Bringing Up Young "No-merit"

In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson describes a curious trend among Puritans in England during the seventeenth century:

Some Puritans maintained that the names of the great figures in the scriptures, all of which signify something-- Adam meant 'Red Earth,' Timothy 'Fear-God'-- should be translated. The Geneva Bible, which was an encyclopaedia of Calvinist thought...had a list of those meanings at the back and, in imitation of those signifying names, Puritans...had taken to naming their children after moral qualities. Ben Johnson included characters called Tribulation Wholesome, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and Win-the-Fight Littlewit in the The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair...[anti-Puritan] Bancroft himself had written about the absurdity of calling your children "The Lord-is-Near, More-Trial, Reformation, Morefruit, Dust and many other such-like." These were not invented. Puritan children...laboured under the names of Eschew-evil, Lament, No-merit, Sorry-for-Sin, Learn-wisdom, Faint-not, Give-thanks and, the most popular, Sin-deny, which was landed on ten children baptised in the [Warbleton] parish between 1586 and 1596. One family...would have been introduced by their proud father as Much-mercy Hely, Increased Hely, Sin-deny Hely, Fear-not Hely and sweet little Constance Hely...Among William Brewster's own children...were Fear, Love, Patience and Wrestling Brewster.

Those silly Puritans...