What Does My Name Mean? Search For The Meaning Of Names Find The Name Meanings And Origins Online!

By Author: Lawrence Kelley
Total Articles: 4
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Names are not just words or sounds. They are linguistic symbols. They are supposed to hold meaning. The names that we give things indicate their nature, usage, purpose, importance, and role in our cultures. We take great care in giving the right names to everything from new technologies to new social trends, ensuring that the names hold the right denotation and connotation to represent what we assign them to. But often, we don’t give nearly as much thought to the meanings of human names. There was a time when name meanings were of extreme importance. In many cultures, a personal name was not even assigned to a child until he or she was old enough to display noteworthy personality characteristics, or to accomplish something impressive. Now the tendency is to have baby names selected before birth, sometimes acting as tributes to ancestors, but often based on less significant criteria. Many of the names given to children these days do have meanings in their original cultures, but the meaning of names is just another thing that has been largely lost to history.

For parents, it is a great idea to investigate the meaning ...
... of names. It can be very difficult to select the right name for a child, but knowing the actual meaning / translation of the name can narrow the list very quickly. A name that sounds nice, but has an undesirable or irrelevant meaning, can usually be removed from the list. Knowledge of the origin of a name can also help to make a good selection. A family may want to pay homage to its heritage by giving a traditional name representing the family culture or religion. If a family decides it wants a name that is Celtic, Hebrew, Germanic, Native American, Greek, etc., they can find traditional names from those backgrounds. In fact, sometimes parents decide to name a child after a culture that they simply admire or study, not necessarily a culture with which they have blood ties. All of these things contribute to the significance and specialness of the name chosen.

People all over the world wonder, “What does my name mean?” Many of us have no idea of the origin and meanings of our own names. While some may think about this only as a matter of natural curiosity, others find deep significance in the process of studying their own names. They feel a greater sense of identity and completeness when they understand their own names, because our names are part of who we are. Fortunately, the origins and meaning of names are easily found on the internet. Having a resource for name origins and meanings can also be good for anyone who needs to create names for any reason: parents, pet-owners, writers, actors, teachers, and anyone else who would like to come up with accurate, meaningful, significant, or interesting names for people, animals, or things. With modern technology, insights into the world of multicultural names is just a few clicks away.

The author is a university professor who is interested in name meanings as part of his literary research. He has written several articles about the origin and meaning of names in literature, prompted by being asked by a child, “what does my name mean?”