People often want their children to display certain qualities. Hope, grace, charity, and chastity are among honorable traits for girls, and are certainly admirable in a man as well.
Sometimes, a parent decides that one specific trait is worth encouraging in their daughter more than others. However, they are very busy people, and have planes to catch and bills to pay. Since day-care centers obviously cannot be relied upon to impart values, and staying home to raise their children the proper way is absolutely unthinkable, parents must employ shortcuts.
One of those shortcuts is to give a child a name encouraging a certain value. Hope. Faith. Charity. Chastity. This practice has been in place since the age of the Puritans, and anyone who has a chance to find a name registry from early New England or from Commonwealth England should, because it's good for a laugh.
Unfortunately for these parentlets, they have yet to learn Witry's First Law of Cosmic Irony.
"People with abstract character traits in their names never display them."
Girls named Hope are always gloomy. Girls named Faith are atheistic. Girls named Charity always order Alaskan cod when their boyfriends are paying. And girls named Chastity dress like prostitutes.
Oddly enough, people rarely name their boys after abstract qualities. Then again, many men's names carry connotations associated with qualities, such as "Buzz", "Butch", and "Dick".
Another reason to avoid abstract qualities as names is because they were frequently used by the Puritans who first settled the United States. While they may have been courageous and noble in their quest for freedom, they were also religious people with guns, a combination that sends Janet Reno scrambling for the lighter fluid.
Examples of the "Abstract Quality" Category:
- Chastity Bono
- Faith Hill
- God Shammgod