16 March 2007

What's in a name ....

Just a fairly short and fairly silly one, and just because DD asked me, what names I knew that "means something".
So here are some, from the top of my head.
Thomas means "twin", and Andrew, Andreas and Anders means "man" / "human being" (and comes from the greek). That's why "Neo Anderson" of the Matrix films is the flimsiest of hidden "clue" as to who he is in that picture "The new son of man".
Adam means either "man" or "human" or - very plainly - earthling. Not earth as in the planet, but as in "soil", seeing that it derives from the noun adamah which does mean soil. Eve on the other hand is a deriviate of a word which means "life".
Sara is "princess", a feminine of the hebrew sar which means "prince" (as in ruler), and Abraham means "father of many".
Christopher means "bearer of Christ" (from the greek, christo foros), Benedict or the female form Benedicta means "blessed", Beata or the male form Beat means "beautiful", both come from the latin. Peter means "rock", and Joshua is actually the hebrew form of a name many of us knows better in the graeco-latin version of Jesus, both means "Jo (= Yahweh = God) saves". Immanuel means "God with us" and Ursula means "little she-bear". Bjørn, is straight out "bear", and other Danish names that are straight out animals are Ravn (raven), Ulf (wolf) and Lærke (lark).
DD gave up long before I got this far :-)
My name ?
Tilde derives from "Matilde" which again derives from ancient German Mechthildis : mighty in strife.
So there :-)

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