The name was borne by a 17th-century English queen and also by the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn (the mother of Queen Elizabeth I), who was eventually beheaded in the Tower of London. Another notable bearer was the German-Jewish diarist Anne (Annelies) Frank, a young victim of the Holocaust in 1945. This is also the name of the heroine in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Canadian author L. M. Montgomery.
This name is sometimes listed as a medieval French form of the Germanic name Ansfried, but that should technically be incorrect, as names starting with Ans- typically do not become Au- in medieval French. Only names that start with Al- do, such as Albert (which becomes Aubert) and Albin (which becomes Aubin). Also compare Avery.
Famous bearers of the name include the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the German-Czech philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), the first person to climb Mount Everest.
This is also an alternate transcription of Russian Ева (see Yeva).
A known bearer of this given name was the Austrian-Hungarian (but of Polish descent) flying ace Godwin von Brumowski (1889-1936).
This name was not regularly given to people until the 19th century [4][3]. It was used by George Eliot for a character in her novel Daniel Deronda (1876).
This name has traditionally been more popular among Eastern Christians. In the English-speaking world it was not regularly used until the 19th century.
According to tales first recorded in Old French in the 12th century, Yseut or Ysolt was an Irish princess betrothed to King Mark of Cornwall. After accidentally drinking a love potion, she became the lover of his nephew Tristan. Their tragic story, which was set in the Arthurian world, was popular during the Middle Ages and the name became relatively common in England at that time. It was rare by the 19th century, though some interest was generated by Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1865).
This name was initially more common among Eastern Christians in the Byzantine Empire, but it flourished in Western Europe after the First Crusade. In England it became extremely popular, typically being the most common male name from the 13th to the 20th century (but sometimes outpaced by William). During the later Middle Ages it was given to approximately a fifth of all English boys. In the United States it was the most common name for boys until 1923.
The name (in various spellings) has been borne by 21 popes and eight Byzantine emperors, as well as rulers of England, France, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria, Russia and Hungary. It was also borne by the poet John Milton (1608-1674), philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), American founding father and president John Adams (1735-1826), and poet John Keats (1795-1821). Famous bearers of the 20th century include author John Steinbeck (1902-1968), assassinated American president John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), and musician John Lennon (1940-1980).
The forms Ian (Scottish), Sean (Irish) and Evan (Welsh) have also been frequently used in the English-speaking world, as has the medieval diminutive Jack.
As an English name, Jonathan did not become common until after the Protestant Reformation. A famous bearer was the Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who wrote Gulliver's Travels and other works.
A notable bearer was the American musician Miles Davis (1926-1991). In Scotland this name was historically used to Anglicize Maoilios.
While the main character Shasta in the 1954 C. S. Lewis novel The Horse and His Boy was male, this is now generally considered a feminine name in the English-speaking world.
This name has never been overly common in the Christian world, and it is considered typically Jewish. It was however borne by an 11th-century Hungarian king.