482 Wiscon-siii Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



mation even in Protestant Europe. The Gotha roster is three- 

 fold: one column presents Greek saints, the second Catholic, 

 and the third, equally lona:, the saints recognized by the Keform- 

 ers. As often as the Lutherans reject-ed one of the Catholic 

 band, they filled the gap by inserting another saint, and that 

 usually from the Old Testament. Thus Genevieve was thrown 

 out and Enoch was substituted. This fact shows where many 

 hard Hebrew vocables came from which were fathered upon 

 the Puritans, but have been proved to be older than they, and 

 also prevalent in the church of England. Adam in the Ke- 

 formed calendar stands for the Catholic Delphine, who was the 

 tutelar of Dec. 24th. 



Whatever then the proximate occasion of our being called by 

 the names we bear, it would seem that not a few of them ulti- 

 matelv came to us from the calendar of the saints, often because 

 we were namesakes of god-fathers. Tracing the possible lin- 

 eage or descent of one sino^le name may shed a side-liaht on that 

 of others. The name George, as has been stated, means farmer 

 and was derived from occupation. It was doubtless common 

 in a region between the Black and Caspian seas which Avas 

 called Georgia, or land of farmers, to distinguish it from the 

 Xomads or pastoral tribes around. Xear there in Cappadocia 

 a certain George slew a dragon and saved an imperilled vir- 

 gin. This exploit, as some hold rather prosaically, lay in de^- 

 livering the ground from weeds and enabling it to yield crops. 

 In the view of others, George vanquished the persecutors of 

 the church, of whom the serpent Satan was chief. At all events, 

 George became a saint, one of tlie seven champions of Christen- 

 dom, and the patron of knights, and of several countries. In 

 England, his royal chapel — still the finest in the kingdom — at 

 Windsor, was completed four centuries ago. It was in 1349 

 that St. George had been taken by Edward III., at the 

 siege of Calais, as the national saint of England. His name 

 became the English battle-cry, so in Shakespeare Talbot ex- 

 claims : ''Saint George and victory, fight, soldiers, fight!" A 

 hundred and sixty-two parish churches have been ascertained 

 to bear his naane. His day was the 23d of April, but we may 

 be sure that many a boy born on other days was christened with 



