I can´t comment on any English usage, but here in Spain Virgilio (obviously, Vergil) has been consistently used as a Christian name, with no implications whatsoever. Homer has never, to my knowledge, been used. Now the situation in South America is very different... you have the *lot *of Roman/Greek names, which apparently carry no special connotations.
Regards, Miryam > > What's the British attitude? Doesn't anyone there give the name > >Homer or Virgil to their son? After all, one meets Englishmen named > >Terence, etc. > > To someone like me brought up in the UK, Homer and Virgil used as forenames > sound distinctly American -- I didn't know they had a hillbilly ring. In > England I don't think Terence is taken to allude to the Roman playwright. > Nor Horace to the poet. I've never heard of anyone called Plautus or > Catullus. I'm sure I've heard or read of a dog called Virgil (or perhaps it > was Vergil) but I can't remember where. In Malta there was (is?) a fashion > for Greek names, e.g. Sir Themistocles Zammit. > > Back to work! (I'm editing a book on a field of study I didn't even know > existed -- the constitutional law of revolutions. Cases cited come from > Restoration England, the secessionist South, UDI Rhodesia, Grenada, Fiji, > Queensland, etc., but so far nothing from ancient Rome, unless you count a > quotation from De Civ. Dei, IV, 4.) > > Simon Cauchi, Hamilton, New Zealand > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. > Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message > "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You > can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub -- *************************************************************************** ...There was Delphinus Polyglott. He told us what had become of the eighty-three lost tragedies of Aeschylus; of the fifty-four orations of Isaeus; of the three hundred and ninety-one speeches of Lysias; of the hundred and eighty treatises of Theophrastus; of the eighth book of the conic sections of Apollonius; of Pindar´s hymns and dithyrambics; and of the five and forty tragedies of Homer Junior. E.A. Poe *************************************************************************** ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
