This was not John Philips, author of the Splendid Shilling. “Namby” is a baby way of pronouncing Ambrose,
and “Pamby” is a jingling reduplication.
Macaulay says: “This sort of verse has been called [Namby Pamby]
after the name of its author.”
Name
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Shakespeare: Romeo
and Juliet, ii. 2.
To take God's name in vain. To use it profanely, thoughtlessly, or irreverently.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”- Exod. xx. 7.
Name Fairies are extremely
averse to having their names known, indeed there seems to be a strange identity between personality
and name. Thus we are forbidden to take God's “name in vain,” and when Jacob wrestled with the angel,
he was anxious to know his opponent's name. (Compare the Greek onoma and the Latin anima.)
