What a virtue name is
A virtue name is a given name taken from a virtue, doctrine, or devotional concept rather than from a named person. This is a distinct category on the site’s second axis, the relationship a name has to Christian tradition. A name like Faith or Grace is not the name of a biblical person or a saint; it is an English word for a Christian virtue that came to be used as a name. That places these names under the heading “virtue or theological usage,” and it is why the site does not treat them as biblical-person names even when the underlying concept is thoroughly biblical. For the broader distinction between a Christian name and a biblical name, see what is a Christian name and biblical name versus Christian name. The full catalog list sits at virtue names.
The theological virtues
Three of these names come directly from one verse. In 1 Corinthians 13:13 the Apostle Paul writes, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13, KJV 1769). Christian theology calls these the three theological virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity as given names descend from this triad. Names built on the sense of faith are gathered at names meaning faith.
The cardinal virtues
Alongside the theological virtues, Christian moral theology recognizes four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. These did not originate in Scripture. They come from classical Greek philosophy, chiefly Plato, and were absorbed into Christian ethics by writers such as Ambrose of Milan and later Thomas Aquinas. Of the four, Prudence is the one that became an established given name, again largely through the Puritan naming tradition below. Its authority as a virtue is the cardinal-virtue tradition rather than a single central biblical word.
The Puritan naming tradition
Most of these words became personal names in one place and period: England in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among Puritan and other Reformed families. Rejecting the medieval preference for saint names, these families named children after virtues and pious concepts, producing Faith, Hope, Charity, Grace, Mercy, Patience, Prudence, and Constance, alongside less durable coinages such as Temperance and Silence. This practice is why several English virtue names exist as names at all. It also explains why the category is strongest in Anglican and Reformed heritage and lighter in Catholic and Orthodox use, where saint names dominated.
Three things not to confuse
For each virtue name, three separate layers are easy to collapse into one, and the site keeps them apart:
- The meaning of the English word today.
- The biblical vocabulary, if any, that the word translates.
- The later practice of using the word as a name.
- Grace: the English word means favor or goodwill; it renders the Greek charis, the biblical concept of unmerited divine favor; it became a name through Puritan usage. Names on this sense are collected at names meaning grace.
- Faith: the word means trust or belief; it renders Greek pistis, a theological virtue; it is a classic Puritan virtue name.
- Hope: the word means expectation; it renders Greek elpis, a theological virtue; it is a Puritan virtue name.
- Charity: here the layers diverge sharply. Modern English “charity” usually means almsgiving, but it was the King James translators’ rendering of Greek agape, self-giving love, in 1 Corinthians 13. The name preserves the older biblical sense, not the modern one.
- Mercy: the word means compassion or forbearance; it renders Hebrew chesed and racham and Greek eleos; it is a Puritan virtue name.
- Joy: the word means gladness; it renders Greek chara, named among the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22; it is used as a given name.
- Patience: the word means forbearance; it renders Greek terms translated as patience or longsuffering, also among the fruit of the Spirit; it is a Puritan virtue name.
- Prudence: the word means practical wisdom; it corresponds to a cardinal virtue from classical philosophy rather than to a single central scriptural word; it is a Puritan virtue name.
- Constance: the word derives from Latin constantia, steadfastness. Steadfastness is a biblical value, but the name has no strong basis in a specific scriptural word; it is a Latin-derived virtue name that also functioned as a personal name in its own right.
So Grace, Faith, Hope, Charity, Mercy, Joy, and Patience each translate an identifiable biblical concept or word, while Prudence and Constance are virtue names without a strong scriptural-word basis. All are legitimately Christian virtue names; they simply reach Scripture by different routes.
This page draws on standard reference works for the theological and cardinal virtues, the King James Version wording of 1 Corinthians 13, and studies of Puritan English naming for the seventeenth-century practice. For the site’s approach to citation and classification, see the methodology page.