"Patronymic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend, is it not needful that I should? When I go there I shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan, nay, pardon me. I fall into my country's habit of putting your patronymic first, my friend Jonathan Harker will not be by my side to correct and aid me. He will be in Exeter, miles away, probably working at papers of the law with my other friend, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... that among the customers at the cafe there were two American officers, one being Brigadier-General Duff, a brother of Andrew Halliday, the dramatic author and essayist, whose real patronymic was also Duff. My father knew Halliday through their mutual friends Henry Mayhew and the Broughs. The other American officer was Major-General William Babcook Hazen, whose name will be found occasionally mentioned ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... hitherto been called Ian Mac-Ivor, or John the son of Ivor, was thereafter distinguished, both in song and genealogy, by the high title of IAN NAN CHAISTEL, or John of the Tower. The descendants of this worthy were so proud of him, that the reigning chief always bore the patronymic title of Vich Ian Vohr, i.e. the son of John the Great; while the clan at large, to distinguish them from that from which they had seceded, were denominated SLIOCHD NAN ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... mind was first awakened to appreciation of sorrow by seeing loathy examples of age, sickness, and death presented to him as he drove abroad. Despite his father's tears and protests Siddh[a]rtha, or as one may call him now by his patronymic, the man Gautama, left his home and family, gave up all possessions, and devoted himself to self-mortification and Yoga discipline of concentration of thought, following in this the model set by all previous ascetics. He says himself, according to tradition, that ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the native Sardes, their descendants, deriving their name of Iolaese or Iliese from their founder, became the most powerful race in the island,—just as the Roumains of Wallachia, boasting their descent from Trajan's Dacian colonists, long proved their right to the proud patronymic. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Phaddy, or, anglice, Bernard the son of Patrick, the son of James, the son of Patrick. But the custom of children calling fathers, in a viva voce manner, by their Christian names, was independent of the other more general usage of the patronymic. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... D too, that once stood for Dobbin, Her lov'd patronymic—ah! can it be so? Its once fair proportions, time, too, has been robbing; A D?—we'll be DEED if it ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... respecting Lord Dunoran, and the murder of which an English jury had found that nobleman guilty. Had people known that Mervyn was the son of that dishonoured peer—as in that curious little town they would, no doubt, long since have, at least, suspected, had he called himself by his proper patronymic Mordaunt—he would not have wanted a visitor to enlighten him half-an-hour after the rumour had began to proclaim itself in the streets and public haunts of the village. No one, however, thought of the haughty and secluded young gentleman who lived so ascetic a life at the Tiled House, and hardly ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... agreed that the matriarchal period was not a time when women were in possession of political or economic power, but was a method of tracing descent and heritage. It is fairly well established that, in the transition from metronymic to patronymic forms, authority did not pass from women to men, but from the brothers and maternal uncles of the women of the group to the husbands and sons. Such a method of tracing descent, while it doubtless had its advantages ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... not certain. They were De Tropys at that time, but, having sunk in the social scale in the course of centuries, and then risen again in succeeding centuries through the medium of trade, they reappeared on the surface with their patronymic transformed ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... termination -ing is as truly patronymic as [Greek: -ides] in Greek. In the Bible-translation the son of Elisha is called Elising. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle occur such genealogies as the following:—Ida waes Eopping, Eoppa Esing, Esa Inging, Inga Angenviting, ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... a mystery, which, however, she did not find attractive. Having, therefore, abandoned it, she generally substitutes for it the patronymic of a Norman peer, but, lest this should be thought too strong, she dilutes it by the addition of a pet name drawn from the nursery. By this title her fame is celebrated amongst many foolish young men who singe themselves at the flame of her friendship, and many others who, wishing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... to Rashi (R Sh I) is formed, in accordance with a well-known Jewish custom, from the initials of his name and patronymic in Hebrew, Rabbi Shelomo Izhaki[9], which the Christians translated by Solomon Isaacides, just as they made Maimonides of Moses ben Maimon. Raymond Martini, the celebrated author of the Pugio fidei, seems to have been the first who saw in Rashi the ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... father. It suited the Prince, who at one stroke would be freed from his embarrassment. Finally, it suited the name of Castagna. Although Peppino was its only representative at that time, and as, by an old family tradition, he bore a title different from the patronymic title of Pope Urban VII, the sale of the celebrated palace had called forth a scandal to which it was essential to put an end. The Countess had forgotten that she had assisted, without a protestation, in