Victorian Name Generator

English given names come in three distinct layers, and mixing them is the fastest way to make a period name feel wrong.

The oldest layer is Anglo-Saxon and, like Old Norse, it is built from two meaningful elements. Ead- is "wealth, prosperity" and gives Edward ("prosperity-guard"), Edmund ("prosperity-protection") and Edith ("prosperity-war"). Ælf- is "elf", and gives Alfred ("elf-counsel"). Þryð is "strength", and gives Audrey and Mildred. These names dominated England until 1066 and then almost vanished.

The Norman conquest replaced them wholesale. William, Richard, Robert, Henry, Matilda and Alice are Germanic names carried in by French speakers, and within two centuries they had taken over: by the 1300s roughly a fifth of Englishmen were called William. Add the church's contribution — John, Thomas, Mary, Anne — and the medieval English name pool becomes very small and very repetitive, which is precisely why surnames became necessary.

The third layer is Victorian, and it is a revival rather than a fashion. Nineteenth-century parents deliberately dug up Anglo-Saxon and Arthurian names (Alfred, Edith, Arthur, Percival, Winifred), added Latinate virtue nouns (Constance, Prudence, Florence, Beatrice) and flower and gem names (Rose, Violet, Pearl, Ruby). If you want a name to read as 1880 rather than 1980, that is the recipe: an antique or a virtue, never a diminutive.

Surnames fixed between roughly 1250 and 1450, and they came from four places. Occupations gave Smith, Baker, Cooper ("barrel-maker"), Fletcher ("arrow-maker"), Chandler ("candle-maker") and Wainwright ("wagon-builder"). Patronymics gave Johnson, Wilson and Harrison. Places gave Ashworth, Whitfield and Underhill — and "atte", "at the", survives fused into Attwood and Atwell. Nicknames gave Fairfax ("fair-haired") and Armstrong. Norman families kept their French place of origin instead: Sinclair, Beaumont, Neville.