How Latin i s Henrietta Maria ?? Fw: Scholastica/Scolastica

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Leo van de Pas

How Latin i s Henrietta Maria ?? Fw: Scholastica/Scolastica

Legg inn av Leo van de Pas » 28 jan 2006 03:48:02

This what I also received. Should be interesting to Richardson if he is so
well versed in medieval and other Latin.

As for the Henrietta Maria business: how silly. Henrietta is a latinate form
of the French name Henriette, while Maria is much older. For people to argue
that Henrietta and Maria are both taken holus-bolus from the Latin is rather
amusing. For one thing, the Romans never knew the name Henrietta or even its
male equivalent (!) Henriettus;). Henricus, the Latin back formation from
the name, was also unfamiliar to the Romans. It was coined in the Middle
Ages to make the previously pedestrian and vulgar Henry/Henri derived from a
Germanic origin, into something more pleasing to scribes and scholars using
the ecclesiastical form of Latin long after the Romans had departed the
scene.

The English have always played around with foreign names when importing
them. In particular, they have never been respecters of the French forms of
names! That the English should have anglicised Henriette into Henrietta is
hardly surprising. That that name happens also to be its form if you care to
make it Latin of a sort is really not germane (dare I say germanicus!) to
the question. The -ette- portion in French is a feminine diminutive, unknown
in Latin*. One of my Ernle relations had a wife, Henrica Forman. That name,
though rare, derives from the Latin form of the English name Henry, i.e.
Henricus, suited up, as it were, for a lady. In past ages, the English name
Henry was generally pronounced Harry, because even Henry was too French!
Modern English being the product of an indescriminate marriage between
Anglo-Saxon and Norman French (plus, of course other elements), a sort of
weird creolisation can occur at times. Thus the form Harry gave rise to
Harriet for ladies, wherein Harri+et (a diminutive derived no doubt from the
use of Norman French in mediæval England) came into existence. No one, I
think, believes that Charles King and Martyr's queen should be referred to
as Harriet Mary.

It must be accepted that scholars generally refer to Charles I's wife as
Queen Henrietta Maria, however they may pronounce her names. So too,
scholars, working in English and French, refer to Louis XVI's wife as Queen
Marie Antoinette. Are we to call her by her Austrian German names! Good
lord. What next: Citing Shakespeare by every variant spelling of the name he
employed in the few surviving documents in which we find his signature?
Scholars can satisfy their hankering for accuracy by quoting defunct
uses/spellings of names used contemporaneously with the life of their
subject in footnotes, endnotes, and explanatory notes. I have no doubt that
Henrietta Maria is called by other names in other languages, French to be
sure, but I very much doubt that she has ever had her name bandied about in
general in Latin, though there may well be documents composed in legal or
ecclesiastical Latin that include her name. This of course reminds me before
closing that even were Henriette Marie her names in French. Doubtless she
was baptised in Latin, ecclesiatical Latin though it may be, and so,
strictly, her name to God, and when first recorded, is to be found in the
baptismal register kept by the French Court in Latin!

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