that sale. Had she not known through Hafner that he had bought at ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... murmured the Captain, on hearing his patronymic pronounced; for ever since his proscription as Cornelio Lantejas, he had held his own name in horror. Never did it sound to him with a more lugubrious ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... itself, the royal patronymic, was, originally, a mere nickname; and literally signifies, one talking through his nose. The first monarch of that name, being on a war party, and sleeping overnight among the mountains, awoke one morning with a cold in his head; and some wag of a courtier had no ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... interruption, Stuyvesant spelled and pronounced the revered old Dutch patronymic. At last he was able to go unhindered, and now, overcome by anxiety, eagerness, and dread, he hardly knew what, he broke into fleet-footed, rapid run, much to the surprise of the staid patrol which he ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... was regarded as a great man. On arriving at the farm-house, which was one of the better description in that region, we were kindly welcomed by the son of the hero I have mentioned, who bore the father's patronymic, and after the usual hospitality, were ushered into an adjoining apartment, and introduced to the object of our visit. He was sitting in an armchair by the side of his wife, who, like himself, was far ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... that Percy Saville was an Anglican version of Pizer Samuels, more in tune with the handsome well-dressed personality it denoted. Montagu had stuck loyally to his colors, but Pizer had drooped under the burden of carrying his patronymic through the theatrical and artistic circles he favored after business hours. Of such is the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... yet failed to connect any memories of interest with the possessor of the patronymic mentioned, but the next phrase mentioned ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... wedding of the second son Commander Miles Charnock. (The younger sons bore their patronymic alone.) His ship had been stationed at the Cape and there, on a hunting expedition up the country, he had been detained by a severe illness at a settler's house; and this had resulted in his marrying the eldest daughter, Anne Fraser. She had spent ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peculiarities of form. Naturalists have established Families simply by bringing together a number of animals resembling each other more or less closely, and, taking usually the name of the Genus to which the best known among them belongs, they have given it a patronymic termination to designate the Family, and allowed the matter to rest there, sometimes without even attempting any description corresponding to those by which Genus and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... after wagon fell out of the line, and turned off to the right or left, until there were left only the Gunns' big carryall, in which sat Hetty, with her two house-servants,—an old black man and his wife, who had been in her father's house so long, that their original patronymic had fallen entirely out of use, and they were known as "Caesar Gunn" and "Nan Gunn" the town over. Behind this followed their farm wagon, in which sat the farmer and his wife with their babies, and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... de Vissard, better known under his patronymic of Rifoel, was silent before the general ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... daughter, who was married to Mr John Gibson Lockhart, the late editor of the Quarterly Review, and his literary executor. This sole descendant, a grand-daughter, is the wife of Mr Hope, Q.C., who has lately added to his patronymic the name of Scott, and made Abbotsford his summer residence. The memory of the illustrious Minstrel has received every honour from his countrymen; monuments have been raised to him in the principal towns—that in the capital, a rich Gothic cross, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... name might seem to imply that he was a native of Algeria; but such was by no means the case. His true name was Laurent; he was a native of Montmartre in Paris, and how or why he had obtained his patronymic was one of those anomalies which the most sagacious of etymologists would find ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the name of this person's father be erroneously put down in the Gospel, yet we have a way of accounting for the error by showing another Zacharias in the Jewish Scriptures much better known than the former, whose patronymic was actually that which appears ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... denotes, were of French descent—Huguenots. Like many other emigrants, they yielded, in the course of a generation or two, to a barbarous mispronunciation of their patronymic, which came to be spoken of as ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... chapters I shall leave speaking of my own adventures and say something of a man whose exploits during the campaigns of 1811-1812 fell but a little short of mine. I do so the more readily because he bore my own patronymic, and was after a fashion my kinsman; and I make bold to say that in our calling Captain Alan McNeill and I had no rival but each other. The reader may ascribe what virtue he will to the parent blood ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... refinement of Miss Winchelsea's mind. Be as refined as you can and then think of writing yourself down:—"Snooks." She conceived herself being addressed as Mrs. Snooks by all the people she liked least, conceived the patronymic touched with a vague quality of insult. She figured a card of grey and silver bearing "Winchelsea," triumphantly effaced by an arrow, Cupid's arrow, in favour of "Snooks." Degrading confession of feminine weakness! She imagined the terrible ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... handful of semi-Romanised Welshmen or Britons. The town took the English name of Cissanceaster, or Chichester. Moreover, all around the Chichester district, we still find a group of English clan villages, with the characteristic patronymic termination ing. Such are East and West Wittering, Donnington, Funtington, Didling, and others. It is vraisemblable enough that the little strip of very low coast between Hayling Island and the Arun may have been the first original South Saxon colony. Nor is it by any means impossible that ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... probably descended from well-known houses in the older States or in England, which, by passing through one or two generations of ancestors who could not read or write, have lost their continuity with the past as effectually as if a deluge had intervened between the last century and this. Even the patronymic has been frequently distorted beyond recognition by slovenly pronunciation during the years when letters were a lost art, and by the phonetic spelling of the first boy in the family who learned the use of the pen. There are Lincolns in Kentucky and Tennessee belonging to the same ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... that his place should seem so humble. Any other but himself would certainly have put James and John in their natural place beside Peter. It must have been himself who slipped himself and his brother into so inconspicuous a position in the list, and further veiled his personality under the patronymic, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... which at first bore the name of Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte. There were branches of the same stock, or, at least, of the same name, in other parts of Italy. Three towns at least claimed to be the seat of a family with this patronymic: and one of them, Treviso, possessed papers to prove the claim. Although other members of his family based absurd pretensions of princely origin on these insufficient proofs, Napoleon himself was little impressed by them. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... cordinerius in Crossraguel, 1573, and William M'Steen in Dunskeith (co. Ross), 1605. Stevenson, Steenson, Macstophane, M'Steen: which is the original? which the translation? Or were these separate creations of the patronymic, some English, some Gaelic? The curiously compact territory in which we find them seated—Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Stirling, Perth, Fife, and the Lothians—would seem to ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fondness for the supernatural must be indulged, an old edifice like this would prove a haunt more attractive, and certainly more appropriate, for ghost and apparition than any school-room, however noted for its spells. Yet notwithstanding some lugubrious associations connected with the family patronymic, phantoms would have to tread softly and whisper low if they invaded its precincts; for the vigorous vitality of its occupants and their cheery tones, if up to the traditional standard of their race, would exorcise the very king of ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... insecure pinnacle of devotion; by the alchemy of a machine centuries have been shortened to days and nights in the meteoric career of Miss PICKFORD. Yet merit has joined fortune in high cabal. Handicapped by a somewhat uneuphonious patronymic, MARY PICKFORD has established her rule without recourse to any of the disputable methods adopted by her predecessor. At home in all the "palaces" of both hemispheres, she owes her triumphs to the triple endowment of genius, loveliness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... as M. Fitz-James's is on his." So it is, but without any de. In 1836, at the period of the legal process to which one of his works, Le Lys dans la vallee, gave rise, he wrote: "If my name is that of an old Gaulish family, it is not my fault; but my name, De Balzac, is my name patronymic, an advantage which is not enjoyed by many aristocratic families who called themselves Odet before they called themselves Chatillon, Riquet before Caraman, Duplessis before Richelieu, and which are none the less ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Scotland. On coming to the throne, David endowed these men with charters of lands in Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great Anglo-Breton House of FitzAlan, who obtained the hereditary office of Seneschal or Steward of Scotland. His patronymic, FitzAlan, merged in Stewart (later Stuart), and the family cognizance, the fesse chequy in azure and argent, represents the Board of Exchequer. The earliest Stewart holdings of land were mainly in Renfrewshire; those of the Bruces were in Annandale. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... Perigord which some local writers have accepted as fact, that the Montaigne family was of English origin. It is not easy to ascertain the ground on which it rests. The patronymic was Eyquem, and the chevalier-seigneur, who settled in Perigord and took the territorial title of Montagne or Montaigne, came from ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... have such a lover, so noble, generous and magnanimous as Anglesea? Why—fine fellow—he felt for my disappointment as if it had been his own; and he exaggerated it, as I have told you! And he offered—dear fellow—to merge his own name in ours, so that my cherished wish to send the patronymic down with the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... by that charity, are often called after it, and known by no other name. Little Bianca's father, or possibly her grandfather, must have been some such Jem, Jack, or Bob "of the Foundlings," and left no other patronymic ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... way a remarkable woman. The daughter of an Englishman, W. Shore Nightingale, of Embly Park, Hampshire, she was born in Florence, in the year 