Gah, how come?

Question

How come when I look up the origin/meaning of names, different sites will say different things? Like on one site, it will say 'Anne' is Hebrew, but another (like behindthename.com) it will say Anne is french. Or with 'Julianne', it will say it is French on one site but on another (like behindthename.com) it will say it is English. Is behindthename.com alot more reliable and accurate than other sites or what?

Answer 1

It's down to interpretation. I know what you mean though. My name is debated over, and I've foudn about 4 different explanations of it. Some say it's French, some Greek, some say it's a name derived from 20th century bastardisation of older names. That's funny, because there was a well-documented French woman with my name in the 1100s...

Answer 2

Tebs is wrong - the vast majority of first names (if you exclude recently made-up ones) have a known origin, and nearly all of them have a known meaning.

The internet sites disagree because:

(a) a lot of people who compile them are pig-ignorant, or fantasists, or both;

(b) they usually give just a single-word "meaning" and "origin" without explaining the history and evolution of the name. Take the case of 'Anne'. This is the French way of spelling and pronouncing the Hebrew name 'Hannah', just as 'Anna' is the Latin way of spelling and pronouncing it. So saying "it's French" and "it's Hebrew" are both true up to a point, just not the whole story.

(FWIW, 'Hannah' is a shortening of the Hebrew phrase "Hanani", meaning "He [i.e. God] has favoured me", and in the Old Testament is the name of the mother of the prophet Samuel.)

If you're interested in names, my advice is to get a proper dictionary, which will tell you all this kind of thing. E.g. the one below, which also has the very useful feature of telling you when names came into fashion and how popular they were - very useful if you write fiction. I'm always coming across historical stories where the author has given the characters names that didn't exist at the time the  story is set! Books like this don't cost much at all if you get them second-hand on a site like abebooks.com.

Edited to add:

Another complication is that in modern times some people have given their children names that are simply words from a foreign language that aren't used as names in that language - e.g. 'Cherie', which is French for 'darling', and 'Colleen', which is Irish for 'girl'. Obviously these are not names that French or Irish parents would give their daughter. (It must be very embarrassing for them to encounter foreigners with these names - imagine being introduced to a total stranger and having to call her  'Darling' or 'Girl'.) So it would be misleading to say that Cherie is "a French name" or that Colleen is an Irish one.

Tebs:  you have misunderstood what those websites are saying, which is: (a) that nobody knows how or when the practice of giving names started, which nobody is disputing, and (b) that because many of them have been handed down to us from dead languages, their meaning isn't immediately obvious. They are NOT claiming that their meanings are unknown; just that you need specialist knowledge to work the meanings out. The quote you give from the second website you list, " This is why we do not recognize the meanings of many names today. Their origins are in ancient languages from words that have passed out of use" - goes straight on to give two examples,  'Edwin' and 'Wulfgar', and shows exactly what they mean in Old English.

Answer 3

The truth is that the origin of many names is really unknown, and it is usually a "best guess" of it's origin or meaning, sometimes based on nothing more than imagination, or myth.

Edit : this is more true of first names rather than last names, which, because they were taken up in more recent history, do more often have a known origin.

I do not believe behindthename.com is any more or less accurate than any other site.

Edit : I'm sorry I am simply stating a well known fact.

.....First names have originated from places, mythology, history, and nature, but the history of names is so ancient that no one knows how it started. Dating back as far as oral history reaches, people have had names. In prehistoric times, descriptive names were used over and over until a name pool was created and rather than invent new names, parents just used existing names for their children. However, as languages changed some words were no longer used, but were still rooted in names. This is why it is difficult to determine the meaning of many names.

http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.co...

Early in prehistory some descriptive names began to be used again and again until they formed a name pool for that particular culture. Parents would choose names from the pool of existing names rather than invent new ones for their children. As time went on the language changed and in many cases the words that formed the original name passed out of use, leaving the fossilized form in the name. This is why we do not recognize the meanings of many names today. Their origins are in ancient languages from words that have passed out of use.

http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/names/nam...

Answer 4

Well, one reason for different interpretations is different sources used.  SOME are simply opinion, if they have little valid proof to back it up.  

And.. it is the internet, after all.  It is a huge market place, and some sites are out to sell fake handbags or coffee mugs with your family crest.

You'll hear me say this often.. the core of genealogy is proof. There is no disputing that your grandfather died on such and such a date (if you have the RECORD), and that is his tombstone.  How his name was spelled or what it could have meant, are all open to debate.  Genealogy looks for actual relationships and facts.  I personally avoid the things that can be disputed, or work to find a reliable source.

edit

by the way.. there is a distinct difference between name etymology.. and genealogy.  One traces a word, the other traces people.

Answer 5

> Is behindthename.com a lot more reliable . . .

I like

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

because they use

A Dictionary of First Names, Oxford University Press

The Oxford University press has a good reputation. Oxford is in England, where oxen used to wade across a river, I believe.

You DO have to look up a surname before it lets you look up a given name, though. I tried Anne and found:

English, French, and German form (via Old French, Latin, and Greek) of the Hebrew female name Hanna “He (God) has favoured me (i.e. with a child)”. This is the name borne in the Bible by the mother of Samuel (see Hannah), and according to non-biblical tradition also by the mother of the Virgin Mary. It is the widespread folk cult of the latter that has led to the great popularity of the name in various forms throughout Europe. The simplified form Ann was in the 19th century very much more common, but the form with final -e has grown in popularity during the 20th century, partly perhaps due to the enormous popularity of L. M. Montgomery's story Anne of Green Gables (1908), and partly due to Princess Anne (b. 1950). In Ireland Anne has been used as an Anglicized form of Áine. See also Anna.

Pet forms: English: Annie. French: Annette, Ninon. Breton: Annick. Low German: Anke, Antje. Dutch: Anneke.