Choosing a name in a country of Josephs and Alfreds

The choosing of names in contemporary Malta is symptomatic of a nation losing its identity. No sooner does a foreign show, business personality, a star soccer player, a pop star or a supermodel hit the headlines than a new name appears on the baptismal horizon.

As Wettinger points out, there is compelling evidence that not a single ‘Joseph’ (was) found among 5,000 Christian inhabitants of Malta in the 15th century- Lino Bugeja

Very often the name chosen for the newborn child adopts the jargon of the moment or the name of the ephemeral personality the parents wanted to be: the classic crooner or the singer with the golden voice, the master or mistress of heartbreak, the superstars for an emotionally repressed generation. Sneer if you like, but quite often the posters pinned to glorify these demi-gods after a few years are used to line the sides of dustbins.

Is our country of Josephs, Carmels and Alfreds ready for a new identity? Is there a new name-branding meant to alter the way the world perceives us? Forgive these questions but what we are dealing with is a state of mind, enriched with flights of fantasy and visions of grandeur.

On the top shelf of my bookcase I still have a dog-eared, battered copy of Alpha of the Plough, from my Lyceum days of seven decades ago, a gem of a book of essays by Alfred Gardner (1865-1946). His essay ‘On Choosing A Name’ is highly topical and a few quotes make interesting reading.

His words of wisdom suggest that “it is a good rule to avoid the fanciful in names. So few of our children are going to be heroes or sages that we should be careful not to stamp them with the mark of greatness at the outset of the journey.”

In my experience, particularly in the education sector, I sadly observed smart lads frustrated and handicapped with their indelible bombastic names meant to give them a flying start and an early smell of success. On the contrary, their names hanging like an albatross round their necks, branding them as outstanding football players or literary figures, spelt disaster for them. In their utter frustration and aversion for not scaling the expected Olympian heights, they gave up football or a literary career altogether because they could not bear the strain or the jibes of their peers.

Gardner admits that choosing a name is not easy and that “he would rather write an article than find a title for it”. Furthermore he shrewdly points out that “even men of genius suffer from this impoverishment” and singles out the great Elizabethan dramatist William Shakespeare, who may have been suffering from this dilemma when choosing the sterile titles of As You Like It and Twelfth Night for two of his plays.

Shakespeare’s Juliet proclaims in the oft-quoted rhetorical question: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” But here Juliet, the star-crossed lover, was referring to titles and surnames, to the Montagues and the Capulets of this world. In this regard I have observed over the years that surnames do matter in Maltese society – those with great expectations tend to add or shed a surname in order to show a pronounced affinity with a high-profile personality.

Undoubtedly the most common name of my generation has been Joseph, with variants of Joe, Joey, Ġużeppi, Ġużi, Ġuż, Żużu, Ġużè, Peppi, Peppu, Żeppi, Żeppu, as well as other foreign derivative forms like Beppe, Josef or Josè. According to international statistics these Maltese variants are the highest in the whole world.

In my eagerness for researching this phenomenon I dipped into an engrossing study of one of the earliest demographic documents discovered in the early 1960s by the erudite medievalist Prof. Godfrey Wettinger, namely the Militia List of 1419-20 (the Dejma register).

This exceptional document, showing the distribution of the Militia men of Malta in the early 15th century, had languished for centuries in the archives of the Mdina Cathedral among the annals of the Mdina Università (municipal council) whose outstanding records on life in Malta before the coming of the Knights in 1530, attest to the high standards of local governance, the first faltering steps towards nationhood.

The Militia List of 1419-20 contains the full names of all the men, numbering 1,667, between the ages of 16 and 65 living in Malta who were eligible for military duties (Id-Dejma) and their distribution in different localities. This register was the responsibility of the Mdina Università which de jure had jurisdiction over the whole of Malta, but the list did not include Birgu, which defiantly proclaimed allegiance to the castellan of the Castrum Maris (Fort St Angelo). And hereby hangs a tale.

The spread of Christian names in the Militia List elicits great interest, and Wettinger’s observations seem to tell us that “seeing is disbelieving” as in a list of 1,667 men there is not a single ‘Joseph’ or its variants. Out of 80 different Christian names in the register ‘Antoni’ tops the list with 104 examples, followed by ‘Johanni’ with 94, Nicolau (94) Guillielmu (76), Thumeu (58), Paulu (58), Petru (52) and Andrea (47). A study of the 1425 Milita List confirms the same trend.

The painful truth is, as Wettinger points out, that there is compelling evidence that “not a single ‘Joseph’ has yet been found among some 5,000 Christian inhabitants of Malta in the 15th century, though several Josephs could be found among the Jews” whose thriving communities and synagogues were firmly established in Mdina and Birgu.

This statement calls for clarification, because the maritime city of Birgu, well before the coming of the Knights, was fully engaged in maritime matters and related trades such as the building of boats and galleys. It had a well-established arsenal, a very thriving industry manned by skilful carpenters, joiners and sculptors who surely promoted the cult of St Joseph, the humble carpenter of Nazareth, as their protector.

In fact, the only altar in the whole of Malta dedicated to St Joseph registered in Mgr Pietro Dusina’s pastoral visits of 1575 is still extant in the old Birgu parish church of St Lawrence. It is to be assumed that some members belonging to the ancient Confraternity of St Joseph in this maritime city must have named their children in honour of their protector. As parts of the baptismal records housed in the Birgu parish archives were destroyed in the German air raids of January, 1941, this assumption could not be checked. The present available records only go back to 1560.

Apparently, the paucity of the name ‘Joseph’ at the baptismal font was also manifest among the early Rhodian/Greek community in Malta. However, it is recorded that a Rhodian Greek, Francesco Mego, in 1546 commissioned a painting of St Joseph, destroyed in an air raid in the war, from the noted Syracusan painter Girolamo Spagnuolo for the church of the Annunciation (Il-Lunzjata) in Birgu. About a decade ago a 16th century painting of The Holy Family by an Italian master resurfaced from the parish church’s reserve collection and is now exhibited at the parish museum housed at the Oratory of St Joseph.

Another foremost medievalist, Prof. Stanley Fiorini, in his analytical study on Ġużeppi Callus (popularly known as Mattew), the Maltese hero of Simblija fame (executed by Grand Master de Valette for harshly opposing his autocratic rule), observes that the cult of St Joseph may have become widespread in Malta with the coming of the Franciscan Minors (Ta’ Ġieżu) in Rabat in the early 16th century. Most probably, Fiorini attests, Callus (born c. 1505) was among the first Maltese citizens under the Mdina Università’s jurisdiction to be christened Joseph in the early 1500s.

A cursory glance at the monthly parish reviews published in these islands underlines the trend in name-choosing. Names that enjoyed great popularity in my youth are quickly dying out. It is no longer fashionable to commemorate a deceased relative or the name of a patron saint, even in parishes where the festa is celebrated with excessive pomp and impressive outward manifestations.

Sadly, Joseph has lost his multi-coloured coatings of many endearing variants.