It's Raining Names: Wacky, Cruel, Bizarre & Beautiful Puritan Names: Curated by Slate

Monday, June 15, 2026

Wacky, Cruel, Bizarre & Beautiful Puritan Names: Curated by Slate

In 🧐researching my ⬅previous piece on the name 📛Trinity, I stumbled upon 📰Slate's ⏪2013 article originally titled — Puritan names: Lists of bizarre religious nomenclature used by Puritans (then retitled: A Boy Named Humiliation: Some Wacky, Cruel, and Bizarre Puritan Names). Trinity made it to #10 on its '10 of the Sweetest Puritan Names' List joking, "The name saw a burst in popularity in 1999—due to a particular film, I suppose."

📰Slate goes into a brief history of Puritanism saying: "Puritanism has its roots in the late sixteenth century, after Henry VIII broke ties with the Catholic Church. The Puritans believed that reforms had not gone far enough and advocated for a church entirely divorced from Catholic ceremonies."

📰Slate is adamant, "Perhaps their greatest gift to history, however, is their wonderfully strange taste in names. A wide variety of Hebrew names came into common usage beginning in 1560, when the first readily accessible English Bible was published. But by the late 16th century many Puritan communities in Southern Britain saw common names as too worldly, and opted instead to name children after virtues or with religious slogans as a way of setting the community apart from non-Puritan neighbors. Often, Puritan parents chose names that served to remind the child about sin and pain. Many Puritan names started to die out after 1662, when the newly restored monarch, Charles II, introduced new laws that cracked down on nonconformist religions and consolidated the power of the Anglican Church. Despite this, some of the names have remained in common use in Anglophone countries."

📰Slate "collected some of the best, worst, and strangest names the English Puritans came up with. Most of these are courtesy of the 1888 book by Charles Bardsley, Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature (seen here on the Public Domain Review’s website), which includes Parish records with details about some of the people who had these names to show some of these names are still in use. Despite their eccentricities, the Puritans did leave us some beautifully resonant names. Names like Verity, Felicity, and Hope more than make up for the Humiliations, Die-wells, and Kill-sins."

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Well, without further ado...

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📃20 Puritan Names That Are Utterly Strange:

📛Dancell-Dallphebo-Mark-Anthony-Gallery-Cesar. Son of Dancell-Dallphebo-Mark-Anthony-Gallery-Cesar, born 1676.
📛Praise-God. Full name, Praise-God Barebone. The Barebones were a rich source of crazy names. This one was a leather-worker, member of a particularly odd Puritan group and an MP. He gave his name to the Barebones Parliament, which ruled Britain in 1653.
📛If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. Praise-God’s son, he made a name for himself as an economist. But, for some inexplicable reason, he decided to go by the name Nicolas Barbon.
📛Fear-God. Also a Barebone.
📛Job-raked-out-of-the-ashes
📛Has-descendents
📛Wrestling
📛Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith
📛Fly-fornication
📛Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world- to-save. Brother of “Damned Barebone”. I can only imagine this name shortened to “Save.”
📛Thanks
📛What-God-will
📛Joy-in-sorrow. A name attached to many stories of difficult births.
📛Remember
📛Fear-not. His/her surname was “Helly”, born 1589.
📛Experience
📛Anger
📛Abuse-not
📛Die-Well. A brother of Farewell Sykes, who died in 1865. We can assume they had rather pessimistic parents.
📛Continent. Continent Walker was born in 1594 in Sussex

📃12 of the Cruelest Puritan Names:

📛Humiliation. Humiliation Hynde had two sons in the 1620s; he called them both Humiliation Hynde.
📛Fly-debate
📛No-merit. NoMerit Vynall was born in Warbleton in Sussex, a fount of beautiful names.
📛Helpless
📛Reformation
📛Abstinence
📛More-triale
📛Handmaid
📛Obedience
📛Forsaken
📛Sorry-for-sin. Sorry-for-sin Coupard was another resident of Warbleton.
📛Lament

📃12 Strangely Pleasant Puritan Names:

📛Silence
📛Creedence
📛Dust
📛Diffidence
📛Desire. In the UK, seven babies were named this in 2012.
📛Make-peace. This name was in use at least until 1863; see William Makepeace Thackeray, the novelist.
📛Ashes
📛Tace. It’s another word for silence, and is of course a female name.
📛Placidia
📛Kill-sin. Kill-sin Pimple did Jury service in the 1650s.
📛Freegift
📛Vanity

📃10 of the Sweetest Puritan Names:

📛Jolly
📛Liberty. 129 were born in the UK in 2012.
📛Tenacious
📛Happy
📛Felicity. 302 babies got this name in 2012.
📛Hope. 416 babies took this name in 2012.
📛Prudence. 13 babies got this name in 2012.
📛Amity. 5 babies got this name in 2012.
📛Verity. 131 babies were born with this name in 2012.
📛Trinity. 69 Trinities were born in 2012. The name saw a burst in popularity in 1999—due to a particular film, I suppose.

My reaction is: OMFG❗😮 to most of these names. They really are unreal 🫠 — especially the lists of strange and cruel names. 🤨 First off, all the names with the -'s really irk me 😤 and they are just ridiculous! 🤡 (Sorry not sorry!🤷🏾‍♀️) I get the "good" intent 😏 behind them... but wow! 😅

📛Thanks?!? 🙏 For what??? NO not a name! 😂 📛Die-Well??? ⚰ Can you get any more morbid? Are 📛Handmaid 🧹 and 📛Humiliation 😔 brother and sister names??? 📛Freegift 🎁 given to a girl is just asking for trouble! 😬 And 📛Abstinence??! 🚫 Really?!?! NO that's not a real name. 🤣 And then 📛Wrestling 🤼‍♂️ just randomly sprinkled in. 😆

The saving grace from this batch of horrendous 😱 names on whole, is that there are some beautiful, interesting and meaningful names on the lists. 👀 I really love 📛Continent 🌎 strangely. 📛Remember is very lovely. 🥰 📛Desire 💋 and 📛Vanity are maybe better stripper 💃 names 😄 but I 🙋🏾‍♀️ still like them. 📛Hope 🤞 is just a great name 👍🏾👍🏾, probably the most normal name on the lists. 😯 📛Felicity is nice too. 📛Liberty as well. 📛Happy 😊 is wonderful and 📛Jolly 😃 is cute. 📛Trinity is of course cool. 😎

After seeing these lists of 🤯outrageous names, it's pretty safe to say that anything goes truly to name one's child 🤦🏾‍♀️as far as ⏪Puritan times, up until ⏩today. I'm one for 🤪wild, 🦄unique names but these make me believe the parent(s) was/were off their rocker(s) 🥴 naming a child e.g.: 📛Experience! It should have been: Experiment, because why not? 🙄

Today's WTF ⁉️🤬 and 😲shocking first names have nothing 🙅🏾‍♀️ on Puritan 🥇 names. I think 🤔 I change my mind: 📛🌊Aquaman is ✔tame, ✔great and ✔makes sense compared to obscene: 📛Fly-fornication! 😖