Text Box:       Puritan Names Puritans in the 17th Century tended toward names from the Bible or names sanctioned by the Bible. Most of these came from the Old Testament. In some cases Puritan parents invented virtue or slogan-type names, which became fairly common. Most of these names were used for either gender. Surviving Puritan names today are usually female names.   Some virtue names were Abstinence, Amity, Arise, Assurance, Charity, Clemency, Confidence, Constancy, Delivery, Desire, Diligence, Discipline, Discretion, Earth, Elected, Faith, Fear, Felicity, Fortune, Godly, Grace, Gracious, Honesty, Honor, Hope, Humiliation, Humility, Increase, Joy, Justice, Lament Mercy Obedience, Peaceable, Piety, Providence, Prudence, Redeemed, Rejoice, Salvation, Steadfast, Temperance, Tribulation, Virtue and even Wrestling. It’s interesting just how many of these names have survived to this day.   Slogan names included Be-courteous, Be-faithful, Be-Thankful, Faith-my-joy, Fear-the-Lord, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith, Fly-fornication, Hate-evil, Help-on-high, If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned, Jesus-Christ-came-into-the-world-to-save, Search-the-scriptures, Sin-deny, Weep-not, and Zeal-for-the-Lord. While it’s true that some of these long slogan names were used, they were not common.                 Home       Contact Salem Focus at   salemfocus@comcast.net