... Is not Ernesto just what Italy would make of Arnstein, after fancying that Arnstino was a diminutive?  Then, over the mountains, comes Arnust I., duke of Swabia, in right of his wife, in 1012, and Arnust the Strenuous, Markgraff of Austria, from whom Ernst spread all over Germany, especially after the Reformation, when Ernst, Duke of Brunswick, had striven so hard to spread Lutheranism among his subjects that Protestants called him the Confessor. (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884)