Authors find inspiration for character names in interesting places. Charles Dickens sometimes changed a surname’s spelling—Edwin Trood, landowner of the Falstaff Inn, became Edwin Drood—or he drew names from real life. Mr. Pickwick, for example, was a Bath coach owner. What of Jane Austen? What is known of her sources for character names?
Some character names for Jane Austen’s books―for example, Willoughby, Wickham, Parry, Price, Reynolds, Elliot, Lucas, Smith and Martin―may have been derived from a map of Antigua, drawn in about 1750. [Gregson Davis wrote of the Austen family’s connection to Antigua; view a reproduction of the map here.] Jane Austen’s father, being a trustee of the Nibbs plantation on Antigua, may have hung a framed copy of the map on the wall at Steventon rectory, where he and his family lived. Jane might very well have been inclined to study it. Readers of Mansfield Park will recognize Antigua as the source of Sir Thomas Bertram’s “West Indies” wealth.
Where might Jane Austen have found names for her characters in Pride and Prejudice? A book of the British nobility may have been one source. When I was researching Rosings Park, I browsed several books on Buckinghamshire, the county I chose as the location of Lord Metcalfe’s main estate, Dodford Meare. One book was charmingly titled Records of Buckinghamshire, or Papers and Notes on the History, Antiquities, and Architecture of the County; Together with Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society for the County of Buckingham. In a chapter on the manor and chase of Whaddon, I came across the name of Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster, who inherited Whaddon on the death of his aunt. I was instantly struck by the surname, it being the first instance of my encountering it when reading books published in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Immediately I went online, where I made a discovery.
Richard Óg De Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster―called the red Earl because of his ruddy complexion―lived from 1259 to 1326. Among his several children were two daughters: Catherine De Burgh (1296-1331) and Joan De Burgh (c. 1300-1359). Joan’s second marriage was to Sir John Darcy. [From: John Lodge’s book The Peerage of Ireland: or, A Genealogical History of the Present Nobility of that Kingdom (1789)]
Here we find the names of two principal characters in Pride and Prejudice: Catherine De Burgh (the spelling changed to de Bourgh) and Mr. Darcy. Jane Austen might have been perusing a book of the British peerage at Steventon rectory, where she penned First Impressions, or later as she reworked the manuscript into the delightful novel we know today. Her inspiration for the names of two of literature’s most beloved characters may have been found in the Earl of Ulster’s family tree.
We certainly know one Austen character was fond of reading about his own family lineage and history: Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall. Of course, we are not likely ever to know with confidence the source of Austen’s inspiration for these characters’ names, but her description in Persuasion of Sir Walter’s pride in reading his family’s pedigree is so vivid, so acute in its rendering, that we might conclude that Austen herself sometimes indulged in the practice.