📖 Article

The Wildest Puritan Baby Names in History

Puritan parents of the 1600s named their children things that would make modern parents blush. From Kill-Sin to Praise-God, discover the most extraordinary names in American history.

Published May 1, 2026·9 min read

The Wildest Puritan Baby Names in History — Photo by Erica Marsland Huynh on Unsplash

The Puritans believed a name was no small matter. To them, a name was a daily reminder — a sermon stitched onto a child for life. The result is some of the most extraordinary, eccentric, and downright unbelievable names in American history.

If you think modern celebrity baby names are unusual, wait until you meet little Fly-Fornication Richardson.

A Name as a Sermon

For 17th-century English Puritans on both sides of the Atlantic, naming was theology. A baby's name was meant to glorify God, profess faith, or warn against sin. Ordinary saints' names felt suspiciously Catholic, so Puritan parents reached deeper into Scripture — and further into the dictionary of virtues — than anyone before or since.

The result fell into roughly three buckets: virtue names, biblical marathons, and the gloriously unhinged slogan names.

The Virtue Names

These are the gentle ones. Many are still familiar today — and some are quietly fashionable again.

Patience, Prudence, Temperance, Constance

Charity, Hope, Faith, Grace, Mercy

Humility, Silence, Unity, Comfort

Mindwell, Truelove, Thankful

Browse the full list on our Puritan names page — many of these names crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and quietly became part of the American mainstream.

The Extreme Virtue Names

This is where things get interesting. A subset of Puritans — particularly the more radical separatists — felt mild virtues weren't enough. If you really wanted your child to fear God, you named her Fear-God.

Real, documented historical names include:

Praise-God Barbon (English politician, born 1596)

Fear-God Barebone, his brother

Kill-Sin Pimple (recorded in Sussex, 1609)

Humiliation Hynde (1629)

Fly-Fornication Richardson (1591)

Abstinence Pougher (1598)

Hate-Evil Nutter — a real New England Puritan

If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone, son of Praise-God Barbon. Friends mercifully shortened it to "Damned."

These weren't pranks. These were baptismal records.

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The Biblical Marathon Names

When in doubt, Puritan parents opened the Old Testament and pointed. Long, thunderous Hebrew names became badges of piety:

For boys: Hezekiah, Bartholomew, Theophilus, Nehemiah, Obadiah, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah

For girls: Priscilla, Dorcas, Eunice, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, Lydia

Many of these still feel weighty and dignified today — and overlap nicely with our biblical names collection.

The Mayflower Names

Some of the strangest names in American history sailed on a single ship. The Mayflower's passenger list reads like a Puritan baby-name generator gone slightly haywire:

Oceanus Hopkins — born on the Atlantic crossing in 1620

Peregrine White — the first English child born in New England (his name means "pilgrim" or "traveler")

Wrestling Brewster — son of elder William Brewster

Resolved White — Peregrine's older brother

Remember Allerton

Love and Wrestling Brewster — yes, two brothers

If you love this slice of American history, our colonial American names list has more.

The Names That Survived

Here's the twist: the Puritans won. Quietly, slowly, without anyone noticing. The most over-the-top names died with their bearers, but the gentler virtues simply… stuck. Grace, Faith, Hope, Charity, Patience, Prudence, Constance — every one a Puritan invention. Today they sit comfortably in the top of vintage baby name charts, free of any whiff of religious extremism.

So the next time you meet a little Faith or Grace at the playground, remember: she's the spiritual descendant of a movement that also produced Kill-Sin Pimple. Naming, like history, has a sense of humor.

Modern Takeaway

What can today's parents learn from the Puritans? Maybe not the slogans. But the underlying instinct — that a name should mean something — is more alive than ever. Whether you want a virtue name like Hope, a Mayflower name like Peregrine, or a long, thunderous biblical pick like Ezekiel, the Puritans got there first.

Just maybe skip If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. The teachers will thank you.