Chapter CCXII: Section VIII: Louis

With the throne of the Franks, the Karlingen took their favourite prefix of the old Salic line, _hlod_.

This word, the same in root as the Sanscrit _çru_, Greek κλύω (kluo), Latin _cluo_, Anglo-Saxon _hlowan_, may possibly have been originated by the cow, to whose voice, in our own language, the verb _to low_ is now restricted. All mean to make a noise; and the dignity of that noise increased, for κλυτός (klutos) was Greek for renowned, κλέος, fame, as we saw when dealing with Cleomenes, Cleopatra, &c.; and in Latin, _clueo_, was to be famous, _clientes_ or _callers_ beset the honoured man, and _laus_ was praise or fame; and so not only have we _loud_ in English, _lyde_ in the North, for the ordinary adjective, but _hlod_ or _hlud_ was the old German term for renown, and _los_ for which French knights afterwards fought and bled, and a score of other words, less relevant to our purpose, will easily suggest themselves as current in every European tongue, first cousin words from _laus_ or from _hlod_.

The rough aspirate at the beginning was once an essential portion of the word, and among the Franks it must have been especially harsh, since their contemporary Latinists always render it by _ch_.

Chlodio, as they call him, is numbered as the second of the long-haired Salians, the father of ‘Meroveus,’ and leader of the incursions of the Franks about 428. His grandson married the Burgundian maiden, called by the Valkyr title of Hlodhild, or Chlodechilda, as the Latin civilization of her day called her, when it hailed her with delight as the converter of her husband to Christianity. Although canonized, her name was not in great use for a good many generations, and to this she probably owes it that, when it was revived as belonging to a royal saint, for the benefit of the daughter of the good dauphin, son of Louis XV., it had not been shorn of its aspirate like all the cognate ones. It has since become a favourite with French ladies.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ French. │ Italian. │ German. │
│Clotilde │Clotilda │Klothilde │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The husband of Clotilda was known to his own fierce Franks as Hluodowig, or famous war, or consecration; but when his success after his prayer to the God of Hluodhild had brought him to abjure his Teuton gods, and receive baptism from St. Remi, the pope accepted the only orthodox sovereign of Europe as most Christian king and eldest son of the Church by the appellation of Chlodovisus, or Clovis, the retranslation into French.

Among his successors was found many a _fainéant_ who had nothing of him but his prefix and his long hair, and one who is counted as Clovis II. When these had passed away, Charles the Great gave the name of the great founder of the former line to one of his younger sons, the only one who lived to succeed him.

What Hlodwig Haman’s War was called in his own day may be seen by the curious barbaric Latin poem sung by his soldiers in honour of their exploit in setting him at liberty, when he had been treacherously made prisoner by Adelgis, Duke of Beneventum, a song that shows Latin in its first step towards the tongues of southern Europe.

‘Audite omnes fines terre errore cum tristitia,
Quale scelas fuit factum in civitas Beneventum
Lluduicum comprenderunt, sancto pio Augusto.’

‘Lluduicus’ is now known to the French as Louis le Debonnaire, a title that some ascribe to his piety, others to his weakness. The Germans took him as Ludwig, and thenceforth these two varieties held a double course, while the softer Provençals made him Aloys, which is now regarded, owing to a saint of its own, as a separate name. Three monarchs of the Karling line bore this favourite name, and the fifth descendant of Hugh Capet brought it in again, to come to its especial honour with the saintly Crusader, ninth king so called, from whom it became so essentially connected with French royalty, that after the succession of the Bourbons, no member of the royal family was christened without it. Indeed, hardly any one of rank or birth failed to have it among their many names, till its once-beloved sound became a peril to the owners' heads in the Revolution, and it has in the present day arrived at sharing the unpopularity of François.

