mosellegreen:

cumaeansibyl:

green-evening:

Sometimes in daily life I like to pretend I’m a time traveler from late medieval Europe and I’m just fucking amazed at my luxurious life

Let me tell you, 14th c me is REALLY impressed with modern me’s easy access to pepper and cinnamon

“you have multiple purple garments? you must be a person of some note”

“these chairs are fantastically luxurious”

“I’ve never seen so much salt in one place”

I am going to start playing this game.

sonnetscrewdriver:

aliceinpunderland:

marjchaos:

Awesome Puritan names

themyskira:

A while ago, for fun, I started doing some reading on some of the stranger naming choices made by the Puritans between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. (Yes, for fun. I am a dork.) Here are a few of my favourites:

A Sussex jury roll from the 1600s includes the names Accepted Trevor, Redeemed Compton, Kill-Sin Pimple, Fly-Fornication Richardson, Search-The-Scriptures Moreton, The-Peace-Of-God Knight, Stand-Fast-On-High Stringer, The-Gift-of-God Stringer, and Fight-The-Good-Fight-Of-Faith White, Obediencia Cruttenden, Called Lower, Hope-For Bending, More-Fruit Flower and Meek Brewer. Some other wonderful Sussex names around this time include Safely-on-High Snat, Mortifie Hicks and the marvellously-named Humiliation Scratcher. And let’s not forget Be-Stedfast Elyarde, Faint-not Dighurst, Hew-Agag-in-pieces Robinson, Swear-not-at-all Ireton and Obadiah-bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-irons Needham.

Here’s another good naming method: There was a tradition among some Puritan villagers of opening the Bible and selecting the first name their eyes landed upon, which led to some interesting christenings. One poor child was landed with the name Ramoth-Gilead as a result of this method, reportedly leading a rather bemused parson to ask, “Boy or girl, eh?” There’s some evidence that certain parents, whose reading was perhaps not the best, would simply open the Bible and choose a word at random – hence the existence in Connecticut of Maybe Barnes and a girl by the rather unfortunate name of Notwithstanding Griswold. One child in England was christened Sirs, the parents insisting that it was a Scripture name and citing as proof the passage “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Another Puritan named his dog Moreover after the Gospel passage “Moreover the dog came and licked his sores.”

Yet another story tells of a priest who was befuddled when a woman informed him that her child was to be name “Axe-her”. “What name?” he spluttered. “Axe-her,” repeated another woman. After much discussion he discovered that the women were referred to Achsah, the daughter of Caleb. This may also explain the existence of an Axar Starrs in Stockport – the daughter, appropriately, of one Caleb Starrs. The name Axar remained popular in Devonshire for some time.

A little boy called John wound up with an unfortunate bonus name due to his godparent’s strong accent and a misunderstanding at the baptismal font. “What name?” the priest asked, to which the godparent replied, “John honly.” The priest dutifully went on to declare, “John Honly, I baptise thee…”

Thomas and Elizabeth Pegden, residents of Kent during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, named their first four sons after the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When Elizabeth gave birth to a fifth son in 1795, they decided to continue this theme by naming him after the next book of the New Testament, and thus he was christened Acts-of-the-Apostles Pegden. According to one source, his nickname was Actsy, “for the Vicar of Boughton has heard a parishioner speak of her uncle Actsy Pegden.” An older relative bore the name Pontius Pilate Pegden.

In the late 1800s, a Thurstonville man named his four sons Love-well, Do-well,Die-well and Fare-well Sykes. Around the same time, another boy, being the younger sibling of sisters Faith and Hope, was given the name And Charity.

Another fellow, rather bemusingly, named his son Judas-not-Iscariot.

Zachary Crofton, died 1672, clearly scoured the Scriptures in order to find names for his children. His five sons were called Zachary, Zareton, Zephaniah,Zelophehad and – presumably after all alliterative possibilities had been exhausted – John.

The Presbyterian clergy were fond of foisting on illegitimate children names reflective of the sins of their parents – names like Helpless, Repent, Repentance,Forsaken, Fly-fornication.

Among many other excellent Puritan names, there was also:

  • Abstinence
  • Abuse-not
  • Continent
  • Creature (a unisex name, apparently!)
  • Do-good
  • Experience
  • Fear-not
  • God-helpe
  • Hate-evil
  • Increased
  • Job-rakt-out-of-the-asshes
  • Joye-in-sorrow
  • Lament
  • Learn-wysdome
  • Magnify
  • More-fruit
  • More-triale
  • Muche-merceye
  • No-merit
  • Obey
  • Original
  • Preserved
  • Refrayne
  • Renewed
  • Safe-on-Highe
  • Silence
  • Sin-deny
  • Sorry-for-sin
  • Thanks
  • The-Lord-is-near
  • Unfeigned
  • What-God-will

All of these are trumped, however, by a Puritan girl who, when asked for her Christian name, replied, “Through-Much-Tribulation-We-Enter-The-Kingdom-Of-Heaven, but for short they call me Tribby.”

“no-merit” oh my god why

This is great and I’d just like to add that a member of Oliver Cromwell’s government was named Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damnéd Barbon.

I really liked the development process with George. Everything was constantly evolving. He obviously had something very fleshed out, but when I watch the movie now, a lot of it came from all of those moments that we sat down and came up with ideas. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I didn’t think it was going to be with an action movie, that I was going to be able to explore a character as raw as Furiosa. She really is who she is without ever over-explaining . She just is. I loved that we never even mentioned her f—ing arm. How many times do you see a movie where the first shot is, Oh, she’s got an arm missing, let’s explain that? What really explains her is the thing that drives her, which is this overwhelming feeling of wanting to take ownership of her life. Wanting to go back to a place of safety.

The look of her was tricky from the beginning. We really had a hard time trying to figure out what she was going to look like and how she was going to embody herself in the film, visually. And what that would say about her as a character. I think the biggest thing that really was when we got ready to go to Namibia. I just had this overwhelming sensation where I just went, “All right: I have to shave my head! I have to shave my head.” So I said, “George, I’ve been walking around for the last three days with this feeling like I need to buzz my head. I need to look like one of those boys. I need to really, really look like one of those boys, because then I understand a woman that’s been in hiding in a world where she’s been discarded.“

This is not in the movie: this is stuff that we talked about, backstory about how she ended up with no arm and that she was discarded. She couldn’t breed, and that was all that she was good for. She was stolen from this place, this green place that she’s trying to go back to. She existed for a sole purpose, and when she couldn’t deliver, she was discarded— but she didn’t die. Instead she hid out with those war pups in the world of mechanics, and they almost forgot she was a woman. 

I can say honestly we never considered romance for Max and Furiosa. We never went there. There was always a very clear understanding that these were two people who got stuck with each other and had to survive, and their survival really depended on each other. That was interesting for us. I think Tom and I are both actors who have probably been in situations where the easy answer is to have them kiss. In this case, it’s more interesting and more real, and I think you feel it so much more when we just look at each other, and there’s this recognition of respect.

Charlize Theron, on bringing Furiosa to life (x)