Who are Calvin and Hobbes named after?
i tell you this has been a pleasure researching this subject. i loved the calvin and hobbes cartoons when i was young and this research has reminded me of how i miss the cartoon…. Calvin is named for 16th-century theologian John Calvin, founder of Calvinism and a strong believer in predestination. Hobbes is named after 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who had what Watterson described as “a dim view of human nature.” According to Watterson, the two names are intended as a joke for people studying political science. Thomas Hobbes’s most famous phrase, from Leviathan, is that human life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”a description that can be applied to Calvin in the comic strip.
