Charlotte staat niet in de Bijbel — en het betekent niet “vrij”

Charlotte is not in the Bible. It is the French feminine of Charles, and Charles comes from the Germanic Karl — a word that meant, quite simply, man. We should pause on that, dear friends, because a great many pages will tell us the name means “free woman,” and the freedom is a later gloss rather than the root. The honest meaning is humbler and, I think, lovelier: one of us. A human being. And the whole Gospel turns on…