Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his December 14th column, he discusses the name “Ebenezer”.
Ebenezer learns to love Christmas in Omaha for another week.
“A Christmas Carol,” based on Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella where skinflint, Christmas-hating Ebenezer Scrooge transforms into a generous Christmas-lover after visits from four ghosts, concludes its 50th anniversary run at Omaha Community Playhouse on Dec. 21.
In the Old Testament, prophet Samuel sets up a stone after Israel’s victory over Philistines near Mizpah. He calls the monument Ebenezer, “stone of help,” commemorating the aid God gave the Israelites.
When Protestant parents began searching the Bible for names after the Reformation, boys named Ebenezer appeared. Though it was unusual for a biblical place name to be given to children, Ebenezer’s meaning commended it to Puritan parents hoping God would help them in battles with Anglicans and Catholics.
In 1851, the British Census found 5,273 Ebenezers. The 1850 U.S. Census, when populations were about equal, found 10,602. The difference in short form Eben was even greater – 124 in Britain vs. 2,619 in America. Puritan descendants in New England were even fonder of Ebenezer than those in Old England.
Dickens probably chose Ebenezer because it was a stereotypical Puritan name. England’s Puritan-controlled Parliament had tried to suppress Christmas celebrations between 1644 and 1659. In 1843 readers would have expected parents who named a son Ebenezer to be skeptical of Christmas.
Interestingly, Dickens’ character seems to have stabilized Ebenezer in Britain while its decline accelerated in the United States. In 1901, there were 6,635 Ebenezers and Ebens in the United Kingdom, out of almost 37 million residents, while the 1900 United States census found 7,021 out of over 76 million.
American author O. Henry didn’t help when his 1907 story “The Ransom of Red Chief” featured Ebenezer Dorset, a rich man who refuses to ransom his young son from kidnappers and instead insists they pay him to take the overly active brat back.
Several homes originally owned by Ebenezers are tourist attractions, including the Ebenezer Avery house in Groton, Connecticut (where wounded soldiers were taken after the 1781 Battle of Groton Heights), and the 1859 Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion in Philadelphia, a gem of Victorian architecture.
Ebenezers who should be remembered include Ebenezer Bassett (1833-1908), the first African-American diplomat, ambassador to Haiti 1869-1877. Geologist Ebenezer Emmons (1799-1863) named New York’s Adirondack Mountains in 1838.
“Scrooge” was Dickens’ invention; there seem to be no real people with the surname. British researcher Ruth Richardson says there was a shop called “Goodge & Marney’s” in London’s Marylebone district when Dickens lived there in the early 1830’s, and he probably altered that to Scrooge and Marley for the miser’s and his ghostly business partner’s names. There was a grocer named William Goodge living in Marylebone in Britian’s 1841 census.Miserly cartoon character Scrooge McDuck was created by Carl Barks in 1947. Despite that, no examples of real people with Scrooge as a first name have been found.
Ebenezer hasn’t been among the top thousand names for American boys since 1885, and Eben hasn’t since 1896. They both had minor rises a decade ago, with Eben peaking at 100 births in 2012 and Ebenezer at 55 in 2017. They’ve receded since and remain quite rare. Most Ebenezers living in America today were born in West African nations like Ghana and Nigeria, far away from Scrooge’s Victorian London home.
Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Ebenezer”!