The Name Game

Do you know what the meaning of your name is?

Names are really important. We use them to identify and make sense of things. Human beings have a need to organize their thoughts and names are a way of doing that. In fact, this is were stereotyping comes from. When you are tired or frustrated, your brain will leap to the nearest word or name that applies to a given thing. But where do these words come from? Roots. 

In English, 65% of all English words come from Greek and Latin roots - meaning words from Greek and Latin that are borrowed but altered and share the same meaning. For example, the word PHILANTHROPIST meaning the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes comes from the Greek PHILO (meaning love), ANTHROPO (meaning human), and the Latin IST (meaning one who or that which). These roots combine to mean one who is a lover of humanity - someone who loves and wants to nurture humanity which is what a philanthropist does through charity.

Usually, the fact that all words can be broken down into its root parts isn't an incredibly important fact unless you study linguistics, are in the medical field, or are studying for your SAT's. 

But all languages are rooted in one or two other older languages as shown in the language tree below. 

Still, roots are integral to how and why we name things. And if anyone has ever asked you for the meaning of your name, that meaning is derived from language roots. 

My name, Amanda is a seemingly American name. Many people are surprised to hear that I come from Brazil because I am pale and have an Americanized name. The name Amanda is very American but like most of English, it pulls heavily from Latin and can it's meaning can be compared to many romance languages that stem from Latin (like Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian). 

The name Amanda comes from the Latin feminine gerundive (form of a verb) of the root AMARE. 

In contemporary languages, this can be seen as: 

The Portuguese AMAR

The Spanish AMAR

The French AIMER

The Italian AMARE

and the Romanian A IUBI

Borrowing from the word love, my name can mean: Worthy of Love or Child Who is Loved By All. 

Speaking a latin language had made it easy for me to guess the name meaning of those who have Latin based names like:

Lucas - meaning light for the Portuguese LUZ (meaning light)

Mariana - having someone to do with the sea for the Portuguese MAR (meaning sea or ocean)

It's easy to look up name meanings in websites dedicated to baby names. My favorite is http://www.babynames.com. I use this not only for fun but also to help me name characters in writing projects I'm working on. Name meaning is a great tool to generate names for new characters in stories and websites like BabyNames is great for this because you can look up names by gender, ethnic background, meaning, etc. 

Learning how roots work are a great way of coming up with character names, expanding your vocabulary, and understanding new languages.

If you are interested in learning a list of often used roots, check out this list here.

I hope this post encourages you to learn more about roots and expand your vocabulary.

Have a great February!