Origin and Meaning of the Name
History
While not entirely uncommon in pre-Christian Rome, the name became popular after Saint Valentine. He was a 3rd-century martyr, whose feast day coincided with the Roman fertility festival – Lupercalia. This is often considered the reason for an early association between St. Valentine's Day and love. Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival marking the first stirrings of spring. According to legend, St Valentine conducted marriage ceremonies between Christians at a time when Christian weddings were illegal under Roman law. Gradually, St. Valentine became known as the patron saint of lovers, possibly under the influence of writers like Chaucer.
Valentinian (or Latin Valentinianus) was a Roman cognomen (personal nickname or clan name) which was derived from Valentinus. Three Roman emperors were known by this cognomen, all of them ruling after the decline of the Roman Empire after Constantine the Great.
In the English-speaking world, Valentine hasn’t been used much in the Middle Ages, but as the name of a Catholic saint, the name was familiar and occasionally found from the 12th century. The name has never enjoyed great popularity, but was in quiet use since the 16th century and all the way into Victorian times.
The name was also adopted as a feminine name during the 17th century. St. Valentine’s Day was by then being celebrated commonly as a day for lovers, while the term valentine referring to a sweetheart has been in use since the 15th century[1].
Since the 1950s, the male name Valentine hasn’t featured in the Top 1,000 Names List for the United States. Valentina, on the other hand, was the 56th most popular female name in the US in 2022.
Trivia
- Valentine was often seen as derived from the word “valiant” in the Middle Ages, as stated in "The Golden Legend" by Jacobus de Voragine.
- Shakespeare has a character named Valentine in two of his plays – “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (1598) and “Twelfth Night” (1602).
- The name is used in its various forms in Bulgaria, Russia, and Germany as Valentin, the Czech Republic as Valentýn, Hungary as Bálint, the Netherlands as Valentijn, Italy as Valentino, and Poland as Walenty.
- A book[2] from the 1900s describes the character of the name Valentine as: “Versatile, healthy, and vivacious. Full of original, ideas. Always busy and has little time for pleasure. Warm-hearted, humane and witty”.
- Valentina Tereshkova (1937- ) was a famous bearer of the feminine form of the name; she was a Soviet cosmonaut, who in 1963 became the first woman to visit space.
- Valentina Evgenyevna Gunina (1989- ) is a Russian chess grandmaster and two-time World Blitz Chess Champion (in 2012 and 2023).
- In literature, Valentine de Villefort is the name of a female character in Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, the innocent daughter of one of Monte Cristo’s enemies whom he uses and simultaneously protects in one of his schemes for revenge.
- Valentine is the name of the main female role, the soprano, in the opera “Les Huguenots” by Giacomo Meyerbeer.
- Valentine (Val) Xavier is the name of the main (male) character in Tennessee William’s play “Orpheus Descending” (1957).
[1] Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/valentine
[2] The Meanings of Christian Names. Anonymous. Duff Press, 2011. ISBN 1446536440, 9781446536445
Sources:
The Wordsworth Dictionary of First Names. Iseabail Macleod & Terry Freedman. Wordsworth, 1995. ISBN 1-85326-366-4
Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine", 1986, (Leiden: Brill), pp. 58-63
The Meanings of Christian Names. Anonymous. Duff Press, 2011. ISBN 1446536440, 9781446536445
