Eufemia

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  Eufemia— “fair fame”

  Euphemia originally meant at once fair speech and abstinence from the reverse, so that almost in irony it signified silence, and was applied to the stillness that prevailed during religious rites, or to the proclamation of silence. The Euphemia who was the parent of the wide-spread name, was a virgin-martyr of Bithynia, whose legend of constancy, unshaken and invulnerable, alike by lion and flame, strongly impressed both the East and the West. Jevfimija, in Russia; Jeva, in…

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  Euphemia originally meant at once fair speech and abstinence from the reverse, so that almost in irony it signified silence, and was applied to the stillness that prevailed during religious rites, or to the proclamation of silence. The Euphemia who was the parent of the wide-spread name, was a virgin-martyr of Bithynia, whose legend of constancy, unshaken and invulnerable, alike by lion and flame, strongly impressed both the East and the West. Jevfimija, in Russia; Jeva, in Servia; Bema, in Lusatia; and Pimmie, in Lithuania. Then she is almost as much changed as by the Effie and Phemie of Scotland, which together with Euphame have prevailed since very early times. It is a question whether this Scottish Euphame were really one of the Greek names brought from Hungary by Queen Margaret, or if it be only another attempt to translate the Keltic Aoiffe. In the Highlands, however, the name is called Oighrigh; which, to English eyes and ears, seems equally distant from either Aoiffe or Euphemia. The church of Santa Eufemia at Rome gives title to a cardinal, and has spread the name in Italy and France.

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part III, Chapter IV (Historical Greek Names Consisting Of Epithets), Section IV (Eu) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)