Name of the Week: Loveday

 

Origin:

Loveday is the Middle English form of the Anglo-Saxon name Léofdæg, derived from the Old English lēof '"dear, loved"+ dæġ 'day'. The term "loveday" is also a literal translation of dies amoris, a day of reconciliation on which enemies met to settle disputes. A famous example in British history is the Loveday of 1458 when Henry VI attempted to reconcile the two squabbling factions of his nobility. In a symbolic act of reconciliation, he lead a prossession to London's St. Paul’s Cathedral where the sons of the noblemen who had been killed at the Battle of St Albans walked arm in arm with the men responsible for their fathers’ deaths. It is thought that, from the Middle Ages, the name Loveday was given to children born on such a day.

Usage:

Léofdæg was in use before the Conquest of 1066 and managed to survive it to good use in the Middle Ages as Loveday and the vernacular form Lowdy.  Leuedai appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the name of two lords who owned land in Wiltshire, and Essex and Somerset*, while a Leofdæge, wife of Healthegen is mentioned in a charter dated from approximate 1026.* A Luveday Bidua can be found in the 1205 Curia Regis Rolls of Northumberland and, in 1381, Loveday, wife of Robert Christemasse, is recorded in the Subsidy Rolls of Suffolk. This early use lead to the name becoming a surname, which became the name of a notable family in Suffolk. One of the earliest examples of the name's surname use can be found in the Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk dated c. 1095 which has record of an Æluric Leuedey.  By the 16th century, the given name was predominantly used in Cornwall and Devon and mostly for girls -- though some use for boys remained, perhaps whenever a loveday occured. By this point it was recorded in the vernacular form Lowdy.  The Surname Atlas (click to enlarge) Data from the 1881 census shows how confined the given name was to Cornwall and Devon at that time, though the surname was more common in the East of England, especially in Norfolk.  The spellings Lovedy, Lovedey and Lovdie, while not as common as Loveday, were in good use, demonstrating the alternative pronunciation, closer to Lowdy, as LƏV-dee.  Over the course of the 19th century, Loveday was fairly consistent in use, averaging around eight births per year. It declined by the 1930s as births per decade in England and Wales show: 1840s: 115 births 1850s: 103 births 1860s: 106 births 1870s: 89 births 1880s: 76 births 1890s: 80 births 1900s: 62 births 1910s: 66 births 1920s: 83 births 1930s: 51 births 1940s: 33 births 1950s: 25 births 1960s: 12 births 1970s: 11 births Since 1996, Loveday has been appeared in the official data for England and Wales (3 births or more) twelve times in nineteen years and has always been below the top 1000. It peaked in 2001 at #1728 with 10 births and in 2014 ranked #4003 with 5 births.

Famous Bearers:

Contemporary: * Loveday Jenkin (female), Cornish nationalist politician. * Loveday Enyinnaya (male) (b. 1989), Nigerian professional footballer. Literature and Other Media: * The Loveday series, a series of romantic fiction by Kate Tremayne.

Variants:

Lovedy, Lowdy, Lovdie

Pronunciation:

LƏV-day / LƏV-dee  [key]

Possible  diminutive:

Lovie, Love, Dovie

Sibling Names:

Morwenna     Cicely     Kerensa     Primrose     Beatrix     Romilly  Constantine    Fergus     Jowan     Barnaby    Griffin     Clement

Name Lists:

Cornish Names

 

If you like Loveday you may also like:   Lowenna, Endelyn, Lamorna, Elowen, Meraud, Venetia, Evelina, Cressida, Emmeline, Sunniva

 

Thanks to Steph for requesting this post.