married a working engineer named Negro, she gave birth to a young citizen, and demanded to have him entered at the registration office under the names of Lucifer Blanqui Revolution, but the mayor refused to enter such an appellation on the books of the mairie, and as the parents refused to give any other name, the child was not registered, and the father having been fined a few francs for this neglect of his legal obligations, the incident terminated with the death of the child a few weeks later. The dispute has now been revised by the arrival of a second son, which the parents wish to name Spartacus Blanqui Revolution. The same refusal has been made at the mairie, and the father has again been fined for not registering the child. The parents have now appealed to the Minister of the Interior, by a letter, in which they inquire why the names of Spartacus, Ennius, and Catalines should not be 'accepted', when children may be named Caesar, Borgia, Pompey, Alexander, Pius, Sixtus, and so on? They say that mayors of different localities have registered little citizens as Washington, Danton, Gambetta, Garibaldi, and even Bazaine, and ask why, such being the case, a child should not be named after Blanqui, the venerated champion of the people? They add that, as such virtues as patience, constancy, clemency, and prudence have become common names, they desire to be informed 'why Revolution, the quintessence of all human progress, should not be admitted as a name?' However logical may be this argument, the Minister will doubtless support the mayor, whose firmness has spared a child the future mortification and injury of having to bear through life so grotesque a name as 'Spartacus Blanqui Revolution Negro.' "   The Brisbane Courier (Brisbane, Australia), Thursday, 1 May, 1884

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