Well here it is 2007 & the Christmas TV shows are overwith.
& now for about the 687th time I'm wondering just how Charles Dickens came up with the weird names for some of his characters.

Wackford Squeers, Smike, Scrooge, Fagin, Mr. Grimwig & a dozen others in his stories.

Dickens society members might know.

Are these names from his head or are they names (approximately) that were around in the 18th & 19th century in Britain ?
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01-01-07, 10:38 AM
DorianGreyed
It's hard to say where some last names come from. According to one poster on another site, the name Scrooge is similar to a Scottish word for scrimping.

I have no cite, but I dimly remember reading an academic paper that suggested a Scottish word for scrimping might have given Dickens the idea for the name Scrooge. It might have been spelled scrudge or scroodge, but as I say it has been some time since I read that paper.

Another poster says

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary lists "Scroo(d)ge" as a variant form of "Scrouge":
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The earliest printed usage, according to the OED, was in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, 1755.

One fascinating point, though, is the OED's third documented use, attributed to Dickens, himself, in Chapter 39 of The Old Curiosity Shop:

quote:At last they got to the theatre, which was Astley's: and in some two minutes after they had reached the yet unopened door, little Jacob was squeezed flat, and the baby had received divers concussions, and Barbara's mother's umbrella had been carried several yards off and passed back to her over the shoulders of the people, and Kit had hit a man on the head with the handkerchief of apples for 'scrowdging' his parent with unnecessary violence, and there was a great uproar. [Emphasis Added]

Dickens was not the only English writer to come up with unusual (to those of us in the US) names. Many of the names used by A. Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock???) stories sound strange to American ears.

Another site says that, in The Pickwick Papers, the gravedigger, Gabriel Grub, was a humorless man. According to Dickens, Gabriel Grub was “an ill-conditioned, cross-grained, surly fellow – a morose and lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himself.” He had “a deep scowl of malice and ill-humor.” Sound like anyone we know?

The site also makes the claim that ' the name "Scrooge" comes from a one-used verb "to scrooge," which meant "to squeeze." '

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Note of little importance: I once dated Sherlock Holmes' daughter. Really. Her father's name was Sherlock Holmes.

01-01-07, 11:42 AM
Professor
They must have been clueless. Big Grin Happy New Year, DG!

01-01-07, 11:45 AM
dance girl

quote:
Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Note of little importance: I once dated Sherlock Holmes' daughter. Really. Her father's name was Sherlock Holmes.



Wow DG..you must be even older than I thought!
Happy New Year to you from dg Smile

01-01-07, 11:57 AM
DorianGreyed
"Wow DG..you must be even older than I thought!"



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Happy New Year to all my wonderful AP friends!

01-01-07, 08:08 PM
FredPuli
The names do suggest, by their very sound, something of the character. Wackford is an appropriate name for a schoolmaster who would whack boys with a cane Smile. Dotheboys Hall seems a play on 'do the boys', 'do' meaning 'to cheat' (in colloquial English). The name Uriah in Uriah Heep just sounds like the noise of a man who professes to be "ever so 'umble", and so on. Dickens may have used some real names . Uriah was not a common first name in his day but certainly was, and is, in use. (There is a soccer referee here called Uriah Rennie ) Other names like Grimwig, Pecksniff, Bumble also sound just right for the person portrayed.

This is something of an extension of the old practice of giving characters names which were more literally descriptive. For example,we have no doubt of the character and interests of Lady Sneerwell, the chief backbiter in Sheridan's 'School for Scandal' Smile

01-01-07, 08:56 PM
coldfuse
If I recall correctly, Marley (but not Jacob) was the name of Dickens' personal physician.

01-02-07, 09:37 AM
juanruiz
Novelists have long used character names as allusions. Cervantes' Don Quijote, for example, is a reference to the character's big jaw bones (quijadas + the suffix -ote). Sancho Pança (Sancho- the popular development of Latin sanctus [holy], Pança (gut), in reference to his love of food.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

quote:

Originally posted by juanruiz:
Novelists have long used character names as allusions. Cervantes' Don Quijote, for example, is a reference to the character's big jaw bones (quijadas + the suffix -ote). Sancho Pança (Sancho- the popular development of Latin sanctus [holy], Pança (gut), in reference to his love of food.

And Rómulo Gallegos' Doña Barbara is another example in Spanish.