I’m watching a Nova episode that mentions a guy whose first name is “St. Elmo.” A few years ago I studied a historical figure with the first name “St. Clair.” There are other examples I’ve encountered but forgotten.
Now, granted, these were not common names, but they were certainly not unheard of (or, at least, not a century ago and earlier).
Is there any special significance to such names? Do they refer, as most people assume, to the holy individuals that Christians call “saints,” or do they refer to a different concept entirely? When did they die out, or did they?
This may be just pushing your question back one step without actually answering it, but AFAIK most given names beginning with “St.” (always or almost always male names, I believe) are simply taken from last names beginning with “St.”
Giving boys first names that were originally surnames (e.g., Willis, Woodrow, Wesley, Wade, Ross, Riley, Ainslie, etc. etc. etc.) is a very common custom, and is currently being expanded to provide more girls’ first names as well (e.g., Mackenzie, Taylor, etc. etc.).
Now your question becomes “How did names of saints, including the prefix ‘Saint’, become common as surnames?” That I don’t know.
FYI, the British given name “St. John” is pronounced Sinjin. I first came across it when I was a kid. It was the name of a character on a TV show, and I thought it was really cool.
I’m very much inclined to agree with Kimstu on the origin of most such names. There is a very common tradition to name children after saints, but without the “Saint…” tag. Frankie’s mother loved St. Francis of Assisi, Anne’s mother felt a devotion to the Virgin Mary’s mother, etc. But St. John Perse, not as a canonized John Perse, but as a member of the Perse family who was given the first name “St. John,” was probably named after his mother’s family, she having been the former Angela St. John or some such.
Then to essay what is not quite a WAG as to the origin of the “St.—” surnames but one for which I cannot adduce a cite, it’s my understanding that the majority (but not all) of them are toponymic in nature. The St. John family most likely lived in late-medieval times, when surnames became common, in the community that grew up around St. John’s Church and in consequence was the village of St. John. A very few of such surnames commemorate a married-and-father saint, duly canonized; this is far more common in the variants such as Gilchrist (servant of Christ) than with the actual Saint Something type names. As noted, there are such variants on the Saint-- surnames, Sinclair being the famous example (St. Clair > S’in’ Clair) – and these tend to be most commonly Scottish in origin.
I don’t know if this would also be an English custom, but in Spain another origin for “St. Whomever” lastnames was children abandoned at the door of convents. Rather than give them the lastname “Foundling”, they’d get the name of the convent or of the day on which they’d been found.
Surnames historically were linked to places - I imagine (WAG) that some people would be know as “Michael who lives by the Abbey of St John”, which gets shortened over generations to “Michael Saintjohn”
I just encountered Sinjin a week or so ago. On Masterpiece Theater’s presentation of Jane Eyre, the “pastor”/cousin who rescues her near the end is named Sinjin. I hadn’t read the book in decades, and had no idea it was St. John until I looked up the credits on IMDB.
People who lived in a city named after a saint may have, at the dawn of surnames, adopted the city name for their family.
Interestingly, most Jewish Hasidic sects are named after the city in which they originated, and one of the best-known, the Satmar, are named for…St. Mary.
Well, from all accounts she was a good Jewish girl!
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I wish I could remember what book series this line came from, but with the St. John excursus this topic has taken, the witticism may be relevant;
“And here, we have the distillery, located in the former Abbey of St. John the Divine.”
“A distillery located in Saint John’s Abbey? [the book contrived to show this drawn out in a drawl] The product must be a holy drink!”
“Oh, no! It’s ‘SIN gin.’!”
Are you saying they’re wrong about the name, or the show the character was in? Like Reality Chuck, I remember St. John Quincy, but I don’t have a clue what the name of the show was.
