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Summary
- Caroline is not in the Bible. It is the French feminine of Carolus, the Latin behind Charles, from Germanic Karl — a root meaning “man.”
- The “free woman” gloss comes from the later medieval sense of a free man as opposed to a serf, not from the root. Charlotte is the same name by another road.
- Romans 16:7 greets “Andronicus and Junia… outstanding among the apostles” — a common Roman woman’s name, praised by Paul, imprisoned with him, a Christian before he was.
- For the first thousand years the Church read Junia as a woman; John Chrysostom marvelled at her in the fourth century. Later editions printed “Junias,” a masculine form with no evidence in ancient literature.
- Caroline was made by adding a feminine ending to a man’s name; Junia was nearly unmade by adding a masculine one to a woman’s. Modern editions, including the NIV, read Junia.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Behind the Name entries for Caroline and Charles (French feminine form of Carolus; Germanic Karl, Proto-Germanic *karlaz “man”); Scripture quotation from the NIV via BibleGateway (Romans 16:7), which reads Junia; John Chrysostom, Homily 31 on Romans, for the patristic reading.
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