Stuart Buck has a post on what baby names mean at "The Buck Stops Here."
It reminds me a bit of a story Hume tells somewhere (I can't remember where - comment if you know) about names. There was a fashion (Puritan, I think) of giving children names that were meaningful from a Christian perspective. Most of them were simple, straightforward names like Chastity, Charity, Patience, Prudence, Temperance, &c. Occasionally, however, the parents got a bit more creative. Hume liked to tell of a man in the Scottish Parliament whose parents had named him something like Had-Christ-not-been-you-would-surely-have-been-damned Barebones. To save time people would refer to him as "Damned Barebones."
I'm going to have to remember to look up the source and and precise details of this story next time I'm in the library....
