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Episode #1371 "On the Shoe Phone" included a segment on hortatory names, such as "Hate-Evil" or "Be-courteous" - names that encourage a positive behaviour. Even nowadays, we may find someone named "Faith" or "Hope".
While listening to the show the first time it aired, I was reminded of a novel by Peter Straub, "Floating Dragon". In it, a supernaturally evil man is visited upon a town and leaves behind, among other things, a crop of children. To quote the novel (p. 198 in my copy): "There was a boy named "Darkness" and a girl baptized "Eventide". Another girl was baptized "Sorrow". I think they would have baptized each of those children "Shame" if they could."
And this reminded me of Straub's friend and collaborator, Stephen King, whose novel "Misery" is about an author who writes bodice-rippers featuring a heroine named "Misery Chastain".
So these novels have some literary versions of names that are the opposite of hortatory - they involve negative qualities or feelings.
This prompted 2 questions for me:
1. Are there any real-life examples of this type of name, with a negative connotation?
There are probably lots of literary examples, and it struck me that many nicknames have this quality: "Evil Ed", "Scary Larry", but these are (I hope) made in jest.
2. What word would you use to describe such a name? Looking of the opposite of 'hortatory' yields 'discouraging', but that doesn't seem strong enough for a name such as "Sorrow"...
Thanks for your thinking on this question!
Welcome to the forum, DDora.
My best guess would be that the opposite of a hortatory name would be a dehortatory name. Not that you're likely to run into one very often. The usual hortatory names were popular with early Puritans for religious reasons only. Hard to see them NOT being thought of as a bit clunky, but the practice served their purpose. For example (and I can cite this source): Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon.
My suggestion for dehortatory as the word you seek is based both on the Latin roots, and the fact that in English, there are 7 hortative modalities that introduce the suggestion (or not) of performing an specific action. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortative#Dehortative
I do not know of any "real life" examples, but fictional literature (as you noted) often uses them. Maybe there was an attempt to make a real-life association of that type by GHW Bush, who pronounced Saddam Hussein's first name as "Sodom" with its negative biblical connotations. That had to be intentional, since he most certainly had advisors who knew the correct pronunciation.
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