Origins of Zephalonius | Anthroponymy | Forum

Thanks Florence, I hadn't seen that page! I would guess he's probably an ancestor of the ones I found, as they seem to be related and the writer's surname is Hoye.

It's interesting that one was known as Zephany; it would be good to know whether it was the older or younger Zephalonius (or perhaps both!) who had that nickname. I agree that it could be a mistake of some kind which has then been passed down. Even if so, it's still intriguing as I didn't find any occurrences of Zephany or Zephaniah in the parish; if Zephalonius is a creative play on these (or a mistake), it's interesting that they chose to base it on a rare name for the area!

Good question - I'm actually not sure! It would certainly account for the Zepha- part of the name if it were a variant. Also, the link which Florence found does say that one of the two name-holders was nicknamed Zephany, so that would make sense with Zephaniah etc. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the origins/linguistic aspect of names to say whether it could legitimately be a variant... If anyone has any knowledge in this area, I'd be immensely interested in their input!

It'd be great to know how this all works together - I'm not aware of -lonius being a particularly common suffix in personal names, and have no idea why the parents would have coined this variant/used an obscure variant which seems to be unattested elsewhere.