Five Brothers and a War

Dutch Naming Protocols—Given Names

Over the centuries, protocols and traditions developed in Holland with regard to both given names and surnames. These protocols can be boiled down into several phases. The first phase was preeminent during the Germanic period where names were made up by combining two parts of other names into a single name. For example, Albert is a name that combined Adel with Bert. An endless series of combinations was possible when naming a child after his or her relatives. The next phase occurred during the Middle Ages, when religious influence became predominant and people were pressured to name their children after biblical or church characters—particularly saints within the Catholic religion. This naming convention was stressed even more after the Protestant Reformation, largely as a means of ensuring that children would remain faithful to their Catholic roots. To this day, Catholics use such names when giving their children first or middle names. While the previous Germanic naming protocols did not disappear, they became less frequent. Leaders in society, who were often also influential in religion, became trendsetters such that commoners would follow. Thus, the Catholic church and society were both moving toward making naming conventions more religious. Names such as Johannes (John), Pieter (Peter) came into strong vogue. The name Johannes was shorted to Jan and the name Pieter was shortened to Piet. Another name that came into vogue was Cornelis, which is the uniquely Dutch name derived from the Roman name Cornelius. The name became powerful religiously as a result of the account in the tenth chapter of the Book of Acts (Acts of the Apostles) where a Roman centurion named Cornelius became the first Gentile convert to Christianity. The name Cornelis was then shorted to Cees or Kees, both of which were pronounced the same way, as in the English word “case”. The two names Jan and Kees became extremely popular, even combining them as JanKees. The very term “JanKees” came to mean “ordinary guy” or “Joe Blow” when referring to a generic person in a story. Realizing that in Dutch the letter “j” is similar to the English “y” when beginning a word, the term “Yan-kees” became an anglicized term, then coming to mean American. Of course, in English ending a noun with an “s” typically turns the word into a plural form. While in Dutch JanKees is singular, in English it was transformed to its singular form, Yankee. Another transformation or adaptation occurred in naming conventions when names of relatives took on a more formal protocol. The origins of this is generally assumed to come from a superstition related to Catholic reincarnation. The idea was that newborns were reincarnated ancestors or other relatives. This led to another superstition in that it was not acceptable to name a child after a living relative, because the older living person would supposedly soon die. Another religiously-based protocol was that Catholics typically used the Latin form of a name, such as “Maria”, whereas Protestants usually modernized names, such as “Marie”.

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Five Brothers and a War

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