Follow the spelling through the years, one published dataset at a time.
No official statistics are imported for this spelling. No statistical dataset covering this spelling has been imported yet. See data coverage.
04 / Through time
History
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
FELIX— “happy”
The name of Felix himself was an agnomen frequently assumed by peculiarly fortunate individuals. It meant happy, and has given rise to all manner of words of good augury in the modern languages. No less than eleven saints so called are numbered in the Roman calendar, and yet it has never been a popular name, though sometimes occurring in Spain and France in the original form, and as Felice in Italy. The feminines, Felicia and Félise, in England and France, have been…
Read the full historical passageShow shorter excerpt
The name of Felix himself was an agnomen frequently assumed by peculiarly fortunate individuals. It meant happy, and has given rise to all manner of words of good augury in the modern languages. No less than eleven saints so called are numbered in the Roman calendar, and yet it has never been a popular name, though sometimes occurring in Spain and France in the original form, and as Felice in Italy. The feminines, Felicia and Félise, in England and France, have been constructed from it, and Felicia was Queen of Navarre in 1067; but the abstract idea, Felicitas (happiness), once worshipped as a goddess at Rome, named the slave-martyr of Carthage, who suffered with St. Perpetua. There was another Felicitas who, with her seven sons, under Antoninus Pius, presented a Christian parallel to the mother in the Maccabees. Felicità in Italy, and Félicité in France, are the votaries of one or others of these. Felix is adopted in Ireland as a substitute for Feidlim or Phelim (ever good).
Wiktionary text: CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata: CC0. Commons recordings retain their individual file licences. Complete attribution is available in each group above and alongside each chart.