FrenchLatin2 syllables
Meaning: fifth.
Quentin
| Origin | French, from the Late Latin name Quintinus, formed on the Roman first name Quintus |
|---|---|
| Meaning | “Fifth”, from Latin quintus (fifth) with the suffix -inus |
| Pronunciation | KWEN-tin in English, two syllables, stress on the first; kan-TAN in French |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100, where it has been used quietly and continuously for a century. Far commoner in France, and one of the most-given French boys' names of the early 1990s |
| Variants | Quintin, Quinten, Quintín (Spanish), Quintino (Italian and Portuguese), Quintus |
| Nicknames | Quent, Quin, Q |
| Name day | 31 October, for Saint Quentin, martyred in Roman Gaul |
| Not the same as | Quinton, which is an Old English place name meaning “queen's estate” |
History & meaning
Romans numbered their children, and did it without embarrassment. Quintus was fifth, Sextus sixth, Septimus seventh, and Octavio preserves the eighth in modern Spanish. Quintinus was the adjective built on Quintus, and it is Quintinus who became a saint: a third-century missionary, said to be the son of a Roman senator, who preached in Gaul and was killed there. The Picard settlement that grew around his shrine has been called Saint-Quentin ever since, and it is the town, more than the martyr, that turned a Roman number into a European first name.
Pilgrim traffic carried the name into French, and the Normans carried French names into England, where Quentin stayed thin but never lapsed. Walter Scott gave it a nineteenth-century push with his 1823 novel Quentin Durward. There is also a Californian coda worth knowing: Point San Quentin on San Francisco Bay was named for a Coast Miwok fighter called Quentín, captured there in the 1820s and christened with the saint's name. The state prison was later built on the point and took the name at one further remove, which is why a Roman ordinal is now most famous as a maximum-security address.
Why parents choose it
Quentin is the only Q name in English that has never needed defending. It is old, it is French, it has a clean two-syllable stress pattern, and it comes with Quent already attached for anyone who wants it. Quentin Tarantino has also given it an edge that names of this vintage rarely keep.
Middle names for Quentin
The front-loaded stress does the work, so the middle name can be plain: Quentin James, Quentin Michael, Quentin Elias, Quentin Rhys. Avoid middles beginning with a hard C or K, which turn the pairing into a stutter. The middle names guide covers the rest.
Famous Quentins
Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed Pulp Fiction. Quentin Blake drew the pictures for most of Roald Dahl's books and became Britain's first Children's Laureate in 1999. Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of Theodore Roosevelt, flew with the American air service and was shot down over France in July 1918, aged twenty. The writer Quentin Crisp made a career of the name a generation later.
Consider instead
Octavio belongs to exactly the same Roman counting system and carries it into Spanish. Vincent matches Quentin for register: a French-inflected saint's name, Latin at the root, unfashionable in the useful way. August is the Roman option currently inside the U.S. top 100 if you want the antiquity without the rarity.