Updated 2 Aug 2003

WIRKSWORTH Parish Records 1600-1900

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UNKNOWN GENDER Firstnames

Number of occurences shown from 100,000 firstnames in Wirksworth registers 1608-1837. Main Latin names translated to English. Variants have the same code number. These names are unknown in the sense that their occurance in the Parish registers gives no clue to their gender. Gentle reader, if you can supply this clue, please write. Checkout the letters from Barrie, Jane and Angela.


Deciphered, transcribed, compiled, indexed, formatted and copyright © 2000, . All Rights Reserved. 

    firstname, code number, (occurences)

          Aannal 2001 (1)
          Aldery 2022 (1)
          Barna 2062 (2)
          Bolyver 2090 (1)
          Eanysa 2141 (1)
          Exton 2171 (2)
          -Exstan 2171 (1)
          -Exston 2171 (1)
          Gooditha 2207 (1)
          Hamia 2218 (1)
          Huldey 2248 (1)
          Iderard 2250 (1)
          Lyth 2326 (1)
          Maden 2329 (1)
          Mathkhy 2351 (1)
          Mattethy 2353 (1)
          Murdy 2378 (1)
          Persenia 2415 (2)
          Ronearte 2446 (1)
          Sendenye 2460 (1)
          Thirza 2495 (2)
          Trophisa 2506 (2)
          -Triphosa 2506 (1)
          Victorell 2514 (1)
          Withnall 2527 (2)
  ---End of Unknown gender names---


Barrie Robinson of Australia writes:
Thirza - f. Still in use. Also, there's a 'Thurza' wife of householder right near the beginning of the Wirksworth 1841 census.

Triphosa - f. This is a biblical name, correctly spelt Tryphosa. Two women called Tryphena and Tryphosa are mentioned at the end of one of Paul's epistles. How does on know they're women -? Their grammatical gender is f, and this is normally reliable, but I've a feeling that he might also refer to them as 'women'.

Romans 16:12 "Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa, those WOMEN who work hard in the Lord."

Mattethy -m? Looks like a fairly standard anglicization of Mattethiah (I don't think that is the correct spelling). This person is a priest in one of the apocryphal books of Maccabees, and there may be one in the canonical books somewhere (1 Chron?)

Still haven't looked up Mattethiah. My New Jerusalem Bible (RC) has a pretty good index of personal names, and I can find it if it occurs in the canonical scriptures from my Young's concordance, or my MacBible (on computer).
Jane Nelson writes

Dear John,

I believe Gooditha is probably a variant of Goditha, a Saxon female name better known to us in the form Godiva.

And Trophisa seems to be a form of Tryphosa; one of my ancestresses was named Tryphosa.

Jane Nelson (JaneL56@aol.com)
Angela Bamford writes

In the list of unknown first names, Thirza, Goditha and Persenia are all female.
There is an interesting name, Bolyver, that I believe is male. It probably has no connections whatsoever, but, for what it's worth, here on the East coast of Canada, the surnames Bolivar, and its variant spellings of Boliver, and Bollivar, is a very common surname. A lot of the settlers here in Nova Scotia were from Germany, England, France, and Switzerland from the mid-1700's on, and there are a lot of variants to the settlers surnames, depending on who was recording them- as in the Parish Registers.

Angela

Deciphered, transcribed, compiled, indexed, formatted and copyright © 2000, . All Rights Reserved.