History
Although the word geōrgos was not used as a name in ancient Greece, it was used as one of Zeus's epithets in Athens: Ζεύς Γεωργός (Zeus Geōrgos), the god of crops and harvest.
In the Western world, the name is known from the eleventh century as a result of the Crusades. The name was extended due to the popularity of St. George and the Golden Legend, widespread in the European courts of the thirteenth century.
In Germany, the name has been popular since the Middle Ages, declining later use. In Britain, despite being St. George the patron of England since the fourteenth century, the name did not become popular until the eighteenth century following the accession of George I of England. In the U.S.A., statistics from mid-nineteenth century placed him among the five most popular baby names. The trend continued until the 1950s, when the name began to lose popularity. The same trend occurred in France as one of the top ten in the early twentieth century, has come to be at position 20.
Read more about this topic: George (given Name)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)