1823, and from this fair city she received her patronymic. From her earliest youth she was accustomed to visit the poor, and, as she advanced in years, she studied in the schools, hospitals, and reformatory institutions of London, Edinburgh, and other principal cities of England, besides making herself familiar with similar places ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Possibly the learned and amiable father of Tristram Shandy or that formidable pedant Professor Slawkenbergius might find much to arouse his interest in the patronymic of the great Swedish painter and etcher. What Zorn means in his native tongue we do not profess to know; but in German it signifies anger, wrath, rage. Now, the Zorn in life is not an enraged person—unless some lady sitter ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Moulin, ex-rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire. The dedicatory ink was hardly dry ere Morus was involved in a desperate quarrel with Salmasius through the latter's imperious wife, who accused Morus of having been over-attentive to her English waiting-maid, whose patronymic is lost to history under the Latinized form of Bontia. Failing to make Morus marry the damsel, she sought to deprive him of his ecclesiastical and professorial dignities. The correspondence of Heinsius and Vossius shows what intense amusement the affair occasioned to such among the scholars ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... have been evolved, and lost, or added to. Some day I will fish this effusion out and give it to a waiting world. Those of us whose ancestors landed at Plymouth or Jamestown are very proud of our family names, and even if we trace quite easily to Castle Garden we do not always discard the patronymic. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... a chief, a syndic; and "Abu Shamah" Father of a cheek mole, while "Abu Shammah" Father of a smeller, a nose, a snout. The "Kuniyah," bye-name, patronymic or matronymic, is necessary amongst Moslems whose list of names, all connected more or less with religion, is so scanty. Hence Buckingham the traveller was known as Abu Kidr, the Father of a Cooking-pot and Haj Abdullah as Abu Shawarib, Father ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of men: "Remain thou here, lest haply we might fail To meet; for in the camp are many paths. But thou, where'er thou go'st, each sev'ral man Address, and ask to rise; to each his name And patronymic giving; pay to each All due respect; nor bear thee haughtily; We like the rest must share the load of toil. Which Jove assigns to ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... patronymic name of the Persian kings, from Arsaces, their great monarch. It was generally added to some distinctive name or appellation, as the Roman emperors added the name ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... not many, but they formed an interesting group. Pier di Cosimo was the head man, and eldest of all; with such ties was he bound to his master and godfather, that he was known better as Cosimo's Peter than by his own patronymic of Chimenti. He was at this time twenty-two years of age, his registry in the Florentine Guild proves his birth in 1462, as the son of Lorenzo, son of ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... Smith, to which in later years he added that of Desborough—partly for euphony, partly because the initials made to his mind a pleasing combination, partly also in pursuance of his theory of life, that he best succeeds who makes others work for him. By annexing the Desborough patronymic—which, however, he tactfully spelled Desboro', to avoid conflict with the family prejudices—he added, at the cost of a trifling fee to the Consistory Court of Canterbury, a flavour of old gentility to the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... dividends, and that conscription of noted names which is levied without the knowledge of the unfortunate writers who bear them, and who thus find themselves actual co-operators in more enterprises than there are days in the year; for the law, we may remark, takes no account of the theft of a patronymic. Worse than all is the rape of ideas which these caterers for the public mind, like the slave-merchants of Asia, tear from the paternal brain before they are well matured, and drag half-clothed before the eyes of their blockhead of a sultan, their Shahabaham, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... type was rapidly disappearing, and most fortunately for humanity, if half the stories told of him by grave chroniclers, accustomed to discriminate between history and gossip, are to be believed. He had committed more than one cool homicide. Although not rejoicing in the same patronymic as his Spanish colleague of Friesland, he too was ready on occasion to perform hangman's work. When sergeant-major in Flanders, he had himself volunteered—so ran the chronicle—to do execution on a poor wretch ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... v.; nuncupation^, nomination, baptism; orismology^; onomatopoeia; antonomasia^. name; appelation^, appelative^; designation, title; heading, rubric; caption; denomination; by-name, epithet. style, proper name; praenomen [Lat.], agnomen^, cognomen; patronymic, surname; cognomination^; eponym; compellation^, description, antonym; empty title, empty name; handle to one's name; namesake. term, expression, noun; byword; convertible terms &c 522; technical term; cant &c 563. V. name, call, term, denominate designate, style, entitle, clepe^, dub, christen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the Frog family had no surname, but about two thousand years ago, in consequence of his disastrous failure in an attempt to rival a male animal of the bovine species, the prefix "bull" was incorporated with his patronymic by a crooked little Greek. The name, however, more appropriately belongs to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... above all his puissant wife Mistress Ulrica