Richard Samson

(male) One of the most enduringly successful of the Old French personal names introduced into Britain by the Normans. It is of Germanic (Frankish) origin, derived from rīc ‘power’ + hard ‘strong, hardy’. It has enjoyed continuous popularity in England from the Conquest to the present day, influenced by the fact that it was borne by three kings of England, in particular Richard I (1157–99). He was king for only ten years (1189–99), most of which he spent in warfare abroad, taking part in the Third Crusade and costing the people of England considerable sums in taxes. Nevertheless, he achieved the status of a folk hero, and was never in England long enough to disappoint popular faith in his goodness and justice. He was also Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy and Count of Anjou, fiefs which he held at a time of maximum English expansion in France. His exploits as a leader of the Third Crusade earned him the nickname ‘Coeur de Lion’ or ‘Lionheart’ and a permanent place in popular imagination, in which he was even more firmly enshrined by Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe (1820).

Scottish, English, Welsh, French, German, Dutch, Hungarian (Sámson), and Jewish: from the Biblical name Samson (Hebrew Shimshon, a diminutive of shemesh ‘sun’). Among Christians it was sometimes chosen as a personal name or nickname with reference to the great strength of the Biblical hero (Judges 13–16). In Wales another association was with the 6th-century Welsh bishop Samson, who traveled to Brittany, where he died and was greatly venerated. His name, which is probably an altered form of an unknown Celtic original, was popularized in England by Breton followers of William the Conqueror, and to some extent independently from Wales.