Geraldine Is Not in the Bible — a Poet Invented It in 1537

Geraldine is not in the Bible, and it is younger than most people guess. A poet made it up in 1537.

Henry Howard wrote a sonnet in praise of Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald and called her The Geraldine — taking her family name and turning it into a title. The title became a name, and it has been given to daughters ever since.

What does the name Geraldine mean?

It is the feminine of Gerald, which is Germanic: ger, a spear, joined to wald, rule. A spear-ruler. One who governs with a weapon in hand.

That is a martial meaning arriving through a love poem, which is a peculiarly English way for a name to be born.

Is Geraldine in the Bible?

No — in no language and no spelling. It is a sixteenth-century English coinage on a Germanic root, and there is no Hebrew form. A page offering one is inventing it.

But the spear is in Scripture, and it ends somewhere we would not expect.

What Scripture does with spears

Isaiah looks forward to the day God settles things, and describes it not by what is built but by what is melted down.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Notice the craftsmanship in that. The metal is not discarded — it is reforged. A spear becomes a pruning hook, which is a blade for tending vines, for cutting back what is overgrown so the plant bears more.

The same edge. A different purpose. That is not pacifism as erasure; it is a promise that the capacity for force will still exist and will be turned to growing things.

And the last clause is the one we usually skip: nor will they train for war anymore. It is not only the weapons that are put away. It is the practising.

The spear that is not beaten down

There is one spear in Scripture that is not reforged, and we should look at it.

Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

It is a small, almost administrative act. The soldier is checking that the man is dead. He is doing his job, competently, with no sense that he is doing anything else.

The Church has looked at that wound for two thousand years and seen the whole sacramental life pouring out of it — water and blood, baptism and the cup. The last spear-thrust in the Gospel opens a source rather than closing a life.

For everyone who carries the name

Geraldine: one who rules with a spear — a name invented for a young woman by a poet who admired her.

Most of us have some capacity for force. A sharp tongue. A position at work. A knowledge of exactly where a particular person is soft. The question Scripture puts is not whether we have an edge but what we have beaten it into.

May ours become a pruning hook: still sharp, used on what needs cutting back so that something can grow.

And may we stop training for the wars we have no intention of fighting — the arguments rehearsed in the shower, the case assembled against someone who has not even said it yet.

Related reading

• Vanessa Is Not in the Bible — but Half of It Is Esther
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names
• Leonardo Is Not in the Bible — It Means “Brave Lion”