Chapter XC: Section X: Valerius

Deep among the roots of Indo-European tongues lies the source of our adverb _well_, the German _wohl_, Saxon _wel_, Gothic _waila_, an evidently close connection of the Latin verb _valeo_ (to be well); and which the Keltic _gwall_ links again with the Greek καλός (well, or beautiful), related to the Sanscrit _kalya_ (healthy, able, or well).

_Valeo_ was both to be sound and to be worth, and to the old Roman a sound man was necessarily _valiant_, worth something in the battle; and _valor_, which to them and the Italians is still value, is to the chivalrous French and English _valour_.

This word of well-being named the old Sabine Valerian gens, one of the most noble and oldest in Rome, who had a little throne to themselves in the Circus, and were allowed to bury their dead within the walls of the city. The simple masculine form of the name had but two saints, and they were too obscure to be much followed, though Valère and Valerot as surnames have risen from it in France. The feminine of it was in honour at Rome for the sake of Valeria, the public-spirited lady who took the lead in persuading the mother of Coriolanus to intercede with her son to lay his vengeance aside and spare his mother-city; Valérie is a favourite French name, but the compounds of this word have had far greater note. Valerianus, the adoptive name, was borne by Publius Sicinius Valerianus, that unhappy persecuting emperor who ended his career as a stepping-stone to Shahpoor. Saint Valerianus was Bishop of Auxerre, and though properly Valérien in French, Valerian in English, was probably the patron of the Waleran, or Galeran, occurring in the middle ages, chiefly among the Luxembourgs, Counts of St. Pol.

Valentinianus has been continued by the Welsh in the form of Balawn.

Valentinus was a Roman priest, who is said to have endeavoured to give a Christian signification to the old custom of drawing lots in honour of Juno Februata, and thus fixed his own name and festival to the curious fashion prevailing all over England and France, of either the choice of a “true Valentine,” or of receiving as such the first person of the opposite sex encountered on that morning.

These customs increased the popularity of Valentine and Valentina, the latter being more probably used as the feminine of the former, than as the name of an obscure martyr who died under Diocletian.

Valentina Visconti was the wife of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France, and as one of the bright lights in a corrupt court, merited that her name should have become more permanent than it has been.

The Slavonic contractions of the masculine are curious. Lower Lusatia makes it Batyn, Tyno, Bal, and Balk; Lithuanian, Wallinsch; and Hungary, Balint.[62]

It is not easy to separate the idea of Virginia from _virgo_ (a virgin), especially since Sir Walter Raleigh gave that name to his American colony in honour of the Virgin Queen, and it was probably under this impression that Virginie was made by Bernardin de St. Pierre, the heroine of his tropical Arcadian romance, which reigned supreme over French, English, and German imaginations of a certain calibre, and rendered Virginie triumphant in France, and a name of sentiment in England. Nay, had the true Virginia lived and died a couple of centuries earlier, her story would have passed for a myth expressed in her appellation; but the fact is, that she derived it from a good old plebeian gens, who formerly spelt themselves Verginius, thus connecting themselves with _ver_ (the spring), Persian _behar_, Eolic Βεαρ, the old Greek Γέαρ, and with all its kindred of _virga_ (a rod, or green bough), _vireo_ (to flourish), _viridis_ (green); and again with the more remote descendants of these words in modern Europe—_vert_, _verdure_, _il vero_, &c. Virginio was a name in the Orsini family, but otherwise it has not been kept up.

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Footnote 62:

Liddell and Scott; Pott; Facciolati; Smith; Arnold; Jones, _Welsh
Sketches_; Brand, _Popular Antiquities_; Michaelis.

CHAPTER IV.

COGNOMINA.