A Snippet of Medfield History

A Snippet of Medfield History...

Names our Ancestors Gave Their Girls

By Claire Shaw

What’s in a name?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, if a rose were called gorgonzola, would it not still smell like a rose?

Names given to children in early Medfield may have expressed parents’ aspirations or hoped-for characteristics in their offspring. Many of these names were Biblical in origin, reflecting heroes and virtuous women. Much admired traits in women resulted in names such as Prudence, Charity, and Chastity being bestowed on baby girls.

John Bullen, a builder of wooden houses, and his wife Judith had seven children: Judith, John, David, Michael, Mary, and Samuel, all names familiar to us today. Their sixth child, however, was given the name SILENCE. Had the noise of five children in a small house been too much to bear? One can only speculate as to the Bullen’s purpose in naming their daughter Silence.

In the Bullen family alone, the names Elisha and Ephraim are used generation after generation, along with what we might call more traditional names. Every once in a while, though, we encounter Meletiah, Amaziah, Gad and many, many more completely unfamiliar to anyone today. Ichabod, whom most of us know only from Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is used twice: the first time for a child who died. Despite the perceived strangeness in early names, I am sure as much thought went into naming children then as it does now.