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:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)