Chapter CXVI: Section IX: Names of Gladness

A large class of names of joy belonging to the later growth of the Latin tongue may be thrown together; and first those connected with the word _jocus_, which seems to have arisen from the inarticulate shout of ecstasy that all know, but none can spell, ἰουας (in Greek), and with us joy, the French _joie_, and Italian _gioia_.

The original cry is preserved in the Swiss _jodel_, or shout of the mountaineers, and this indeed seems to be the sound naturally rising from the cries that peal from one hill to another, for here the Eastern meets the Western tongue. The sound at which the walls of Jericho fell, was called the Yobêl; and the fifty years' festival of release, inaugurated with trumpet sounds, was the Yobêl (the jubilee). _Jubilo_ (to call aloud), already a Latin word, also from the sound of the shout and exultation, had been connected with it even before the _annum jubileum_ had come in from the Hebrews.

_Giubilare_ and _Giubileo_ made themselves at home in Italian, while German, either from the Latin or its own resources, took its own word _jubel_. Giubileo was probably born in the year of a jubilee.

From _jocus_ came Jodocus, an Armorican prince, belonging to a family which migrated from Wales. He refused the sovereignty of Brittany, to live as a hermit in Ponthieu, where he is still remembered as St. Josse, and named at least three villages, perhaps also forming Josselin; but in his native Brittany, Judicael, an old princely name, seems to have been the form of his commemoration. In _Domesday Book_ we find Judicael _Venator_ already a settler in England before the conquest, probably brought by the Confessor. Germany accepted this as a common peasant name, as Jost, or Jobs; Bavaria, as Jobst, or Jodel; Italy, as Giodoco; and the feminine, Jodoca, is not yet extinct in Wales.

Neither is the very similar Jocosa, once not uncommon among English ladies, by whom it was called Joyce. The contractions of this name are, however, almost inextricably confused with those of Justus. Joy stands alone as one of our abstract virtue names.

Another word very nearly related to our own glad, is _gaudium_ (joy), still preserved in the adjective gaudy, and in gaudy (the festival day) of a college. It named St. Gaudentius, whence the Italian Gaudenzio, and the old German name of Geila.

_Hilaris_ (cheerful) formed Hilarius, whence was called the great doctor of the Gallican Church, known to us as St. Hilary, of Poitiers; and to France, as St. Hilaire. A namesake was the Neustrian hermit who made Jersey his abode, and thus named St. Helier; and moreover the Welsh called those who traditionally had been named Hilarius, first Ilar, then Elian; and then thought they had found their patron in the Greek Ælianus.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Russian. │ Frisian. │
│Hilary │Hilaire │Ilario │Gilarij │Laris │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Portugal likewise has Hilariāo, and Russia Hilarion; and the feminine, Hilaria, was once used in England, and is still the Russian Ilaria, and Slovak Milari.

_Lætus_ (glad) formed the substantive _lætitia_, which was turned into a name by the Italians as Letizia, probably during the thirst for novelty that prevailed in the Cinque-cento; and then, likewise, Lettice seems to have arisen in England, and must have become known in Ireland when Lettice Knollys was the wife of the Earl of Essex. Thence Letitia, or Letty, have been common among Irishwomen.

Prosperus, from the Latin _prosper_, formed of _pro_ and _spero_, so as to mean favourable hope, formed the mediæval Roman Prospero, of which Shakespeare must have heard through the famous condottiere, Prospero Colonna, when he bestowed it upon his wondrous magician Duke of Milan.[80]

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Footnote 80:

Kitto, _Bible Cyclopædia_; Butler; Pott; Michaelis; Dugdale; Petre
Chevalier.