Elsewhere it is chiefly a French importation; the Welsh use Lewis as an Anglicism of Llewellyn, and the Irish of Lachtna; and the Scots make rather more use of it from their old alliances and connection through the Scottish guard. The Scottish Lodowick is probably taken from the northern form of the original word; just as with the Italians, Luigi is the mere Italian version of Louis, Lodovico the inheritance from the Lombards or Germans, and in this shape was long current in northern Italy, belonging in particular to the unfortunate Sforza, of Milan, who perished in the first shock between France and Italy.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ Breton. │ Scottish. │ French. │
│Ludovick │Loiz │Lodowick │Clovis │
│Lewis │Loizik │ │Louis │
│Louis │ │ │Looys │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Provençal. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │
│Aloys │Lodovico │Clodoveo │Luiz │
│Chlodobeu │Luigi │Luis │ │
│Lozoic │Aloïsio │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Swiss. │ Swedish. │ Dutch. │
│Ludwig │Ludi │Ludwig │Lodewick │
│Luz │ —————— │ │Lood │
│Lotze │ Bavarian. │ │ │
│ │Wickl │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ Slovak. │ Hungarian. │
│Ludvik │Ludvik │Ludvick │Lajos │
│Ludvis │ │Ljudevit │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The Provençal Aloys apparently was the first shape that threw out a feminine, the Aloyse or Heloïse, whose correspondence with Abelard was the theme of so much sentiment, and whose fame, brought by the archers to Scotland, no doubt was the origin of the numerous specimens of Alison found in that romantic nation. According to Dugdale, the wife of the Norman William Mallet was Hesilia or Helewise, no doubt the same as Heloïse. Heloïse had nearly died away in France when Rousseau’s romance of _La Nouvelle Heloïse_ brought it as well as Julie into fashion again.

The votaresses of St. Louis had, however, chosen to come much nearer to his name, and by the end of the fifteenth century Louise was in great vogue at the French court; it travelled everywhere with French princesses, came to us with the House of Hanover, and has now a thorough hold of all ranks.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │
│Louisa │Louise │Luisa │Luisa │
│Louie │Lisette │Eloïsa │ ————————— │
│ ————————— │Loulou │ │ Portuguese. │
│ Scotch. │Heloise │ │Luiza │
│Leot │Louison │ │Luizinha │
│Alison │ │ │ │
│Ailie │ │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Swedish. │ Polish. │ Lettish. │
│Ludowicke │Ludovica │Ludvika │Lusche │
│Luise │Lovisa │Ludoisia │Lasche │
│ │Lova │Lodoiska │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The eldest son of the great Clovis was Hlodmir, or Clodomir, great fame, made more euphonious in German as Ludomir, and furnishing such surnames as Luttmer and Lummers.

All his sons were murdered by their uncles, except one, who was shorn of his long locks to save his life, and was put into a convent, where he became a holy man, was canonized, and his harsh name of Hlodowald, or Clodvald, became the pleasant one of St. Cloud, best known for the sake of the palace near Paris. Another St. Chlodvald, of Metz, is commonly called St. Clou.

One of the uncles who killed the poor boys was Hlodhari, or Chlotachari, famous warrior, a terrible savage, but the last survivor of the brothers, and counted in the Frank history as Chlother, or Clotaire. Others of his race likewise were so baptized, and when the name passed to the Karlingen it was as Lothar. So was called the son of Louis le Debonnaire, whose portion, known at first as Lotharingen, came to be in Latin Lotharingia, and still remains Lorraine. Lothar did not pass away from Germany; one emperor, after the separation, was so called; and it fell into many forms of surnames, in especial into Luther; and when Martin Luther had rendered this almost saintly to his countrymen, they over-hastily explained it by _lother_, pure; while the Bohemians found a similar word in their own tongue, meaning a swan. Oddly enough, Huss signified a goose, and the saying arose that the Bohemian goose had let fall a quill, which had been picked up by a swan of far more distant flight.

Luther has a few namesakes in his own country on his own account, but, in general, Chloter has died out of Christian nomenclature.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ German. │ Spanish. │
│Lothario │Clotaire │Lothar │Clotario │
│Lowther │Lothaire │Luther │ ————————— │
│ │ │ ———————— │ Lettish. │
│ │ │ Italian. │Lutters │
│ │ │Lotario │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Chlodoswintha, or famous height, was a Frank princess, without namesakes beyond her own race; in fact, the use of this prefix seems to have been exclusively Frank.[144]

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Footnote 144:

Sismondi, _Histoire des François_, _Littérature du Midi de l'Europe_;
Friedrich Pott; Michaelis; Thierry, _Récits des Temps Mérovingiens_.