Fear

Seriously? Fear is a name? Yup. We know because a sixteen-year-old young woman by the name of Fear Brewster followed her parents (William and Mary Brewster) to the New World in 1623 aboard the ship “”Anne”. Her parents and two younger brothers (Love and Wrestling) arrived via the “Mayflower” three years earlier in 1620. Her older brother Jonathan came in 1621 and Fear and her sister Patience arrived two years after that. Apparently, Fear was born in England during the period of time when her “separatist” parents were involved in secret religious meetings. They were under constant “fear” of arrest due to this then-illegal activity which inspired them to bestow this unfortunate name upon their daughter. “Fear” is the modern form of the Olde English “færan” meaning “terrify, scare”, related to the Old Saxon “faron” meaning “to lie in wait”. Ultimately the word is derived from the Proto-Germanic *feraz meaning “danger, risk, harm”. Be careful what you name your children; it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the case of Fear Brewster, she probably lived most of her life in “fear” – first having been left by her parents at the age of 14, then traveling alone with her sister on a scary voyage to an unknown place, then she married some old dude 20 years her senior, had one kid and died before the age of 30. We’re hoping her sister had the “Patience” to get through all this.