Eugenia, her proper name, but which she had afterwards tortured into the more refined patronymic, Ulrique Eugenie—were individuals who moved in the higher classes of society, at least he who should endeavor to prove to the contrary would find the task a ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in the remoter, northern islands. Surnames are rare in Iceland, and such as exist are mostly of foreign origin. In their place, Christian names followed by the patronymic prevail; but in the Faroes, these patronymics have in a great many cases become recognized as surnames. So again, while the Faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced from Scotland in 1671, in Iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovation in 1800, and even to-day competes with ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... nationality. But the patron saint of Ireland being a Frenchman, what more natural, and therefore what more proper, than that the whole Emerald Isle should slant toward the people who love art and rabbit-stew! Anyway, from the proud patronymic of Patricius to plain Pat is quite a drop, and my heart is with Paddy in his efforts to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... yes, sir! I was in the Confederate service. Yes, sir, I'm a Southerner to the backbone. My grandfather was a ——" (I missed the patronymic), "and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... filial chord within his bosom. He almost bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... preux of the times of my brother's patronymic. And there is my Roland awaiting us. Is he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... violations of the neutrality laws during the Canadian disturbances in 1837-8. From the day of his cadetship he received the sobriquet and was always thereafter designated familiarly by his more intimate friends as Baldy Smith in contradistinction from other officers of the same patronymic. In the old days his name would ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... fault, poor man! Further, M. de Balzac will prove to you that the Bourbons and the Montmorencies and other French gentlemen must lower their armorial bearings before him, who is a Gaul, and more—a Gaul of an old family! In fact, this name 'De Balzac' is a patronymic name (patronymically ridiculous and Gaulish). He has always been De Balzac, only that! while the Montmorencies—those unfortunate Montmorencies—were formerly called Bouchard; and the Bourbons—a secondary family who are neither patronymic nor Gaulish ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... all save the oldest Philadelphians had forgotten Miss Lydia Carew, the very, very distant cousin appeared. He was quite in the prime of life, and so agreeable and unassuming that nothing could be urged against him save his patronymic, which, being Boggs, did not commend itself to the euphemists. With him were two maiden sisters, ladies of excellent taste and manners, who restored the Carew china to its ancient cabinets, and replaced the Carew pictures upon the walls, with additions not out of keeping with the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... uncertainty concerning the facts of Sordello's life; he was born at Goito, near Mantua, and was of noble family. His name is not to be derived from sordidus, but from Surdus, a not uncommon patronymic in North Italy during the thirteenth century. Of his early years nothing is known: at some period of his youth he entered the court of Count Ricciardo di san Bonifazio, the lord of Verona, where he fell in love with his master's wife, Cunizza da Romano (Dante, Par. ix. 32), and eloped with ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... Slavonic peoples and England, Scotland, and Central America, being possessed of green teeth. The male is called nix, the female nixie, the generic term for both being nicker, from a root which perhaps means 'to wash.' There is perhaps some truth in the statement which would derive the Satanic patronymic of 'Old Nick' from these beings, as spirits extremely familiar to the Teutonic mind. On fine sunny days the nixies may be seen sitting on the banks of rivers, or on the branches of trees, combing their long golden locks. Previous to a drowning ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... probable, nay, certain, that nobody but the parson and the witnesses ever knew anything about it. I take it that immediately after the marriage Michael Carstairs and his wife went off to America, and that he, for reasons of his own, dropped his own proper patronymic and adopted hers. And," he ended, slapping his knee, "I've no doubt that you're the child of that marriage, that your real name is Gavin Carstairs, and that you're the successor to the baronetcy, and—the real owner of Hathercleugh,—as I ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... a distinct people, preserving in a good degree a nationality of their own, but in the lapse of years this disappeared. One hardly knows in our day where to find a genuine Saxon,—'pure English undefiled,'—for the Huguenot blood circulates beneath many a well-known patronymic. Who would imagine that anything French could be traced in the colorless names of White and Black, or the authoritative ones of King and Masters? Still it is a well-known fact that such names, at the close of the last century, delighted in the designations ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inexplicable, till at last there proved to be an historical kernel to the nut. The Portuguese, and to some extent the Spaniards, have kept nearer to the primitive usage which made the personal name the important one and the patronymic quite secondary. John Smith is not known conversationally as Mr. Smith, but as Mr. John,—Senhor Joao. One may have an acquaintance in society named Senhor Francisco, and another named Senhora Dona Christina, and it may be long before it turns out that they are ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various |
