View Message

I agree. Two names very much in line with what you say are Catherine and Beatrice ... modern parents concerned with giving their daughters 'meaningful' names are very likely to select 'purity' or 'making happy' rather than some or other meaning that hasn't been current for a millennium or three, and it seems churlish to burst their balloons. Give them the scholarly information, certainly, but also mention the history of the names and how they acquired their present-day meanings, which by now surely have some status of their own.

---

We don't, after all, mean that someone is blessed when we say they're silly, or lacking in wax when we say they're sincere. Why should names retain their original meanings when non-name words don't?