Ferdinando

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

  Ferdinando— “adventuring life”

  …It was the Spanish Goths who used this gallant name, and made it with their Romance tongues into Fernan and Fernando. San Fernando, king of Castille, and father of our own Eleanor, made it a favourite for his royal line; and a younger son of Castille so called, being heir of Aragon, carried it thither, and thence it passed to southern France, where the grandson of old King René was Ferrand or Ferry. Aragon again bestowed it upon Naples; but it was there prolonged into…

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  …It was the Spanish Goths who used this gallant name, and made it with their Romance tongues into Fernan and Fernando. San Fernando, king of Castille, and father of our own Eleanor, made it a favourite for his royal line; and a younger son of Castille so called, being heir of Aragon, carried it thither, and thence it passed to southern France, where the grandson of old King René was Ferrand or Ferry. Aragon again bestowed it upon Naples; but it was there prolonged into Ferdinando, whilst Spanish elisions had at home turned it to Hernan, as the conqueror of Mexico termed himself. It was bestowed upon the second son of Juana la Loca, who was born in Spain, and long preferred there to his brother, though it was to the imperial throne that he was destined to succeed, and to render his Spanish name national through Germany, where Ferdinand has long been a sore puzzle; sometimes explained by _fart_, a journey, and sometimes by _fried_, peace, but never satisfactorily. The contraction Nandel was the shout of the mob in the ears of Ferdinand, the obstinate, narrow-minded man who won his cause by mere force of undivided aim.…

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter VI (Descriptive Names), Section X (Life) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)