(Written in 2005)

This autumn Michael Ignatieff, writer, historian, public intellectual, lifelong Canadian Liberal, is returning from Harvard University to Canada to teach at the University of Toronto amid major rumours that he will succeed Paul Martin as leader of the Liberal Party and perhaps eventually become Prime Minister of Canada. Darker rumours bruited about the backrooms of Ottawa whisper of Michael Ignatieff replacing Paul Martin in office!

Interestingly, Ignatieff is a good friend of former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, also pegged by the rumour mill to be a possible Liberal candidate for the Prime Minister’s office.

But who would want to get rid of Old Wimpy Wattles Martin, that foundering ship of non-leadership, that Liberal wuss boat who is taking on the water of incompetence faster than the Titantic? Who? Well, I can name one occasional Liberal who’d like to see Paul Martin sent into retirement to scrape the barnacles off his tankers. His name is at the top of this page.

Michael Ignatieff has a fascinating surname and I deal with it in my book, What’s in a Canadian Name? After the surname etymology is a brief bibliography and biography of Michael Ignatieff whose official appointment at the University of Toronto starts in January of 2006, but university sources expect Michael Ignatieff to begin working on campus this fall.

Ignatieff is a Russian patronymic surname whose literal meaning is ‘son of or descendant of Ignatius.’ As a given name, Ignatius or Slavic versions of it, prospered even in the face of the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church disapproved of the first Jesuit, Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Society of Jesus.

The Slavic Ignatius surnames (there are more than a dozen) honour a different, earlier Ignatius, Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Saint Ignatius of Loyola took his name from an apostolic church father, Ignatius, a bishop of Antioch who wrote seven letters to various Christian communities around AD 125 that give us useful portraits of Christian life in the years immediately after the age of the apostles. Ignatius is shown in Koine Greek as Ignatios.

Ignatia and Ignatz stem from Latin ignatus = in ‘not’ + natus, gnatus ‘born.’

However, the literal meaning of the elements must be added to, since the adjective did not mean ‘not born’ but ‘low-born, of humble birth.’ And so when Ignatius came to be a male given name in postclassical Latin, its humility made it an apt one for early Christians. There was also a Roman family name, a variant of Ignatius, Egnatius.

A possibly far-fetched but intriguing suggestion is that one orthographical variant of the Greek version of the name, Iknatos, might be a much later Greek borrowing of the ancient Egyptian king’s name Ikhnaton (1375–1358 BC), the XVIII Dynasty ruler who introduced monotheism into a polytheistic muddle of deities with his worship—exclusively—of Aten, the Egyptian sun-god. Ikhnaton or Akhenaten means ‘Aten is pleased’ or ‘he who serves the Aten’ in ancient Egyptian.

Michael Ignatieff 1947–

photo by Martha Stewart

The writer and historian has written such books as The Needs of Strangers (1984), The Russian Album (1987), Asya (1990), Scar Tissue (1993), Blood and Belonging: Journeying into the New Nationalism (1993), The Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (1998), Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998) a biography of the Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin; Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (1999), The Rights Revolution: The Massey Lectures (2000), Human Rights as Politics and as Idolatry: The Tanner Lectures 1999 (2001), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2003), Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (2003), and The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004).

He is the son of Russian émigré George Ignatieff (1913–1989), a distinguished Canadian diplomat who served under Prime Minister Lester Pearson. At the summit of his father’s career, Ignatieff senior was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations. George Ignatieff was also president of the Security Council in the 1960s and later chancellor of the University of Toronto (1980–1986).

© 2005

More intriguing stories about the origin of famous Canadian names await the reader of my book, What's in a Canadian Name? Available to order at all bookstores.

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