ch he owed his life; in any case it was not the
impatience of a betrothed couple, but an irregular alliance of long
standing, of which a brother, Peter, had been born three years before.

We can only vaguely discern the outlines of a numerous and commonplace
middle-class family. The father had nine brothers, who were all married.
The grandparents on his father's side and the uncles on his mother's
side attained to a very great age. It is strange that a host of
cousins--their progeny--has not boasted of a family connection with the
great Erasmus. Their descendants have not even been traced. What were
their names? The fact that in burgher circles family names had, as yet,
become anything but fixed, makes it difficult to trace Erasmus's
kinsmen. Usually people were called by their own and their father's
name; but it also happened that the father's name became fixed and
adhered to the following generation. Erasmus calls his father Gerard,
his brother Peter Gerard, while a papal letter styles Erasmus himself
Erasmus Rogerii. Possibly the father was called Roger Gerard or Gerards.

Although Erasmus and his brother were born at Rotterdam, there is much
that points to the fact that his father's kin did not belong there, but
at Gouda. At any rate they had near relatives at Gouda.

Erasmus was his Christian name. There is nothing strange in the choice,
although it was rather unusual. St. Erasmus was one of the fourteen Holy
Martyrs, whose worship so much engrossed the attention of the multitude
in the fifteenth century. Perhaps the popular belief that the
intercession of St. Erasmus conferred wealth, had some weight in
choosing the name. Up to the time when he became better acquainted with
Greek, he used the form Herasmus. Later on he regretted that he had not
also given that name the more correct and melodious form Erasmius. On a
few occasions he half jocularly called himself so, and his godchild,
Johannes Froben's son, always used this form.

It was probably for similar aesthetic considerations that he soon
altered the barbaric Rotterdammensis to Roterdamus, later Roterodamus,
which he perhaps accentuated as a proparoxytone. Desiderius was an
addition selected by himself, which he first used in 1496; it is
possible that the study of his favourite author Jerome, among whose
correspondents there is a Desiderius, suggested the name to him. When,
therefore, the full form, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, first appears,
in the sec