In seventeenth-century England, Puritan parents often gave children names that were sentences or moral statements, such as Fear-not, Accepted, Thankful and Kill-sin Pimple. The Puritans turned to the Bible and beyond for names, aiming to separate the godly from the wider world. Charles Bardsley recorded these in his 1880 book Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, drawing on church records. Earlier, after the Norman Conquest, English names had shifted toward nicknames and diminutives such as Tibet and Tonkin. Bardsley himself complained about the spread of three-part baptismal names in the Victorian era.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.