fem. proper name, Biblical name of the wife of Aaron, from Late Latin Elisabeth, from Greek Eleisabeth, Eleisabet, from Hebrew Elishebha "God is an oath," the second element said by Klein to be related to shivah (fem. sheva) "seven," and to nishba "he swore," originally "he bound himself by (the sacred number) seven." Has never ranked lower than 26th in popularity among the names given to baby girls in the U.S. in any year since 1880, the oldest for which a reliable list is available. The city in New Jersey is named for Lady Elizabeth Carteret (d.1697), wife of one of the first proprietors of the colony.
1809, a collection of sculptures and marbles (especially from the frieze of the Parthenon) brought from Greece to England and sold to the British government by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1766-1841).
The removal of the marbles, many of which were torn violently from their original positions upon the Parthenon, to the further damage of that monument, was in itself an act of vandalism; but their transportation to England at a time when Greece was accessible with difficulty opened the eyes of the world to the preeminence of Greek work. It was one of the first steps toward securing an accurate knowledge of Hellenic ideals, and has thus influenced contemporary civilization. [Century Dictionary]
The place is in Scotland, literally "little Ireland," from Ealg, an early Gaelic name for Ireland, with diminutive suffix -in. "The name would have denoted a colony of Scots who had emigrated here from Ireland ..." [Room].
1663, North American colony named for King Charles II (the Latin form of the male proper name is Carolus). Earlier French colonists had called the region Caroline (1564) in honor of Charles IX, King of France, and a 1629 grant here by Charles I of England was named Carolana.
The name at first referred to modern South Carolina, but the tract originally included North Carolina and Georgia; North Carolina first was used 1691, in reference to settlements made from Virginia. The official division into north and south dates from 1710. It has been used generically in forming species names in botany and zoology from 1734. Related: Carolinian.
American colony, later U.S. state, 1681, literally "Penn's Woods," a hybrid formed from the surname Penn (Welsh, literally "head") + Latin sylvania (see sylvan). Not named for William Penn, the proprietor, but, on suggestion of Charles II, for Penn's late father, Admiral William Penn (1621-1670), who had lent the king the money that was repaid to the son in the form of land for a Quaker settlement in America. The story goes that the younger Penn wanted to call it New Wales, but the king's secretary, a Welshman of orthodox religion, wouldn't hear of it. Pennsylvania Dutch (adj.) in reference to the German communities of the state, which retained their customs and language, is attested from 1824.
U.S. state, the region is traditionally said to have been named by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano when he passed through in 1524, based on an imagined similarity between modern Block Island and the Greek Isle of Rhodes. More likely it is from Roodt Eylandt, the name Dutch explorer Adriaen Block gave to Block Island c. 1614, literally "red island," so called for the color of its cliffs. Under this theory, the name was altered by 17c. English settlers by folk-etymology influence of the Greek island name (see Rhodes) and then extended to the mainland part of the colony. By 1685 the island had been renamed for Block. The Rhode Island red domestic fowl was so called by 1896, for its plumage.
former New Amsterdam (city), New Netherlands (colony), renamed after British acquisition in 1664 in honor of the Duke of York and Albany (1633-1701), the future James II, who had an interest in the territory. See York. Related: New Yorker. Latinized Noveboracensian "of or pertaining to New York" (1890) contains the Medieval Latin name of York, England, Eboracum. New York minute "very short time" attested by 1976.
Some of Mr. [Horace] Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and casual smartness, the flat fashionable irony, meaningless because it proceeds from a frame of reference whose amorphous superiority is the most definite thing about it—they are the trademark not simply of a magazine but of a class. [Randall Jarrell, "Town Mouse, Country Mouse," The Nation, Sept. 20, 1941]
