The poem "Miniver Cheevy" is generally accepted as semi-autobiographical about Edwin Arlington Robinson's own life. Your question about the name, "Miniver Cheevy," took me to an interesting fact about Robinson's own name. When he was born, his parents had wanted a girl so much that when the boy was born, they refused to name him for several months. After a while, they held a lawn party and had a raffle to allow their friends and neighbors to name the baby. The name "Edwin" was drawn from a hat by someone at the party, and Edwin Robinson finally had a name.
To consider the meaning of the name, you must first understand the characterization that occurs in the poem. This person, Miniver Cheevy, appears as someone who is out of touch with the time he lives in. He is dissatisfied with the life he is living, he longs for things like romance and chivalry. However, he is either powerless to do anything about his state or he simply chooses not to take any action. Instead, in the penultimate stanza, we are told that he simply "thought, and thought, and thought, and thought, and thought about it." He is a man of no action. Finally, in the closing stanza, we learn that he succumbs to what he considers his "fate," and he takes to drinking as a way of consoling himself.
So, now consider the name. What thoughts come to mind at the sound of the name, "Miniver Cheevy"?
"Mini" -- small, impotent, inactive
"Cheevy" -- sounds like "peevish," someone small, complaining, whining
Cheevy could also have a relationship to "cheval," the French word for horse, from which we get the modern word chivalry, which Miniver Cheevy longs for.
I looked up a site on the meanings of names, and the word "miniver" is "a white fur worn originally by medieval nobles and used chiefly for robes of state." The great irony here is that this is exactly what Miniver Cheevy would want, to be a medieval noble wearing a miniver. But he doesn't get it.
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