In 2014 I featured a series of blog posts introducing you to 2,014 names. For the most part they were names that were brand new to me as well. Some names may be more familiar but I found the meaning or origin or some other aspect of the name made it worthy of inclusion here. You may love some of the names, you may hate some, but hopefully you enjoy learning about all of them.

Friday, January 17, 2014

2,014 Names in 2014 - Names 120-126

Girls

Paget -English, from the name Page, which comes from the Greek word 'paidion' which means "little boy".

Quartilla - Latin, meaning "fourth born" or "born in the fourth month".

Radmilla - feminine form of the Slavic name Radomil, which comes from 'rad' meaning 'care' and 'mil' meaning 'gracious' or 'dear'.


Boys

Sarek - one of the more famous Vulcans from Star Trek - Sarek is Spock's father.
Here are possible sources for the name (there wound up being a LOT more than I anticipated and so probably, I could fit more in here)

1- Sarek National Park in Sweden. In the far north of Sweden. It is a remote wilderness area in Lapland. The Sarek Mountains are found here including Mount Sarek. Sarek is a Sami word meaning 'spear shaped'.

2-  In medieval Persia there was a place called Sarahasi. The source I consulted identified this place as Sarakhs. I can see how you might call a person from Sarakhs - Sarakh, leaving the s off, and over time that might convert to a surname and then a personal name.

3- There was also a place called Saliya, identified as Saria or Sari. Depending on the language it might be that someone from this place would be called Sarik. Even if it started out with a long vowel sound, over time or in different dialects or languages it might convert to a short vowel sound.

4-  I came across a place in Asia called Sai-lon or Sairam  (I suppose this is Ceylon which is now called Sri Lanka, and not Siam, now called Thailand).

5-Ptolemy described a place called Sarakene, and this is the region that the Saracens came from (the north part of Sinai) - Hippolytus called them the Saraceni. Greeks called a people from near this region 'Sarakenoi'. Even though the name of the people did not originally mean an Arab, it came to be used that way during the middle ages. I found one source that thought Saracen might come from the Arab 'sharq' meaning 'sunrise' or 'east'. I can see Sarak developing as a short form or nickname for someone called a Saracen or Sarakene.

6- There is an early Egyptian king called Har Sarek - Sarek means "scorpion".


7- Chaldean or Assyrian, meaning "prince". It seems to be another name used for Sargon, an Assyrian king.



8- Sarek Uzdn is the name of an ancient town on the river Arch

I found several of the place names in a something I guess I did not know existed. The Universal History of Time From its Earliest Accounts to the Present. Several people worked on this in the 18th century and it resulted in 65 volumes, pulling together knowledge gathered from earlier writers in various cultures around the world including ancient times.

** Update**  I found another possible source for the name Sarek. There is a town in northern Mexico called Sáric, which sounds like 'saar eek'. It comes from the O'odham language and means 'mountain pass' (the O'odham word is Sa'alk).

Tiberius - Yes, I could not resist the temptation to follow up Sarek with another Star Trek name. However, Tiberius is a bit easier to pin down. It is Latin, though it may have originally come from Etruscan. It might be associated with the river Tiberis or the city of Tibur, or possibly the king Tiberinus. Wikipedia suggests that it may come from a preindoeuropean root 'alba' meaning 'white with sediment' or 'from the mountains' or 'mount'. It might relate to the Aegean word "tifos" or "still water". In Roman Mythology Romulus and Remus were thrown into the waters of the Tiber river (ruled by the god Tiberinus - the king who had drowned in the river).





Uranus - Greek, from Ouranos, meaning "sky" or "heaven". The Greek god Uranus was the personification of the sky. Father Sky was the son and husband of Mother Earth (Gaia). An ancient god he was the father of the Titans, the gods who ruled before Zeus and his group. It's interesting to me that the ancient Egyptians had a sky and earth couple as well - Nut, a goddess, was the sky, and Ged, a male god, was earth. The Greeks reversed the roles, but the sky deity retained some similarity to the Egpytian goddess' name and the earth deity had a name even more obviously related to the Egyptian precursor.


Vlad - a short form of names like Vladislav. These names have the Slavic root 'volod' which means 'rule'. I find that interesting as well, since the word valid in our language is essential to any sort of effective government or leadership.

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