christian name

christian name (plural christian names)

1. Obsolete form of Christian name.
   • 1761, [Laurence Sterne], “Slawkenbergius’s Tale”, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume IV, London: R and J Dodsley , →OCLC, pages 47–48:

     —Now you ſee, brother Toby, he would ſay, looking up, “that chriſtian names are not ſuch indifferent things;”—had Luther here been called by any other name but Martin, he would have been damned to all eternity—Not that I look upon Martin, he would add, as a good name—far from it—’tis ſomething better than a neutral, and but a little—yet little as it is, you ſee it was of ſome ſervice to him.

   • 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XII, in Sense and Sensibility , volume I, London: C Roworth, , and published by T Egerton, , →OCLC, pages 137–138:

     This was all overheard by Miss Dashwood; and in the whole of the sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her sister by her christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them.

   • 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Fieldhead”, in Shirley. A Tale. , volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., , →OCLC, pages 294–295:

     Shirley Keeldar (she had no christian name but Shirley: her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage, Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a boy they had been blessed)—[…]

   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter I, in Great Expectations , volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, , published October 1861, →OCLC, page 1:

     My father’s family name being Philip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.