My G-G-G-G Grandmother was Content Barnes. I have never heard this name spoken. Is it pronounced conTENT like the “satisfied” word or CONtent?
Adjectives and nouns which connote positive attributes or attitudes weren’t uncommon names, particularly for women (e.g., Prudence, Faith, Charity, etc.).
Given that, I’d imagine that it was probably pronounced conTENT (as in, “peaceful happiness” or “satisfaction”), rather than CONtent (as in, “something contained in a work”).
I knew a lady named Mercedes. It was pronounced Ma-SHED-us.
It’s all according to how Mom meant to pronounce it.
Content is a beautiful name.
I have a great great Aunt named America. I love that.
“You answer to the name of Content. You look as if your name was Content. You are the most content-looking person I ever saw in my life.”
Probably not promounced Comtemt.
Mercedes is an old female name. The car brand borrowed the word from the given name, not the other way around. To be precise, it was an engineer with the Daimler car company who introduced the name for a line of cars after his daughter, Mercedes Jellinek.
But note that these are all words which come from Latin and which have the female gender in Latin (and, consequently, all the Romance languages): prudentia, fides, caritas. This makes it easier to use them for women. Content is not evidently a feminine noun, so I’d say it’s more unusual.
By the way, the only popular culture counter-example of a grammatically feminine noun used for a man that I can think of is Liberty Valance, from the classic western.
I think so also. “Content, do you consent to the contents of this marriage vow?”
Your examples are all nouns. Adjectives like Content are and were much rarer. August, Merry, Divine, Innocent. That’s about all I can think of.
The Carter parents were a quiet and respectable Lancre family who got into a bit of a mix-up when it came to naming their children. First, they had four daughters, who were christened Hope, Chastity, Prudence and Charity, because naming girls after virtues is an ancient and unremarkable tradition. Then their first son was born and out of some misplaced idea about how this naming business was done he was called Anger Carter, followed later by Jealousy Carter, Bestiality Carter and Covetousness Carter. Life being what it is, Hope turned out to be a depressive, Chastity was enjoying life as a lady of negotiable affection in Ankh-Morpork, Prudence had thirteen children, and Charity expected to get a dollar’s change out of seventy-five pence – whereas the boys had grown into amiable well-tempered men.
How about verbs? There’s Increase Mather….
Female relative in my extended family named “Faithful.”
I knew that.
But these parents didn’t have any inkling of the car brand, I’m sure.
So they pronounced it incorrectly.
Wikipedia suggests it’s a variant on the name “Constance” and has a list of people with the name.
“Constant” is also the title character’s name in the French translation of The Importance of Being Earnest (since the “Ernest”/“earnest” pun wouldn’t translate).
Isn’t that a noun, as in “He had an increase in his salary”?
[Moderating]
@Beckdawrek , while a comment like this wouldn’t be out of place in FQ once a thread had run some ways and there had been multiple attempts to answer the question, a post which doesn’t make any attempt to answer the question isn’t appropriate so early in the discussion. Please remember that not all of the fora here are MPSIMS.
In this case, apparently so, but other names from that naming convention could very well be any part of speech. The convention at that time and place was to take some full phrase or sentence of spiritual value, and abbreviate it down to a single word (in Mr. Mather’s case, “the never-to-be-forgotten increase, of every sort, wherewith God favoured the country”).
See also Praise-God Barebone, or his son If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned (“but you can call me Nicholas”).
I’m confused, did we somehow go from ‘Content’ to ‘Constant’?
ETA: by the way, I did find some women named ‘Content’ on geneology dot com, but obviously no pronunciation keys.