Horace

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

  Horace

  The Horatian gens was a very old and noble one, memorable for the battle of the Horatii, in the mythic times of early Rome. Some explain their nomen by _hora_ (an hour), and make it mean the punctual, but this is a triviality suggested by the sound, and the family themselves derived it from the hero ancestor, Horatus, to whom an oak wood was dedicated. The poet Horace bore it as an adoptive name, being of a freedman’s family. Except for Orazio, in Italy, the name of Titian’s…

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  The Horatian gens was a very old and noble one, memorable for the battle of the Horatii, in the mythic times of early Rome. Some explain their nomen by _hora_ (an hour), and make it mean the punctual, but this is a triviality suggested by the sound, and the family themselves derived it from the hero ancestor, Horatus, to whom an oak wood was dedicated. The poet Horace bore it as an adoptive name, being of a freedman’s family. Except for Orazio, in Italy, the name of Titian’s son, it slept till Corneille’s tragedy of _Les Horaces_ brought it forward, and the influence of Orazio made it Horatio in England. Thus the brother and son of Sir Robert Walpole bore it, and the literary note of the younger Horace Walpole made it fashionable. Then came our naval hero to give it full glory, and that last mention of his daughter Horatia seems to have brought the feminine forward of late years. The name is not popular elsewhere, but is called by the Russians, Goratij, by the Slovaks, Orac.[59]

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part IV, Chapter III (Nomina), Section VII (Cornelius, &c) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)