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.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

210 New Names so far in 2,014, Plus 7 New ones today = 217 total new names, Subtracted from goal of 2,014 = 1,797 names left to learn this year!

GIRLS

Nancy Ann Story Book Doll #174  Flossie













Flossie - a nickname for Florence.

               Flossie came from Dublin Town
               With forty frills upon her gown,
                A hundred trunks of linen fine,
                If she'll have me, I'll make her mine.

Glynnis - Welsh, derived either from Glenys, meaning "clean" or "holy" or "fair" or from glyn, meaning "valley".





St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Berlin, Germany




Hedwig - German, from Hadwig and Haduwig which derive from the roots "hadu" meaning "battle" and "wig" meaning "fight".






Icie - according to one blogger this derives from the spelling Icesis (for the goddess Isis). I found a lapse in her logic, though, as she suggested that the use of this as a name made sense if there had been a great fascination with Egypt at the time this name was popular. There was a fascination with it (she showed it popular from the 1880s through the 1910s) but the thing is, Egypt only increased in popularity in the 1920s and 1930s and her explanation that it fell out of popularity due to the use of the phrase 'ice princess' does not really coincide with that time period. Use of ice princess nowadays may be common enough, but it was not back then. In addition, if Icie was being used in place of Isis or as a nickname for Isis (or Icesis) then those two names should have shared some level of popularity similar to the nickname's. However Isis did not even enter the U.S. Top 1000 names for girls until the mid-1990s.

I find it much more plausible that Icie is a nickname for Isabelle and Isadora, which were much more popular at the time.

I think it would even be more likely that all the Icies named at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century came from names other than Isis which WERE more commonly used at the time, such as Eunice or as a way to honor someone, such as Isaac or Isaiah.

Dicy is a name to consider, since it is so similar to Icie. Dicy was a nickname for Diana and other names and it seems possible that Icie could just be a variation of Dicy.

I came across a woman whose middle name was Ica and her nickname was Icie. Likely that c in Ica is pronounced with an s sound, which would make it a variant spelling of Isa, which IS a nickname for Isabelle.

Here is some evidence for Icie as a nickname for names other than Isis.

 Isadora Icie Ferguson (1877 - 1963)

Birth: Dec. 6, 1877
Roanoke County
Virginia, USA
Death: Feb. 2, 1963
Roanoke County
Virginia, USA

Isadora was the 3rd child of William Harrison Ferguson & Margaret Rachel Owens of Back Creek, Roanoke, Virginia. She was the oldest daughter of eleven children. She was called Icie all her life. Her father was a civil war veteran. Icie was a small woman with a waist of 18 inches. She had wavy brown hair, blue eyes & fair skin. She was an excellent seamstress & cook. 



Isadora Icy Harper, Born in Tennessee on 12 Jul 1856 and died 25 Nov 1947 in Dallas, Texas
Isadora "Icie" A Dull
Roma Isadora Icie Brown
Isadora Virginia Brown
Isabelle Icie or Isey Mullins
Isabelle Icie Geren

There WERE some people named Isis with Icie for a nickname:

Isis Icie Chenoweth

I had a hard time finding people named Isis (nicknamed Icie) that were born in the 19th or early 20th centuries. And I found an abundance of people born then named something OTHER than Isis that were nicknamed Icie.

Icy Basaak
And then there's just plain 'ice'. I found one woman who was named Icie whose mother's maiden name was Ice. In that instance, Icie is probably to honor the mother's maiden name. But finding Icie an appropriate name for her child was probably in relation to its usage at the time for other established girl names, like Isabelle.

I find it similar to my own name Dellitt. Dellitt is not just a variation of Della, but an unrelated surname. My grandmother was given this name in 1906, when the name Della WAS popular. Even though she was named for a relative with this surname, it is likely that her mother found Dellitt an acceptable first name for her daughter due to the popularity of Della at the time. 

BOYS


Joah - Hebrew, from "Yahu" (or YHWH) meaning "Yahweh" or "God" and "ach" meaning "brother".

Kenji - Japanese, meaning "second-born son".

Lazarillo - Spanish, nickname for someone named Lázaro, which is the Spanish form of the Hebrew name Lazarus, which means "God will help". It can also come from the Italian or Greek name Lazaro meaning "resurrection". In Spanish a lazarillo was a little boy that served as a guide for a blind man. In Spanish this name is pronounced "lah sah ree yo", the r being rolled. A famous work of Spanish fiction is the picaresque novel "Lazarillo de Tormes", which recounts the life and adventures of a boy who worked as a lazarillo.


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