Thomas means “twin,” Peter means “stone.” Does that mean that relative to English a Thomas Smith was referred to as Twin Smith and would he have been most likely been a twin? Would Cecil really have been called Blind Adams? Was an Allan Jones referred to as “Handsome Jones?” I suppose that given Roman cognomens, Tom the Cook= Tom Cook, and Native American names, that probably is the case, but are there any name etymologists out there that care to elaborate?
One could suppose all names began as epithets. The tailor was called Snyder[tailor in German]; the cook, Koch.
But the time at which epithets used for given names lost their primary meanings, in their context as names, was probably within a few weeks of their being bestowed. I mean, there are still plenty of such names in modern English, but their primary meanings are totally ignored. Don’t you know anyone named Victor or Daisy or Hope or Carter or Lance, and do you think of them as particularly victorious or daisy-like or hopeful or cart-driving or lance-wielding?
As for whether given names were originally bestowed because of their descriptiveness as epithets, and how long it took for such names to become “just names”, I would guess that’s probably so far back in human history that it’s impossible to tell.
A lot of the most common first names in English-speaking countries are Biblical names. While they can be traced back to Hebrew and Greek sources, very few people who give those names to babies know what they mean in Hebrew or Greek. At most, all they know is that they come from the Bible.
Who says that first names don’t mean anything anymore?
In my case, my second child was named Iris because of her very blue eyes that reminded me of the colour of the flower.
Certainly many people name their children in an aspirational way - they name them after a particular saint or biblical figure because they want them to exhibit the characteristics of that figure. The comment above that very few people know what biblical names mean is, I think, a considerable underestimate of the proportion of the world’s christian and jewish population that know the content of the bibles quite well.
Other children are named in a commemorative fashion - their parents name them after a favoured relative or friend who may have died so that the memory of that person is kept alive.
Similarly other children are named to show admiration, respect or gratitude - children are regularly named after friends or relatives (my brother named his two children after our older brother and sister).
In that respect, all of those names mean something.
Oh, come on, HappyHappy, take a survey if you don’t believe me. Ask some people what the meaning in Greek or Hebrew is of some standard Biblical names. The meaning, you understand, not which person in the Bible had that name. Yes, lots of people name children after a particular Biblical character or a particular friend or a particular relative or a particular famous person, but that’s not what the OP was about. KidCharlemagne was asking about the original meaning of names, not about famous people with those names. Many people are named after somebody else, but not very many are named because of the meaning of the name.
This is a considerable overestimation of the importance many people place on religion when choosing names.
(I didn’t know how my name derived from Hebrew until I looked it up a couple of years ago.)