Names Shakespeare Didn’t Invent: Imogen, Olivia, and Viola Revisited

Sara L Uckelman

doi:10.1080/00277738.2018.1490518

Abstract

Just as Shakespeare’s plays left their indelible stamp on the English language, so too did his names influence the naming pool in England at the beginning of the 17th century and beyond. Today, certain popular modern names are often described as inventions of Shakespeare. In this article, we revisit three names which are often listed as coinages of Shakespeare’s and show that this received wisdom, though oft-repeated, is in fact incorrect. The three names are Imogen, the heroine of Cymbeline; and Olivia and Viola, the heroines of Twelfth Night. All three of these names pre-date Shakespeare’s use. Further, we show in two of the three cases that it is plausible that Shakespeare was familiar with this earlier usage. We conclude by briefly discussing why these names are commonly mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare’s imagination; and we examine the weaker, but not mistaken, claims which may underlie these attributions.

Highlights

Shakespeare’s plays are well-known for the variety of the characters’ names, and the variety of the sources, both linguistic and temporal, that he used. Just as his plays left their indelible stamp on the English language, so too did his names influence the naming pool in England at the beginning of the 17th century and beyond
Many popular modern names are often noted as being inventions of Shakespeare, giving them just that little bit more cachet
We have considered three names commonly cited as being inventions of Shakespeare, Imogen, Viola, and Olivia

Summary

Introduction

Shakespeare’s plays are well-known for the variety of the characters’ names, and the variety of the sources, both linguistic and temporal, that he used. It may be that modern historians, following Gudenus’s uncertainty concerning Imogenis, misidentified her name as Imagina on the basis of the other 13th century examples, without any positive evidence that she was called this contemporarily. One reference to this wife of Werner’s (his second), in an unreliable, nonscholarly website that cites no sources (Schommer 2016), calls her Irmagenis. No other Germanic names using this theme have been found, and dithematic names combining Old German and Latin elements are rare, and no other more plausible origin presents itself Another possibility is that Imogenis is a misreading or a miswriting of Innogenis, just as Imogen is (purportedly) a misspelling of Innogen.. Shakespeare’s use of the name follows his established pattern of co-opting Italian or Latin names

Conclusion

Notes on contributor