Gallery V · 1400 to 1600
The Renaissance
The names of Florence and Venice, Valois France, Spain's Golden Age and Tudor England.
Scholars rediscovered ancient Rome and Greece, and with them names such as Julius, Hippolyta and Lucrezia. At the same time the Church urged parents to choose saints' names, and parish registers, begun in England in 1538, start to record every baptism.
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Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.