Oldest, least-understood

What does your name mean?

One of our tutoring consultant’s students, not long ago, was named Edward.  There is nothing unusual in this; Edward is a common name in English-speaking countries.  Nor is it unusual that the student was of Chinese descent.  East and south Asian immigrant families are well-represented among the tutoring center’s students.  It was the combination that our tutor thought worth remarking on, if only to himself.

“Edward” is the modern spelling of what appears in Old English as “Eadweard,” which means “blessed guardian” in that language.  The student, then, marked all his textbooks and papers with a word from a language that ceased being spoken maybe a thousand years ago, and was only common in an island off a continent distant from both the tutoring center and his own heritage.  It is a remarkable survival from a time and place that now seems utterly strange.  Everything else from there and then must be taught as something foreign, and it’s probable that everything else in Edward’s daily life is much more modern.

But it’s also pretty certain that Edward’s parents did not intend to label him as a blessed guardian when they gave him that name.  They must have named him after someone else, who was named after someone else; and so on.  In fact King Edward I of England was not named by Old English-speaking parents (the language had changed into Middle English by then, and the aristocracy spoke Norman French anyway) as a blessed guardian, but after a previous king.  And that was in 1239.  So the name Edward is at once a survival from an ancient time and a reminder of how quickly words can lose their meanings.

Similarly, the various Fionas, Caitlyns and Ians are not restricted to Gaelic-speaking families or those with such heritage.  Their original literal meanings are gone, replaced by previous people.  Examples could be multiplied.

Perhaps the most extreme form of this survival and loss comes from Biblical names.  “Samuel,” for instance, is probably Hebrew (though perhaps with ingredients of older languages) and dates from some time previous to 1000 BCE.  It is a common name in English-speaking countries but very few such Samuel-parents speak Hebrew, and many are unaware of its original meaning.  Indeed, it appears often among our tutor’s Asian-heritage students, even those who know nothing of the Bible and are only vaguely aware of its existence.  Maybe the only way our tutor could meet with something more extreme is to have a student by the name of Gilgamesh (which, so far, hasn’t happened).

So names survive for very long times, but not their meanings.  What does your name mean?