Chapter CCVI: Section II: Charles

Most heroes gain by becoming the subjects of romance, but this has been by no means the case with the great Karl of the Franks, for though ‘il Rè Carlo’ be three rolled into one, he has lost the heroism of him of the hammer, and the large-minded statesmanship of the first emperor, obtaining instead the dulness and weak credulity of him who was called the Bald.

The three Charleses are matter of history, and the Carlo Magno of romance and ballad is little more than a lay figure, always persuaded to believe traitorous stories of his best friends, and meeting with undignified adventures, as in the case of the enchanted ring that bound his affections to lady, bishop, and lake. We therefore pass on at once to this name, which a foolish old story thus accounts for. As an infant he was put out to nurse, and when brought home, much grown, his mother exclaimed, ‘What great carle is this?’ whence he continued to be so called, instead of by his baptismal name of David. This tale may have been suggested by the fact, that the veritable Charles the Great, when laying aside his state he became a scholar in his palace hall, under the teaching of the English Alcuin, assumed the appropriate title of David.

Karl was in fact, as we have shown in the chapter on ancestral names, the regular family name of the line, used in regular alternation from its first appearance with the grandfather of the hammering Charles, who perhaps took his soubriquet from Thor, and gradually acquiring more and more ignominious epithets till it sunk into obscurity in Lorraine, whence it only emerged again when the Karlings intermarried with Philippe Auguste, and brought the old imperial name into the French royal family, where five more kings bore it. They sent it to Naples with Charles of Anjou; and his son, Charles Robert, or Caroberto, being elected to Hungary, had so many namesakes that Camden was led to suppose that all Hungarian kings were called Carl. It went to Germany when the son of the blind king of Bohemia received it from his father’s connection with the French court, and afterwards reigned as the 4th Karl of Germany, taking up his reckoning from the old Karlingen. Again, the second ducal house of Burgundy was an off-shoot from the line of Valois, and it was from Charles the Bold that the name was transmitted to his great grandson of Ghent, soon known to Europe as Carlos I. of Spain, Karl V. of Germany, Carolus Quintus of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the real name spreader from whom this became national in Spain, Denmark, and even in Britain, for his renown impressed James I. with the idea that this must be a fortunate name; when, in the hope of averting the unhappy doom that had pursued five James Stuarts in succession, he called his sons Henry and Charles. The destiny of the Stuart was not averted, but the fate of the ‘royal martyr’ made Charles the most popular of all appellations among the loyalists, and afterwards with the Jacobites, in both England and Scotland, so that rare as it formerly was, it now disputes the ground with John, George, and William, as the most common of English names.

Another namesake of Charlemagne must not be forgotten, namely, the son of St. Olaf, of Norway, whom his followers, intending an agreeable surprise to the father, baptized after the great emperor by the name of Magnus, whence the very frequent Magnus, of Scandinavia, and Manus of Ireland.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Keltic. │ French. │Span. and Port.│
│Charles │ GAEL. │Charles │Carlos │
│Charlie │Tearlach │Charlot │ German. │
│ │ ERSE. │ │Karl │
│ │Searlus │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Italian. │ Swedish. │ Danish. │ Dutch. │
│Carlo │Karl │Karl │Carolus │
│Carolo │Kalle │Karel │Carel │
│ │ │ │Karel │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Illyrian. │ Lusatian. │
│Karol │Karel │Karlo │Karlo │
│Karolek │ ————————— │Karlica │Karlko │
│ │ Slovak. │Karlic │ │
│ │Karol │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│Lettish. │ Esthonian. │ Hungarian. │ Dantzig. │
│Karls │Karl │Karoly │Kasch │
│ │Karel │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The two feminines are of late invention. The first I have been able to find was Carlota or Charlotte, of Savoy, who married Louis XI., and thus introduced this form to French royalty. Charlotte d'Albret had the misfortune to be given in marriage to Cesare Borgia, and had one daughter, who married into the house of La Tremouille, whence the brave Lady Derby carried it into England, and our registers of the seventeenth century first acknowledge Charlet. The Huguenotism of the house of La Tremouille connected it with that of Bouillon, where the heiress Carola, or Charlotte, was married in 1588. The house of Orange probably thence derived it, and it became known in Germany, whence it was brought to us in full popularity by the good queen of George III. A sentimental fame was also bestowed on it, as the name of Göthe’s heroine in _Werther_.

Carolina, the other form, seems to have been at first Italian, and thence to have spread to Southern Germany, and all over that country, whence we received it with the wife of George II., by whom it was much spread among the nobility, and is now very common among the peasantry.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian │
│Charlotte │Charlotte │Carlota │Carlotta │
│Lotty │Lolotte │Lola │Carlota │
│Chatty │Caroline │ │Carolina │
│Caroline │ │ │ │
│Carry │ │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Swedish. │ Slovak. │ Lettish. │
│Charlotte │Lotta │Karolina │Latte │
│Lottchen │ │Karolinka │ ————————— │
│Caroline │ │Karla │ Dantzig. │
│Lina │ │ │Linuschca │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Ceorl was the name of an early king of Mercia, and of a thane of Alfred’s, who defeated the Danes, and Carloman was almost as common as Carl in the old Karling family.[139]

-----

Footnote 139:

Sismondi; Roscoe; Michaelis; Pott; Anderson, _Genealogies_.